This study examines the way Swedish students in Upper Secondary School respond to two excerpts from a classic Swedish novel. The paper’s aim is both to give an overview over some of the theoretical concepts concerning the field of reader-response criticism, and to describe and analyse what the students experience in their first meeting with an older text. The background to my interest is the many studies showing that young readers regard reading of fiction in school as boring. By using the method of written reading responses I want to contribute to a deeper understanding of how an older text can be received, understood and engage its readers. The readers’ responses have been analysed using an analysis tool that categorises the responses under different aspects. The result shows that the older texts actually often do engage its readers in various ways, and indicates that it is the teaching method, rather than the classic text, that is viewed as “boring”. Another finding was that the specific reading response method used in this study and my own method of analysis could function as a pedagogical tool in order to understand the students’ reading act, with both its obstacles and possibilities.