Let's go back (or stay there), and talk about books you had to read in school.
Fahrenheit 451 was one of them, I actually liked it a lot.
Mathematics for Data Processing, Second Edition
Somewhat dry, lacked a satisfactory resolution.
Doña Bárbara, for History of Colombia and Venezuela. This book is actually pretty damn good D: Sort of a "rip-roaring adventure" with literary merit. And deep in the Venezuelan consciousness...I actually heard Hugo Chavez referencing it, calling Bush "Señor Danger" after one of the characters.
I read "The Bean Trees," by Barbara Kingsolver. I thought it was a really good book, I finished it ahead of my class, but it's a "chick-lit," and a romance, to boot, along with some political problems, attempted suicide and child abuse here and there.
>>1
I read Fahrenheit 451 for school years ago. Should probably read it again as I'm not sure I got much out of it at the time.
Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir, by J.P. Telotte
I really enjoyed it, even though it gets densely academic at times.
I think everyone has to read Fahrenheit 451 at some point in their school career. I was the only one in my class who actually liked it.
I read Nothing But The Truth (by Avi) last year, and even though everyone moaned and groaned about it, I actually enjoyed it. It felt like a real case file, and helped open my eyes to what lawyers must go through every day.
>>8
Actually, I only ever read it for kicks. Not bad, though Bradbury is a bit luddite-ish.
It's kind of sad that now I'm in college, pretty much all books I read are part of my class list.
>>8
I didn't. This old lady was in charge of what my private school's english classes read, so we got stuff like The Odyssey and Tale of Two Cities since she loved those books.
Note, The Odyssey was one of the better things I've ever read.
I had to read Nothing but the Truth and Moves Make the Man in middle school.
I hate them both.
I read Nothing but the Truth and loved it until the conclusion, which was really dumb.
I'm in middle school and we've read... The Once and Future King, Things Fall Apart, Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, Watership Down plus some other stuff I don't remember. Hated Watership and Fahrenheit, liked the others.
We read over the years:
Lockee Leonard: Human Torpedo
Letters from the Inside
Back on Track: Diary of a Street Kid
Deadly Unna
Minimum of Two
Romeo and Juliet
Montana 1948
Macbeth
If This is a Man
Sky Burial
Nineteen Eighty-Four
There were others but I don't remember there names. Sky Burial and Nineteen Eighty-Four was actually really great!
Ragtime
Macbeth
Flowers for Algernon
The Giver in grade 3.
Actually pretty okay. (:
macbeth turn of the screw the awakening heart of darkness hamlet in the time of the butterflies their eyes were watching god the adventures of huckleberry finn all quiet on the western front to kill a mockingbird a separate peace
and that is all i remember; i liked them all i guess but then i've never been discriminate in ehat i read.
Ugh, the one book I remember, mostly because I hated it, was Crime and Punishment. Though now that you mention I did like Fahrenheit 451. Probably one of the better books I read.
oh hey i remembered that in 5th grade i read a book about the story of a samurai by some finlandish dude. that might have been a formative weeaboo moment.
I too blame Erik C. Haugaard for making me a weeaboo. D:
Death of a Salesman; Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream; Animal Farm; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; various poetry books by Robert Burns; various poetry books by Edwin Muir; The Call of Cthulthu & Other Stories; The Cay & Lord of the Flies. I read a bunch of other less-memorable books.
As you may be able to tell, I live in Scotland.
The Chocolate War, Nothing but the Truth, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Lord of the Flies, Grapes of Wrath
I liked most of the books I read in school, but there was this terribly sweet 40-year-old fangirl who assigned us Jane Eyre and A Farewell to Arms. I didn't bother reading that shit.
death of a salesman
all quite on the western front
Confucius lives next door- ver interesting incite into japanes culture
the things they carried
Once we had to write a report on a book chosen from a box of approved books. I was dejectedly sorting through the Harry Potters and other adolecent pulp fiction drek when I got to the bottom and --"Holy Shit, is that a copy of One Flew Ove the Cuckoo's Nest!?" It must of gotten in their by some accident. I'd been interested in it for a while. I bought my own copy of it afterwards
I can't beleive no one mentioned The Catcher in the Rye and only one person mentioned 1984. I had to read both of them, although Catcher I had actually read the year before on my own accord.
I was never assainged Fahrenheit 451, but read it on my own accord aswell.
Four of my favorite books.
All the other books I was assainged ranged from mediocre to alright. The only really terrible book I can remember is Johnny Tremain, in 5th grade. It was so awful that each day when we came into school, me and my friends would joke about how terrible the writing was and all the plot holes. There was another book about the American Revolution, notable only because an asaingment for it gave me the chance to draw a bloody sword... That looked a lot more like a katana than it probably should have.
To Kill a Mockingbird - Good.
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Very good.
Julius Caesar - Like it.
Macbeth - Really like it.
Oedipus Rex - Really good.
The Scarlet Letter - Hated it. I hated hated hated hated hated it.
A Farewell to Arms - Tolerated.
The Glass Menagerie - OK.
The Mayor of Casterbridge - Meh.
1984 - Wow.
Lord of the Flies - Pretty good.
