What books and plays were you forced to read in high school?

[XemaSab]

Antigone
Romeo and Juliet
The Chosen
Great Expectations
The Long Walk
All Quiet on the Western Front

A Seperate Peace
1984
Lord of the Flies
Catcher in the Rye
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Great Gatsby

The Crucible
Macbeth
The Scarlet Letter
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Slaughterhouse Five

Most of these books I hated with the burning fire of a thousand suns. And note well this is 13 books and 4 plays in 3 years, or almost 6 works a year. In retrospect, I can't FATHOM spending almost 6 weeks on each of these books. Which is probably why I hated them with the aforementioned burning fire of a thousand suns. :boring:

[lindisfarne]

1. We read books but we didn't just do that. I doubt we spent more than one week on a particular

book. In between, it was poems, or literary criticism, or literary movements, or learning to write ourselves.

I voluntarily read Faust in HS - in translation, of course. Of course, at that age, a lot went over my head.

[Kurska]

2. I had to read most of those

I loved about half of them, studied about 25% (Just for the grade) and barely trudged through the remaining 25%

I never finished the scarlet letter and a seperate peace (D's on both tests, I just couldn't stomach any more of either of those.)

The big standout that you read and I didn't was Grendel, which is atleast in my top 3 books of all time and it was summer reading no less.

The worst book I had to read in school was "Anthem" by Ayn Rand, which was a teacher mandate and no something required by the district. I consider myself lucky that the Ayn rand filth I was forced to read was the shortest available option, I really feel for anyone who was forced to Read Atlas Shrugged.

[elleng]

3. HATED?

with such passion??? I can't imagine such.

[XemaSab]

5. Most of them would have been fine for a "read A Seperate Peace for Tuesday"

type of class, but having to go chapter by chapter was horrid. x(

[elleng]

6. So the teacher/method got you, eh?

I can understand that.

Shakespeare, maybe; not the others, especially as there's so much to discuss in/from them. SORRY!

[LibDemAlways]

8. Some of the teaching methods leave a lot to be desired.

In my daughter's 10th grade English class the kids were typically required to go chapter by chapter in each and every book and put together three column journals where they would have to copy three passages from each chapter, explain why they chose those particular passages, and relate those passages to a particular theme or concept. It became an exercise in boredom and repetition and killed her desire to read. There were also a bunch of "cutsie" assignments like the Catcher-in-the-Rye related "Draw and color a baseball mitt and put slogans on it that you live your life by." Kids in her school never experience reading for pleasure.

I'm hoping that when she gets to college the profs still believe in the old "read such and such novel by Tuesday and we'll discuss it."

[XemaSab]

10. For "Great Expectations"

we had to write a paragraph description of each character. Even the characters who are only mentioned once. :banghead:

[LibDemAlways]

11. Mentioned once? What were you supposed to do, make stuff up?

[tigereye]

22. yeah, my son had to do that kind of thing with several books in 5th grade

I think they wanted people to be able to analyze the work and it's complexity, and to be able to write about it, but I can kind of see how it would leave an unpleasant taste in one's mouth.


What a shame to despise Mockingbird, and some of those other books - maybe better to read them by choice later on and see if they "taste" better

[LibDemAlways]

4. I know there were others, but the one that stands out

as being the most boring and tough to get through was Great Expectations. Only fit to be punishment for serious offenses. My daughter is in high school, and, so far, she's escaped it. Lucky kid.

[dipsydoodle]

7. I only recall

the Merchant of Venice, Macbeth , The Thirty Nine Steps and Mr Polly as school reading.

At the age of 11 our entire class also knew almost the entire lib of The Pirates of Penance....lol.

My favorite was and remains the full version of The Count of Monte Christo , 900 pages or so , which is back in print again these days.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. None. I loved reading anything I could get my hands on. I read 'Andersonville' when I was 11. Had

to use a dictionary to understand some of the sexual terms used in it.

[LWolf]

12. "Forced?"

I didn't have to be forced. I loved, to read, and to think, and to discuss literature. I still do.

I've read all of your list. Some in school, some outside of school. I don't hate any of them.

I've read books that many love, and been left cold. "A Confederacy of Dunces," for example. That doesn't mean that I can't find anything of value to think about, or to discuss; just that it doesn't resonate with me the way it does with others.

That doesn't make it unworthy.

[Goblinmonger]

13. Gatsby and Mockingbird

are two of the best American novels you can hope to read. Sorry you hated them. Others on that list are pretty good, too. Great Ex sucks, I'm with you on that. Read Of Human Bondage instead.

[Forkboy]

14. The only one I remember for sure is A Tale of Two Cities.

I'm pretty sure we read Great Expectations, but don't quote me on it. :)

[fadedrose]

15. Martin Arrowsmith (and I enjoyed it) nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. I hated a Separate Peace and Catcher in the Rye. and I read them in

the late 1960s.

There was another book I had to read in ninth grade: Street Rod, which was about boys racing around in souped-up cars.

I either liked or tolerated the rest of the books on your list.

I suspect that in around 1960, some national committee of English teachers decided that they'd design a reading list that was "relevant" to the teenagers of the day. Unfortunately, they never changed it, so today's teens are forced to read books that were "relevant" to their parents' older siblings.

Does anyone who ISN'T a high school student ever read A Separate Peace?

[pitohui]

25. i loved street rod

on the other hand i was prob. about 11 when i read it!

