One quote in the article disturbed me. A college student said "Summer reading is a good thing if and only if there's a context for it. I don't like the idea of just handing us a list. If you say, 'Read these books,' tell us why."

Context is a great thing. But there's a lot of value in simply reading for pleasure, reading for its own sake, reading for exposure to different ideas and styles.

Oh, these are "coming of age" novels...like kids need to focus on themselves more than they already do. These are the novels that are replacing the archetypal cautionary tales?