Great Expectations - Yuck.
The House of Mango Street- Ew!
Emerson's Essays - Love the style. Don't like the ideas so much.
The Stranger - HOLY SHIT!
This Good Earth - So-so.
The Metamorphosis - Very good.
The Catcher in the Rye - Meh.
I took AP classes in a Catholic high school. Can you tell?
The Outsiders
The Giver
Jane Eyre
To Kill A Mockingbird
Various Shakespeare pieces
The Red Badge of Courage
The Crucible
Black Boy
The Hatchet
Night
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Parts of Dante's Inferno
Parts of Gulliver's Travels
The last two things was because it was an European History and Literature class (double class, two teachers, only class like this in my HS) so there wasn't enough time to read whole stories/novels/whatever, haha
Schools shouldn't be allowed to expose their students to Dante. No professor can teach you how to appreciate things like that.
>>33
Atleast you end up knowing what Dante is by the end of school. Then you can read the rest if you're interested.
>>34
That is true, because we only went over a few parts of the Inferno and there was an activity we had to do where we had to 'express' the punishment, I guess you could say? Well, my group was doing the final scene where they encounter Lucifer so we made a model of Lucifer. It was kind of lame, haha...
But because of that, I went and got the book myself although I really have to say, it's very hard to read. I'm constantly referring to the notes at the end of the book, haha
True, I guess, but his name is so mainstream that it's kind of hard for someone without an interest in poetry to hear about it.
Kite Runner!
>>30
yes.
I didn't go to a Catholic high school, but i guess any northeast US private school is pretty much the same as that.
Did anyone else have that one weird teacher who made you read cool stuff? One of mine made us read "the wind-up bird chronicle" by murakami, and "tropic of cancer" by henry miller. Still not sure why, but i'm happy he did.
I'm in grade 10 now. I've had to read
I liked all of those except Romeo And Juliet
I then chose:
They were all pretty good, American Psycho being the worst. I'm almost done siddhartha which is great.
I've had to read a lot of the books posted up there. In 11th and 12th grade alone I had to read the top 20 books on the English AP (lit and lang.) so we were always busy.
One of my favorites was definitely Catch 22. Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison's, not H.G. Wells') and Ender's Game were really good, too, but Catch 22 was it for me.
Looking through this, I note: I hated all of these books except the ones I'd read of my own accord. These being:
1984
Catcher in the Rye
Brave New World
Animal Farm
The Crucible
Kite Runner
Catch 22
and I think I found Of Mice and Men and Siddartha vaguely enjoyable, though not really my taste.
Jane eyre.....
Currently going into grade nine.
Over the years we have read:
Animal Farm(seventh grade*)
The Giver(seventh grade*)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer(seventh grade*)
*Was in a Catholic School at that point in time.
The Outsiders(eighth grade)
Flowers for Algernon(eighth grade)
The Pearl(eighth grade)
I had to read Machbeth and Romeo and Juliet. Other than that, nothing. My school kinda sucked.
William Shakespeare's Julius Ceaser.
Theres no better way to destroy any potential appreciation of literature than to force high school students to read it.
To Kill a Mocking Bird
was forced to read it in the 7th grade and was forced to watch the movie also. Hated the book ever since I picked it up
to kill a mockingbird
journey's end
romeo and juliet
day of the triffid
whats annoying is that both romeo and juliet and journey's end are plays so why the hell did I have to sit down and read them?
We "had" to read a decent number of books, most of which were already mentioned.
What I mean by that is that the only required reading that I found interesting enough to read through all of high school was A Tale of Two Cities. Don't ask me why but for some reason I loved it.
For high school English, roughly in the order I was assigned them: The House on Mango Street, The Count of Monte Cristo, Great Expectations, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Fahrenheit 451, Antigone, Romeo and Juliet, To Kill and Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, Death of a Salesman, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights, A Man for All Seasons, 1984, Macbeth, Brave New World, Pride and Prejudice, Paradise Lost, The Importance of Being Earnest, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Poetics, Oedipus Rex, Siddhartha, Hamlet, Jasmine, Candide, The Republic, The Inferno
In addition, we read a considerable amount of poems, short stories, and essays. In general, I enjoyed the assigned reading, with a few exceptions (like A Farewell to Arms and The Republic), including the stuff that the majority of my class hated, like The Scarlet Letter. Oh, and I also read/translated the Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and other assorted works in my Latin classes.
I'm currently taking Sci-Fi as an English class, and prior to it I read 1984 because it was recommended to me, plus it'd put me ahead if I ever had to read it in school. So my Sci-Fi teacher hands out the syllabus at the beginning of the year and it lacks 1984. So I ask why and I request that we read it and my teacher said she didn't want us reading it because she couldn't even finish it.
More or less in order, probably missing several:
Locky Leonard: Human Torpedo, The Hatchet, Letters from the Inside, Diary of a Street Kid, Romeo and Juliet, Deadly Unna, Minimum of Two, Macbeth, Montana 1948, Sky Burial, 1984, If this is a Man
I probably enjoyed Sky Buriel the most. Quite amazing. Based on a true story or not, Wen sure was dedicated to her husband.