Discovering The Outsiders

[cooroo]

How did you discover The Outsiders? What made you read it? What was your first impression and what made you love it?

Well, my story starts off simply enough. My mom was trying to get me to read stuff on schools' recommended reading lists (I'm homeschooled) and while I love reading, I also like choosing what I read. But eventually I gave in a got a couple of books from the library, including The Outsiders and The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. I read The Chocolate War and was bored out of my mind, which severly put me off reading The Outsiders which had the potential to be just as bad, seeing the blurb made it sound boring enough to put you to sleep.

But eventually, the combination of feeling like I had to read it and my sister telling me it was the best school book she had ever read, made me pick up the book and I didn't put it down until my dad forced me to go to bed. Even then, my sister had to yell at me several times to get me to turn off the light ;D

Now, the harder question: What made me love it?
I think a big part of it was that it was all about brothers, which is one of the things I adore reading about. Also the characters were so real, with so many layers to explore. Ponyboy's narrating helped matters, too. It felt like he was my best friend telling me a story It was also different from anything I had ever read. There was a kind of... charm to it. It felt real, more real than anything I've ever read.

Well, enough about me. How about you guys?

[texaskid]

for me I had to read it for tenth grade English. one day our teacher stood up and passed out the books and said we were reading it so yeah that's how I discovered it. At first I just thought great another book. I mean I love reading and could have read that book in a couple hours but eventually I grew to love it.

As for why I love it I don't know. I just do. Sometimes it's like that with a book I'll just have to read it over and over and over again. I couldn't tell you why just that I want to. it's mysterious to me.

[murderofcrows]

Aug 25, 2008 3:26:37 GMT -5 cooroo said:

How did you discover The Outsiders? What made you read it? What was your first impression and what made you love it?

6th grade. our teacher read it to us, and i fell in love with it and subsequently kept checking it out of the library. at that time, i wasn't really sure WHY i liked it...i mean, i was 11 years old at the time, i don't think i COULD comprehend why i liked it at that point, but i knew that i was drawn to it.

Now, the harder question: What made me love it?

well, looking back on it, now, i realize the reason that i loved it is because i agreed with what was presented in it...things like not judging people by their outer appearance, it shaped the way that i think today. and the brother dynamic of the story introduced me to a family that loved each other unconditionally [especially when my own homelife wasn't that great]. it was something that i was drawn to, something that attracted me because it was something that i didn't have at the time. and the camaraderie of the gang just added to it. it was like the first time i read "to kill a mockingbird" [11th grade], it was an epiphany.

[Nittanylizard]

I vaguely remember seeing the trailer on TV for the movie when I was about 14, but it wasn't something I thought my parents would be the least bit interested in taking me to see. So when we got cable and HBO the following summer, The Outsiders happened to be on at least twice a week. I probably watched it every time, lol.

My sister and I liked the movie so much, we bought the book. She read it first and I bugged her all day to read faster so I could have my turn.

I remember thinking how much more there was to the book, especially with the opening scene and Ponyboy getting jumped. I loved him as a narrator, and I really enjoyed the brother/family dynamic thing it had going. It wasn't like anything else I had ever read. It had a more gritty realness to it.

[Tensleep]

I will never forget the day I discovered The Outsiders. I was just barely 14 at the time - the perfect age to relate to Ponyboy, if I do say so myself.
Mrs. Hall walked to the front of the room, dropping a book on each person's desk as she went. She got to the black board, turned around and said, "I will get through to you chuckleheads yet. Everyone is reading this one. Everyone is going to think about what they read. And what might surprise you the most is that it's a gang story."

That being said, we were curious and we read the book. And she was right. It wasn't a western (the only thing I liked to read at the time). And it wasn't like any of the other books we had to read for class. It was just out there. I doubted any of us knew you could write about life like that.

My first impression was that it would have been a better story from Darry's POV. I don't know why, but that probably inspired a lot of my writing being Darry centric later on. I liked the story, don't get me wrong, but Ponyboy just didn't hit me as real.

What made me love it was it's potential. It left you wondering, opening up so many avenues for the fiction we write. There had to be more to the story and there was never a sequel - probably never will be. The best books leave me like that, keeping my imagination engaged long after the book is closed. I can't stop thinking about what was happening that we never saw. I guess I loved that it lived on even after there was no more.

