Huh, interesting. The best advice I've always gotten has been to start with something I enjoyed, then pick something about it to analyze, which I suppose adequately splits the "appreciation" and "analysis" segments. For me, at least, when I go straight for analysis without thinking about enjoyment, I tend to write very facile papers.

But my high school did literature and history as purely discussion-based classes, and it quickly became terribly embarrassing to have nothing more to say than, "I liked it," so we learned that we had to read by analyzing.

(Also, is there any chance you could point me in the direction of that BS essay? I'm curious.)