I know I'm forgetting some, but this is what I do remember:

Elementary:

2nd grade - The Call of the Wild

4th grade - The BFG, The Phantom Tollbooth, James and the Giant Peach

6th grade - The Pigman, Bridge to Terabithia


Middle School:

The only one I can remember is To Kill a Mockingbird


High School:

Great Expectations, The Great Gatsby, 1984, Animal Farm, The Scarlet Letter, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, The Jungle, The Grapes of Wrath, Brave New World, Moll Flanders, A Modest Proposal, The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, along with lots of short stories and poetry

5th grade - The Dark is Rising, Island of the Blue Dolphin, Julie of the Wolves, Westing Game

6th grade - Where the Red Fern Grows (which is why I refuse to read books with dogs on the cover), Bridge to Terabithia, Hatchet

7th grade - Hound of the Baskervilles, I am the Cheese, War of the Worlds, The Hero and the Crown, Ender's Game, Ten Little Indians

8th grade - Diary of Anne Frank

9th grade - To Kill A Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,

10th grade - American History/Lit- Huck Finn, Telltale Heart, Common Sense (Thomas Payne), The Great Gatsby, big textbook of short pieces

11th grade - The Stranger, Candide, Metamorphosis, House on Mango Street, Kitchen, big textbook of short pieces

12th grade/AP English - Illiad, Odyssey, Medea, Canterbury Tales, The Tempest, Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (LOVED IT!), Return of the Native, The Catcher in the Rye, Stones from the River (HATED IT!), Beloved (loved it!), Pride and Prejudice + one quarter of daily poems

Lisa wrote: "Hayes - I know exactly what you mean with children in school and how some teachers are better than others with developing good reading comprehension. We've struggled for years with how my oldest d..."

I'm guessing your oldest is a fluent reader (ie reads aloud with few eras at a reasonable speed). If she is not fluent, you might try a tutoring program. If her fluency is impaired by limited vocabulary, try watching TV with the closed captioning on.

How is your daughter's comprehension on TV shows or movies?

If you have not read When Kids Can't Read, pick it up from the library. Use some of the simple graphic organizers and have your daughter do them after watching a favorite TV show or movie. Obviously, the extra work should bring some sort of reward (picking the show, extra TV time, something). As she fills out the organizers, try to identify what part of comprehension she is struggling with (making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, determing importance or synthesizing).

Most kids struggle most with inferring. If so, watch sitcoms and movies together. During commercial breaks (or by pausing a movie) infer what you think the characters are feeling or will do. Try to think aloud and explain to your daughter WHY you think that. Have your daughter try as well. She might be bad at it but ask her to explain why she made that inference.

As she gets better with feedback from you, encourage her to apply her skills to her reading. I think reading what your daughter is reading is a great way to make these conversations deeper.

We all comprehend all the time. The key is to help your daughter transfer the comprehension skills she already has to reading AND to transfer her reading comprehension skills to her real-life decision making.

Good luck!

I can't remember a lot of them.

The ones I do remember.. and not in any particular order include:
Goodnight, Mr. Tom which I enjoyed.
Flowers for Algernon
Tomorrow when the war began
Of Mice and Men
Pygmalion
Lord of the Flies
Looking for Alibrandi (which was awesome because it had been one of my favourites for a long time before we had to study it)

And for some reason, when Shakespeare was part of the required reading, through high school I seemed to alternate between having to do Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet, I don't remember reading any other Shakespeare plays. Not so fond of Romeo and Juliet but Macbeth grew on me.

LOL Don't feel bad Lori! I'm guessing you didn't see the response I posted in my other thread before I deleted it.

I had done a quick search of the threads and didn't see this topic, so I posted the new one... Then you commented on mine, and I went and dug a little more and found this one, which one can be bent to my will purposes. There's no sense in having 2 of the same thread so I chucked mine...

Please come out of your corner! :)

To answer your questions tho, I read:
Lord of the Flies
Old Man and the Sea
Of Mice and Men
Catcher in the Rye
Ordinary People

in school and reread all (except for OP) within this past year. I really enjoyed them all in school, but got more out of them this time around. Not to mention that 3 of the 5 are Lost Lit novels and have an even deeper meaning for me now!

Dang Becky.. I didnt mean for you to delete the other post. I was just making a joke. I feel bad now :(

(Going to pout in the corner)

In the category of "wait to read until older to appreciate it": King Lear. I am still clueless about that play.

I keep hoping it will pop up in the continuing Shakespeare courses given by a local retired professor of English (and a fabulous lecturer).