[Broken_Hero]

17. Quite a few,

The Pearl

Summer Lightning

Lord of the Flies

To Kill a Mockingbird

Cry the Beloved Country

Black Like Me

Watership Down

Son of the Morning Star

Black Elk Speaks

Merchant of Venice

The Crucible

Romeo and Juliet

Taming of the Shrew

Things Fall Apart

Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfights in Heaven

Twelve Angry Men, I was juror number 8. When we did the play in our sophomore year, I was chosen to pick a juror number, I picked 8...not knowing, that number 8 had the most lines and was the driving force. Next time, I'm going with 3! :D

Thats about all I can recall at the moment...in HS we had to read 4 books per year for my english class, so I had to read a lot of books that I didnt' care for that much, but at least I learned something new. :D

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

18. Similar to your list

Romeo and Juliet
Spoon River Anthology
A Tale of Two Cities
Huckleberry Finn
To Kill a Mockingbird
Separate Peace
Lord Of the Flies
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Great Gatsby
The Outsiders
The Crucible
A LOT of Poetry from the Norton Anthology
To the Lighthouse
The Jungle
Babbit
The Canterbury Tales
The Old Wives Tale
The Scarlet Letter
The Grapes of Wrath

[libguy9560]

19. Some books I read

Of mice and Men
Catcher in the Rye
1984

[Onceuponalife]

20. Let's see...

in school I remember reading

The Old Man and the Sea
Island of the Blue Dolphin
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Just So Stories (Kipling)
Flowers For Algernon
Twelve Angry Men (the play)
and other I can't remember....I took mostly creative writing courses. We wrote, we didn't read.

Plus on my own I read

Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Rings
The Hobbit
1984
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
A Christmas Carol
Treasure Island
Roots
Tom Sawyer

[LeftishBrit]

21. Several by Shakespeare

Henry IV Part 1

Henry V

Julius Caesar

Midsummer Night's Dream


Also:

Jane Eyre

Great Expectations

Pride and Prejudice

Tale of Two Cities

Journey's End (of which I have no memory)

My Family and Other Animals

Arms and the Man

Northanger Abbey

Animal Farm

A selection of poetry, ranging from e.e. cummings'
'Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town' to Wordsworth's
'Michael' to D.H. Lawrence's 'Snake' and 'Work'.


Probably others. I liked most of them, though I
never liked Lawrence's poems, and 'Henry IV Part 1' is not my favourite Shakespeare - both Hal
and Falstaff are total bastards IMO! I didn't
much enjoy writing essays about the books, but
I did enjoy reading them.

[tigereye]

23. Old Man and the Sea

Ethan Frome, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, The Screwtape Letters, Silas Marner, John Hersey's The Child Buyer (incredibly creepy, but so sharp), 1984, The Scarlet Letter, House of the 7 Gables, and The Great Gatsby are what I remember offhand. I also remember reading Merchant of Venice and memorizing lines from it- the quality of mercy speech, for example. I really liked reading Shakespeare and most of the other books - but I seem to remember feeling that I didn't "get" some of them and might have understood them better with more maturity and life experience. The list seemed to zoom from English classics to apocalyptic post-war paranoia, which affected my view of the world and made me quite existential for a while.

The one I really disliked and thought was incredibly dull at the time was Silas Marner- I didn't get it at the time. I suspect I would now, but I can't bring myself to re-read it. :D I thought The Lord of the Flies was amazing.

[pitohui]

24. well most of these that were on my syllabus i actually liked

i agree you don't spend 6 weeks on one book, i read a book a day at that age, but there was no internet then, hell, there was no cable teevee or VCR back in that day

we still had huckleberry finn (before some nazi found out the n word was in there), even you would like that book i think

we also had hamlet, actually we had to read hamlet aloud for some reason, which was vastly entertaining )it is not a short play)

we also had thomas hardy, the mayor of casterbridge and probably tess for the older crowd -- i remember someone walking up behind me and saying "stop crying, it ain't that bad" when i was reading the mayor of casterbridge

a tale of 2 cities instead of great expectations

oh, and billy budd, to humor the yankees -- we're not going to invest the time required for moby dick

[Lydia Leftcoast]

26. Our curriculum was pretty standard

Our 12th grade English teacher, whom I didn't like much otherwise, encouraged us to read non-assigned books. He gave us a list of some fifty classic or well-regarded modern novels and said that we had to get credit for five of them during the year.

The way to get credit was to make up a test on the book or take someone else's test. I recall writing a test on Doctor Zhivago, which contained some trick questions to weed out people who had only seen the movie and not read the book.

Otherwise, I recall reading Macbeth, Hamlet, a modern English version of Canterbury Tales, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible (We read it aloud with assigned parts--I was Ann Putnam's mother), Julius Caesar, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace, Catcher in the Rye, a modern English version of Beowulf, and some short stories by Ray Bradbury. We also read a lot of short stories out of a series of anthologies.

[Jim__]

27. Do you know any books that you would rather have read in high school?

Part of the difficulty is that most books are written by adults, probably most of them older than 30 years. Their life experiences and concerns are generally going to be different than the concerns of a high school student. Is there good literature available that is specifically written for the high school student? That type of literature would probably be more appreciated by high school students.

Meanwhile, I think exposure to good literature that many high school students wouldn't be exposed to without it being covered in school is probably worth the cost. Later, you may come to see more of the point of what was being said.

[niccolos_smile]

28. The Yearling

Actually, I never read it; I hated it that much. Read the first couple of chapters and said, "Screw it." Passed all the quizzes though.

I just read what I felt like reading throughout college and highschool. Saved me a lot of time and effort. Luckily most of the required reading were things I wanted to read anyway.

[Jkid]

29. This is the reason why many high schooler hate books

Because the first thing they think when they hear "read a book" is either classic novels or popluar tween novels. I have the same feeling to when I keep seeing that phrase during the digital television transition.

I just read what I want to read (manga, non-fiction books).

[david13]

30. Force? I recall no force in my education.