16 "Assigned-Reading" Books You Loved in High School

At school I had a lot of Gabriel Gracia Marquez books, like two for year (and I didn't like any of them).

The books i remember studding for my GCSE's (2 years ago) were...

Of Mice And Men
Macbeth
An Inspector Calls

The rest was just poetry. I did also study Romeo And Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing and Millions pre GCSE.

Dorian Gray <3

At school I read Fernando Pessoa, Saramago, Dickens, Dumas and other classics writers. In these books the only I read in my high school times was " The tale of two cities"

Night by Elie Wiesel. Martian Chronicles wasnt on our H.S. required reading, but ive read it a few times. and yes, i loved the Old Man and the Sea; in fact, i re-read last year.

A Tree grows in Brooklyn and Cue for Treason were two assigned books I enjoyed.

I read The Picture of Dorian Gray at least once every five years. It takes on a new meaning as I get older.

I've read and loved The Outsiders, but it wasn't assigned to me.
I was assigned Tex, which was how I wound up loving Hinton so much later.

I was assigned the Orwell duo, which I hated.

My favorite school-assigned books are Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
I also read Mark Baker's Nam for a history course and I loved it.

I didn't really appreciate the books we had to read at school though I enjoyed The Grest Gatsby. I remember we had to read The Day Of The Triffids and really struggling with it

Crime and Punishment completely altered my perspective on life.

We had To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer nights dream, Macbeth, Othello, Beloved, Northanger Abbey, and Wuthering Heights. loved to kill a mockingbird, beloved and northanger abbey! Still got Beloved on my bookcase complete with annotations!

The book I most loved reading from school was The Giver by Lois Lowry. I still reread it on occasion, my sister has read it, I got my mom into reading because of that book, and now I'm trying to get my dad to read it (he's more of a true movies guy, but I think I can crack him).

Of Mice and Men and Flowers for Algernon were assigned reading and I loved them. Still a couple of my favorites!

I don't think my high school had the greatest English curriculum, since we were only assigned to read three of the above 16 books. I find that rather sad :(

Animal farm. I loved it.

Of Mice and Men and A Separate Peace. Both were phenomenal, and I never would have read them had they not been assigned.

I was assigned Animal Farm by my Sophomore English teacher. After we'd read the book and written a paper analyzing it, we were shown the movie. And a very trippy movie at that! Charlotte's Web it was NOT!

Also was assigned Ethan Frome by another teacher, which I hated.

Catch-22. I remember it being very difficult to get into, but after about a 100 pages, I was deeply into it. Remains my favorite book to this day.

I don't see Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath, Old Man and the Sea, Ordinary People, Flowers for Algernon... I am sure I missing some others.

Would you believe the first time I read 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird was as an adult? I moved twice in High School though so maybe I just missed it?!

And I still haven't read The Great Gatsby. That was another one I missed due to the move.

How to remove this from my homepage?

Asagi wrote: "At school I had a lot of Gabriel Gracia Marquez books, like two for year (and I didn't like any of them)."

This seems to be a trend. I am much older, so i didnt have to read his works.

Two of my favorites are missing:
Of Mice and Men and Flowers for Algernon

Alas Babylon, Rebecca and Mrs. Mike

My favorite book of all time is The Outsiders. I read it in high school as required reading. I've read it every year since I've graduated from high school in 1973 and will start reading it again this year in November on my 61st birthday!

Pride and Prejudice <3

We read Black Like Me in high school (20 years ago) and I honestly think it changed my life. Even though the way the book was researched and the fact of its publication is dubious, it opened my 15-year-old eyes to the kind of crap that people who deal with racism face every single day.

Hamlet was hands down the best required reading in my High School experience.

We read 1984, the Outsiders and Les Miserables in 1974 Loved Le Miz then and when I read it again as an adult.

Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

Crime and Punishment was my favorite. And Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The ones I read in school and recall enjoying are Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies. The most awful was Alvin Toffler's Future Shock and boy did I hate reading Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. I was not a Steinbeck fan either.

Ivanhoe, A Separate Peace and All the King's Men of all things! Loved them all! Liked Spoon River Anthology too.

Hated (still not a fan) Shakespeare!

A Man for All Seasons

According to this list, I only read Macbeth and the Great Gatsby in high school. The other books I either haven't read yet or I read after college. In high school my favorite on this list was Gatsby, but overall I still like Wuthering Heights a lot (even though I read that after college).

In 11th grade, I had to read mice of men by John Steinbeck

My favorite high school read was The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. Re-reading it years later it was a very different (but still wonderful) experience. Also loved A Tale of Two Cities.

I actually liked many of these books, although I was not assigned all of them. I hated having to read David Copperfield, just could not get through it. We read lots of Shakespeare though and it seemed we had to write reflections on every single line...grrr! I liked Portrait of Dorian Gray, 1984, The Great Gatsby, and The Good Earth.

My favorite "assigned reading" book in high school was The Once and Future King. I also loved The Martian Chronicles, but that one was never assigned reading for me.

, &

for a class on Canadian literature. Still favourites.

Our Teacher in 7th grade let us choose what to read (loved him for that). Still he asked us to include these in our list:
The Diary of a young girl by Anne Frank, Heart - A school's boy journal, The mysterious island by Jules Verne.
These are some others I do not see in your list above and which I was told to read as a young student:
Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, The Secret Garden, Around the world in Eigthy Days...

Weird, I was one of those rare students who adore The old Man and the Sea. I do not why, but I felt related to it. Maybe because of my grandpa, who lived with us back then.

There were very few assigned books that I liked, and some I despised. I hated "Of Mice and Men" and especially hated "Lord of the Flies." Most assigned books and those two especially are so male oriented that I couldn't relate to them or even get interested in them. I have read some classics on my own that I liked a lot. Robinson Caruso and Jane Eyre for starters. My sixth-grade teacher read us some great books: "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Gulliver's Travels."

Remember in honors senior English being assigned Canterbury Tales. We had to memorize the Prologue in the original Olde English and then recite it for a grade. We were assigned certain tales to read but our very wise teacher said "I can't assign you the Low Earthy Tales to read. These are tales #......" and of course we read those first. It was the 70's. Great fun!

I've read 7 from this list, 6 were assigned reading, but I picked up Dorian Gray on my own. The other books are on my TBR.

I knew The Outsiders would be on the list. I remember reading it in 7th grade English.

I would definitely add Catch 22!

It's interesting how students are "required" to read these books in school here and some people are ungrateful and don't appreciate it, whereas where I went to school, I had to read these furtively!

Of Mice and Men was one we read in high school and one that I actually enjoyed.

I loved several of the ones that made the list, but I'll always remember Rebecca as the only book that my entire freshman English class liked.

Jill wrote: "I didn't really appreciate the books we had to read at school though I enjoyed The Grest Gatsby. I remember we had to read The Day Of The Triffids and really struggling with it"

I agree, I feel like now that I have experienced more of the world and am more mature I actually understand what the books are getting at. I tried in high school but often had to cliff note it just to get the basic premise of the story...

I loved The Scarlet Letter. It taught me a lot about the power of judgemental people and how they can be wrong.

I really tried to read Moby Dick, but about 1/3 the way through it, I hit a sentence that rambled on for 3 pages. That's when I quit.

What I remember most is that by the time I got to high school and was assigned all these things to read, I had already read most of them. My grandmother had more books than bookshelves and never stopped me from picking up a book.