I was just thinking about all of the books that I should have read in school but didn't. Books like 1984, Brave New World, Pride and Prejudice, Beloved, The Count of Monte Cristo, Far from the Madding Crowd, Fahrenheit 451, etc...

There are so many books that I somehow escaped reading in school. I have to wonder whether I'd have felt differently about these books if I had read them in school.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird, A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories and A Tale of Two Cities (along with quite a few others that I can't name off the top of my head) in school and I loved them, and especially loved the discussions we had about them. But then there were others, like The Old Man and the Sea, that I just hated.

But I am curious about what you guys think. I want to know about books that you were forced to read in school but then loved as an adult, or the books that you liked when you were in school and then hated later.

Which books did you manage to avoid reading until you were out of school?
What do you wish you could have waited to read until you were older to appreciate it more?

Yeah, I had that reaction, too, Elizabeth - "that hadn't even been written yet when I was in school!"

I can see by some of your booklists that you're a lot younger than I am. Some of your required reading wasn't even written yet when I was in school. LOL

I'm with Liesl, I feel sort of semi-literate there are so many holes in my reading. I don't remember any required reading in either grade school or junior high, but of course that was centuries ago, so maybe it's just that my memory is bad and we did really have to read some books. I remember we had to read The Scarlet Letter and Tale of Two Cities. I limped through class by listening to the discussion, but I've read both these books since school and loved them. We also were assigned The Merchant of Venice as I recall. We had some Hemingway short stories one year. I remember I loved them, but don't ask me now about any of them.

I am reading "The Cay" in school

Liesl/Lori, I'm also an English major, so I know how yoyu both feel. There's a couple of books that it seems like most people but me have read.

I've done lots of reading for school. The only required books that I remember from middle school were Where the Red Fern Grows, Monkey Island, The Girl Who Owned a City and Tunes for Bears to Dance To. The only one I really remember having strong feelings about was Where the Red Fern Grwos, which was heartbreaking. High school I'll need to do in list form...

9th grade: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Chocolate War (hated it), The Chosen, Tuesdays with Morrie (LOVED It), Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Great Expectations, To Kill a Mockingbird.

10th grade: Snow Falling on Cedars, A Walk in the Woods (funny and informative), Sense and Sensibility (I love Jane Austen, this was my first), Antigone, Animal Farm, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Brave New World (so good)

11th grade: A Farewell to Arms, The Jungle (grotesque, but a book that had an impact), Catch 22, The Scarlet Letter, Ordinary People, The Great Gatsby, Grapes of Wrath, Farenheit 451, If I Should Die Before I Wake, The Awakening
I think I'm forgetting some...

12th grade: The Once and Future King, 1984, Crime and Punishment, The Handmaid's Tale, Jane Eyre, Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet (which we spent a lot of time on), Dubliners, Frankenstien, A Midummser Night's Dream, To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway

Yeah - I felt no need to major in English - I was raised by English professors! I got that stuff at home already. (So I majored in the other major for bookaholics - history.)

My teachers must have hated me.

Snort.

Liesl, I feel like I'm a complete failure as an English major, you can talk to me if you don't want to be embarrassed about the holes in your reading...

Lori -- I'm laughing because my husband was an English Lit major in college, so he's often "shocked" at the holes in my reading. So many books he's read - and a bunch of them I not only haven't read, but have no desire to read. But I am trying to slowly plug some of the holes. (In the case of GE, very slowly.)

Liesl, It took me the entire summer to read Great Expectations and I kept picking up other, more interesting, books, so don't feel bad. I also feel illiterate, especially when I talk to other English majors and their read list is way longer and more impressive than mine.

OMG - I must be borderline illiterate. The only thing I remember having to read in high school was Great Expectations and a book by (or maybe just about?) Walt Whitman. Fortunately I was a bibliophile who read all the time on my own even way back then, but the list of books I've read is seriously lacking in the classics. I'm trying to make up for that. Last year I read Jane Eyre, Silas Marner and Lolita. Right now I'm creeping through Great Expectations. Yes I read it in school, but that was a very long time ago and it was from a text book so I think it may have even been an abridged version - which I detest - so I'm making sure I've read the real deal. I may be sorry I did that, cuz as I said, it's pretty slow going so far - I keep picking up other books that I actually do find interesting, but I will persevere. :-)

There were very few books that I was introduced to by my teachers/professors that I loved and had not already read or been interested in reading. This either makes me a child prodigy or sad that my teachers have led me to crappy literature.

