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.
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.