[Keira]

I was introduced to to the book in the sixth grade when my all-time favorite teacher read it to us, towards the end of the school year. He passed out a book to each of us, every day that he read it, and I remember thinking it was cool how all the guys were leaned up against the brick wall and how similar they looked to some of the people we had living in the apartment complex across the street.

Every day that he read it, I was completely enthralled, even though I was constantly mixing up Darry and Dally (12 years old and the very closely related names confused my poor little mind). I was immediately in love with Soda, and even wrote in my journal about how much I loved him and how he reminded me of my crush at the time, lol.

The school year ended before my teacher could finish read it to us. I believe he got as far as them being in Windrixville, but I don't remember exactly where we left off. I forgot about the book over the course of the summer and only remembered about liking it when my English teacher, from the following school year, told us that we were reading it.

I was SO excited to read it again, and read it all in the first night we took home the book, and went on to read it another 10+ times before we finished with it in class. There was a weekend that I read it four times in a row, I was so in love with it (scary, huh?). When I obtained a copy of the movie I watched it daily, much to the annoyance of my family.

The rest is history, I suppose. I could go on and on with this topic, but I'll spare ya, lol.

[Two-Bitty]

How did you discover The Outsiders? What made you read it? What was your first impression and what made you love it?

Oh boy, oh boy.

I was in the 7th grade when the teacher I HATED had the book reccomended to her by a former student of hers. She rented the tape of the book and let that read it to us instead of her reading it herself. At first, the voice in the tape made me thing it was a black gang and we hadn't got to the part of the descriptions. Since I thought it was a black gang, I wasn't interested. But at the book went on, and characters were introduced, I began to warm up to the idea(and I realized they were white, stupid me). After school(after Ponyboy and Johnny killed the Soc), I went exploring on YouTube and found the movie(or parts of it) and decided on watching it. I got HOOKED and I didn't want to stop watching it.

My first impression was "Oh no, another lame book my teacher is reading to us," like how I felt about 'Searching for David's Heart'. But I read it on my own and watched the movie and LOVED it to death.

I think the reason I began to love it so much was that I related to some of the characters. Like Two-Bit; I live with my mother and sister and sometimes I just need to get out. I play alot and try to be the class clown, because I want to fit in. And Pony; we have the same thoughts and likes.

But I have to say that the actors swore in the deal. Having Gordon Bombay(Emilio) be Two-Bit was great, and Tyler(Tommy Howell) from E.T. play the main character was awesome. Now I can't ever see me being a write that I hope to be without reading The Outsiders or any of S.E. Hinton's books for that matter.

[johnnycadeschick]

When I first discovered The Outsiders, it wasn't in a way most people would...
It was a boring day, December 30, 2007. I was about...twelve. I was talking to my best friend on the phone and flipping through channels when I found the Karate Kid, a movie my mom had been watching last night. "Linds, turn to ABC Family," I told her. Ralph Macchio intrigued me. But of course, the way I am made me forget about him a few days later.
In February, Karate Kid was on AMC. So I IMDB'd Ralph Macchio to see what else he was in. Most of his other stuff was rated R and I was pretty sure my mom wouldn't let me watch it. Then I found The Outsiders. I went through quotes and everything-I knew all the characters' names before I even read the book, but I didn't know who was who. My mom told me to read it.
So on February 14, 2008, I finally found The Outsiders at my school library. I started reading it during 5th hour Social Studies because my teacher was letting us watch a movie and I wasn't going to get busted for getting caught reading in class again. But I started to read it. I read to page 17 and I wanted to go back through it again for some reason.
I finished that book in an hour and a half, and I introduced my five friends to it. To this day, the other four are now Twilighters, except one who's been my best friend since we were born. She loves Sodapop, I love Johnny...people call us that, and they have for about nine months.
And that is how I was introduced to The Outsiders...four months before my thirteenth birthday, and all because of the studliness of that Karate Kid

[Rozamond]

8th grade English.
My English teacher just kind of passed the books around to us, explained that we were reading it... you know how it goes. I didn't know much about it, just that when my friend and I had been writing a really random story the year before, she stuck Ponyboy and Johnny into it.
I tried sticking to the 25-pages-a-night assignments, but that got old really fast, especially when she was stopping us in THE MIDDLE OF CHAPTERS. ...but everybody read ahead, so whatever. And I was made extremely angry when my friend told me Johnny died, because I hadn't gotten there yet.
ANYWAY.
Why do I love The Outsiders? It's gritty. It's real. It's the only thing I've really ever liked reading for my English class, haha. And, I've always been into all aspects of the 1960s. And, I have kind of an obsession problem... when I really like something, I REALLY like something. Hehh...
And, as Tens said, I think there's a lot of ways the story can go after it ends. There's a lot to explore.