Books I remember we had to read:

Our town - Thornton Wilder
Tonio Kröger - Thomas Mann
Chess Story - Stefan Zweig
Antigone - Jean Anouilh
The great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Physicists - Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Effi Briest - Theodor Fontane
Götz von Berlichingen - Johann Wolfgang Goethe
The Maid of Orleans - Friedrich Schiller
Emilia Galotti - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Minna von Barnhelm - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
The Rider of the White Horse - Theodor Storm
Utopia - Thomas More
The Marquise of O... - Heinrich von Kleist
The earthquake in Chili - Heinrich von Kleist (not sure about the translation of this title)
The Lark - Jean Anouilh
Friedrich - Hans Peter Richter (6th grade)
The diary of a young girl - Anne Frank
Lord of the flies - William Golding
Faust - Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Maria Stuart - Friedrich Schiller
The caucasian chalk circle - Bertold Brecht
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Sansibar oder der letzte Grund - Alfred Andersch

Except for LORD OF THE FLIES, THE GREAT GATSBY, ANIMAL FARM and UTOPIA I read those books for my german classes. I do remember that I hated Götz von Berlichingen and that I loved Chess Story. And FRIEDRICH was the first book I had to read for school. I think it was in 6th grade but I am not 100% sure about it.

I remember they talked about it on the Simpsons and Bart got really excited when Marge mentioned that the protag was maimed.

I read Johnny Tremain in school too, can't remember what grade, but probably 6th, like you Lori. I don't remember much about it, however.

I remember reading Johnny Tremain in the 6th grade. And we read the True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle in the 5th grade. I don't remember much about the actual plot, but I remember really liking it. In the 8th grade we had to read Giants in the Earth. There were 2 English teachers and the other one decided with her class that it was too bad or too much to finish. Of course, I wasn't so lucky. But in retrospect, it might not have been so bad. I've been tempted to get a copy and see 7 years later.

Susanna wrote: "I read them in grade school, but I don't recall ever being assigned them."

I think, beside Jane Eyre, they were the only "required" books I really enjoyed in elementary school.

I read them in grade school, but I don't recall ever being assigned them.

Does anyone remember "Johnny Tremain" or "Ivanhoe"? They were required reading in Jr. High - but then maybe I'm dating myself, LOL!

I love Tennessee Williams, but I don't think we read any when I was in high school. I don't think we read any plays written as recently as the 20th Century, for that matter. My high schools were both fairly heavy on classic literature. Thank goodness only one of them made us diagram sentences six weeks a year!

Yes I really enjoyed his work too. I have tried to read more of his plays since but don't find it very easy reading a play, it's better to do so in a group situation I think.

I love Tennesse Williams...I want to read some of his, but I don't think I will get to anytime soon.

Hi,

I think this is what I studied...

GCSE
Shakespear - Juliet Ceaser, Macbeth
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Poetry - Saemus Heany & various modern poets
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
An Inspector Calls, J.B.Preistly

A-Level
Regeneration, Pat Barker & Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
Shakespear - Hamlet, King Lear
Poetry - Carol Ann Duffy
A Room with a View, E.M. Forster
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams

We did a group book report on The Lord of the Flies in college and since we were already cramming we divided the chapters among ourselves (there were 10 of us I think)and combined our reports together. The result was of course far from excellent and our grade was terrible. I couldn't even remember what the story was all about, which is why this book is in my TBR pile. :)

We read alot of Dikens it seemed like which I was never too fond of. And we did a shakespeare play every year of high school which I did like. I also remember readin The Mists of Avalon and Bram Stokers Dracula

Andrew-I'm impressed your school has you reading such a great variety. I think more kids would read classics if a few contemporary novels were sprinkled in there.

oh wow, what a neat list.

I liked "Curious incident", I almost liked "garcia girls", liked "Bees" a lot, couldn't love "100 years", god knows I tried, adored Shakespeare, and havent read the others.

Lemme know what you think of Marquez. Have you read "Love in the time of Cholera?" I haven't and can't get it from the library, so it will have to wait.

Here is a complete List of what I've read in highschool...I'll update it as we read more.

1. Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom(yawn)
2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Hadden(ehh)
3. How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Julia Alverez(LOVE HER)
4. The Chosen by Chaim Potuk (Bleh)
5. Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (LOVED it)
6. Macbeth by Shakesphere (just finished Act 2)
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez...(just getting ready to start)

Hayes---Rhank you for you comment about my avatar!

Yes, after we read each act, we watch thtat act in the movie version ddirected by Roman Polanski...which is fairly well done. WE might get to see it on the stage, but I doubt we will. :(

The only books we read in highschool (that I can remember) are The Iliad by Homer, El Filibusterismo and Noli Metangere by Jose Rizal and another Filipino novel that I did a thesis on. Of course, we also read a lot of short stories and poems.
Last semester at the University, we read Blindness by Jose Saramago and tons of short stories and poems.