[greaserfreak]

I actually didn't discover The Outsiders through the book or the movie. I was watching television one night when I was ten and the pilot for the television series came on. I was hooked from the start and the book and movie followed shortly after.

I did read the book in school when I was in seventh grade, but by that time, I had already read it several times. I think I actually had it memorized at one point because I had read it so much.

I think one of the reasons why I love The Outsiders is because S.E. Hinton manages to grab your attention with the first sentence and holds it until the end of the book. I also like how it's realistic and that people can relate to it.

[dramaholic74]

For me, I discovered it when my teacher made us read it during class it last year in seventh grade.For me, it started out as an okay book. Then, I started getting interested. I thought-and still think- that it is an amazing book. Now what made me love it... Well,like Rozamond, I just get obsessed with a book. I'm still very much obsessed with it as almost a year ago.

[dramaholic74]

For me, I discovered it when my teacher made us read it during class it last year in seventh grade.For me, it started out as an okay book. Then, I started getting interested. I thought-and still think- that it is an amazing book. Now what made me love it... Well,like Rozamond, I just get obsessed with a book. I'm still very much obsessed with it as almost a year ago.

[missmouse]

Grade 7 I had to read it for school... I didn't like it- I failed the unit, I never did any work. I didn't even read the whole book, I skipped huge sections.

The next year, I somehow ended up reading it again and thought it was okay- I wrote a really bad fanfiction on it (Dally stood crying and asked Soda for a hug because he'd just heard his girlfriend Brooke had died in a carcrash and miraculously came back to life). Then I fell back out-of-love with it, and gave it up.

Then, about 5 years later, out of the blue I was drawn back to the story. I don't think I thought of it for all of those years, and I don't know what triggered it, but suddenly I just HAD to work with it! I needed to research it, watch it, read it... It just popped out of the blue and became an obsession.
I'd never written fanfiction (other than my crappy first attempt- I thought that I was so cool for coming up with the idea of writing with other authors characters!), and wasn't into writing, but I suddenly just HAD to pick up a pen! I have no idea what triggered it, but I went and wrote two and a half stories that night, having not read the book in years and never writen anything serious before.

Since then, the obsession has definitely faded- I haven't written any fanfiction in ages, and I don't read it anymore (although that could be because of the MarySues)- but I still adore the story.

And you know, that first fanfiction I wrote is my most popular one on fanfiction.net (a oneshot with 29 reviews) and I just love it! It's one of my favorite stories of mine, and it's hard to believe. Everyone says that you evolve as a writer the more you write- for a long time, I got worse!

You know how they say that writers ramble a lot? After re-reading this, I see that I fit that bill perfectly, lol.

[cassasaur]

Wow...I remember exactly.

It was sometime in September. My favorite English teacher ever told us we would be reading a book called "The Outsiders" the next day. She read us the back cover, and I thought I was gonna hate the book. It looked boring. Anyways, later that day, I went shopping with my Dad at Big Lots. I was looking at the book section, and saw the book "Hawkes Harbor". I saw the author was S.E. Hinton, and told my Dad, "We're reading one of his books tomorrow. That Hinton guy. (I didn't know S.E. Hinton was a woman, yet!) Anyways, I told my Dad, "The nook looks so boring!"
How little I knew.
The next day, we only got up to like page 10, and I was in love. I read the whole book in three days, bawled my eyes out when Johnny and Dally died, and cried and drooled when we watched the movie. (Matt Dillon was hot!!!) I had watched the whole movie on Youtube in one night, and loved it. I then joined fanfiction, 731, WSOTT, on and on.

[kdlaxgoalie]

It was 6th grade and I was reading my way through my homeroom teacher's classroom library... I simply fell in love, I'm not sure why... At the end of the year my teacher gave away her books because she was retiring and I snagged her copy of The Outsiders. Five years later I still read it at least once a month and it's the book that goes in my purse when my mom drags me shopping.