Nikki, I love the way you did this, so I'm going to emulate you and do the same.

Early grades: The BFG, Wrinkle in Time and Where the Red Fern Grows

9th: To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men

10th: My Name is Asher Lev

11th: Alice in Wonderland

I mostly read short stories and essays my senior year of high school. I think the best thing I ever got out of high school reading was Mockingbird and a love for Steinbeck.

Oh wow, good luck andrew. I find shakespears so hard to read and so brilliant to see on stage.

The benefits of growing up in NY (or any other big city) is you have a lot of opportunity to see great productions. I saw a great version on the stage - 8 million years ago - with christopher walken playing macbeth, and another with sam waterston playing hamlet. Makes all the difference in the world - I was able to pass the exam and term paper I had to write about it!! Any chance of you getting to see a production, or a least a movie of it?

PS: like your avatar!!

Currently...I'm reading Macbeth in 10th grade...so far so good.

I definitely can't remember by grade level, but in no particular order, I remember reading in high school:

House of Spirits (Allende) - my favorite book ever.
Grapes of Wrath(Steinbeck) - loved everything but the intercollary chapters (I think that's what they were called??)
The Stranger (Camus)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn)
The Metamorphosis (Kafka)
Ethan Frome (Wharton) - HATED IT
Hamlet, Macbeth, R&J, Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare)
Collected Works of Robert Frost
Collected Works of Poe
Gulliver's Travels (Swift)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston)
Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
Great Expectations (Dickens)
The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)

... my mind has gone blank except for those. Now in middle school, I only remember reading two books for school - Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury) and To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee). Most of that time was spent on grammar and sentence diagramming - ICK - what a waste! Maybe that's why I became a middle school English teacher... to right those wrongs! :)

Nik wrote: "wait tom jones like the movie tom jones


Yes, like that Tom Jones.

I loved, loved, loved The House of the Spirits and Stranger. Also liked Song of Solomon and The Once and Future King really had an impact on me.

I absolutely hated Madame Bovary, The Return of the Native, and Georges Bizet Carmen because my classmates had a negative perspective on the women in those books, even if that wasn't what the authors were trying to do. We never read any books with strong female characters, which really bothered me.

Oh yeah, and how could I forget The Odyssey and Mythology. I ate that up.

For as long as I have loved reading, I have hated reading in class. I read fast and would get ahead and was never able to find where we were when called on. And it's pretty boring.

9th Grade: Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird (this may or may not have happened, I don't really remember). I know there's more. I think there's more.

10th Grade: Heart of Darkness (barfs), Siddhartha (super barfs), The Pigman was read aloud to us and we got in trouble because of giggling when she said the word 'breast' (really? at 15 and 16? Come on). I was never in class, so I'm not surprised I don't remember more.

11th Grade: Because I did not want to take APUSH, I was stuck in an english class that was basically remedial. Like...half the kids did not have a firm grasp on the English language. We read: The Grapes of Wrath (made me want to be a truck driver), Bless Me Ultima (lots of words in Spanish - which I did not take), The Things They Carried. A few Poe stories. The Old Man and the Sea. Huck Finn.

12th Grade: AP English. I only remember reading The Canterbury Tales. But not all of them, so I know we didn't do that the whole year. Hmm.

wait tom jones like the movie tom jones
Susanna wrote: "In grade school I remember loving Little House on the Prairie, which we read in third grade.

Here's what I can remember of my assigned middle and high school reading:

7th grade: The Pearl, Th..."

we read it in 11th or 12 grade, can't remember... must have been 12th...

dont some schools read catcher in the rye in high school

What a great idea... doubt it'll ever happen, unf.

I don't know who chooses books for schools but students might enjoy reading more if the top classes and recent past students helped with the choice.

Let's see, I'm surprised I didn't post in here (or maybe I did!). I went to the same school as Julianne (only two years later) and we did read a lot of less traditional books. She and I have had many discussions that we feel like we missed out on a decent amount of books. Not sure I'll necessarily catch up on them, though. I'll list the ones I remember and put a star next to the ones I liked.

Huckleberry Finn
Dust Tracks on a Road*
Their Eyes Were Watching God*
Things Fall Apart*
The Death of Artemio Cruise*
Grapest of Wrath*
A Raisin in the Sun
Othello*
Macbeth
The Illiad
The Odyssey
Metamorphosis
The Scarlett Letter*
Greek Myths*
Edgar Allan Poe*

Gosh, lots of other stuff, but I can't remember anything else at the moment. That was actually all high school. I don't remember too much back in elementary school, but I remember reading Roald Dahl in elementary school and really enjoying.