what did you have to read in English at school!?!

[Mark]

(gcse / a level books that you were made to read and analyse, how you found them and how they affected your reading experience as a teen.....!!)

I had to read z for zachariah.
in retrospect I think this is a pretty cool book! I'm sure as it was imposed by school that I had to force myself to hate it, as much as I secretly enjoyed it, so much that I clearly remember it and it is maybe 1 of my top books! maybe even the book that created my love for dystopia, near future, apocalyptic world's!

what have you read in school, and what do you feel about it now?

[Mark]

sorry!
please include all books that were read as a teen in a class situation!
not just gcse or a levels as in the UK! !

[Ty]

There are two that stick out in my mind. Interestingly, the first was Z for Zachariah. I really liked the book and remember being amused that we were forced to read a book that was something I would have read on my own anyway. I'm looking forward to the movie coming out later this summer.

The second one was Something Wicked This Way Comes. It quickly became one of my favorite novels. We were required to read so many pages each day, but I blew through the entire book the first night and then just re-read the parts we would be discussing in class the next day. I still recall making comments in class about things my classmates hadn't read yet...and the strange looks I got from most of them. Years later I joined the Sci-Fi Book Club just because they had their own printing of it and wanted to add it to my permanent collection.

[Andreas]

School textbooks, no literature, as I had to learn the language first :)
As for my mother language, that's a different story.

[Adrian]

I was forced to read 'Lord of the Flies', 'Far from the Madding Crowd' and 'The Moonstone' none of which did anything for me at all. However, inependantly of these I was discovering the likes of Robert A. Heinlein, Asimov, Isaac, etc, etc and haven't stopped since.

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

I did Lord of the Flies and really enjoyed it but its definitely a marmite book.
I also did Silas Mariner (loved it) , The Pearl (so so) , Old Man and the Sea (not too bad) , Great Gatsby (hated it) , Animal Farm (Loved it) The Catcher in the Rye (loved it)

[Andrew]

To Kill a Mockingbird certainly stands out. I love this book and read it about once a year to this day.

The Giver another really amazing one that I was glad to read, and still read nearly as often as Mockingbird.

A Separate Peace was pretty good.

Animal Farm fantastic but incredibly sad LOL

Of Mice and Men short and great.

The Sea Wolf I liked it.

I really liked Othello and Macbeth.

There's probably a couple others that I am forgetting. There's a few kinda random ones I enjoyed for summer-reading assignments but were by no means classics.

I think there were more that I DISLIKED and resented being forced to read them, but nothing too specific comes to mind.

[Andrew]

I'm one of those people that really did not like Catcher in the Rye. It was short and interesting enough for me to not hate it--and in fact I have read it twice LOL Certainly better than other books I have been forced to read. But I dislike Holden a lot. I find him to be more of a classical "anti-hero". Not like...Wolverine or Punisher anti-hero haha But like, a protagonist that is just an annoying and selfish without a worthy redemption arc.

But that's just me ;)

[Lisa]

I had the best English teacher who really fed my love for books and could guide us through discussions on the books in a way that made us understand it all and learn how to not only read the book but also understand it.
The Scarlet Letter
A Tale of Two Cities
Of Mice and Men
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Odyssey
The Crucible

I feel like I'm forgetting one. Maybe I'll think of it later. I loved all these books so much!

[Rinn, (Retired mod) Captain of the SSV Normandy]

I've moved this to Non-BotM Discussion, think it fits better there ;)

I had to read Angela's Ashes, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Lord of the Flies, The Crucible (studied it in Drama as well as English), Macbeth, The Tempest... plenty more I'm sure. I went to an all girls' school and the all boys school next door read completely different things. Funny thing is, I re-read Jane Eyre last year and absolutely fell in love with it, which makes me wonder whether I should re-read some of the others and see if my view changes once I don't have to rip the text apart.

I also wrote a book review of 'Bored of the Rings' when I was 13 for school, and Bilbo was called Dildo Shaggins. I don't know how I got away with it - plus I didn't understand the first reference at the time...

[Simply Sam]

Tess of the D'Ubervilles sticks out in my mind because it's the one title I did not read. I still feel the guilt...
I think I had the most fun writing about Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm though.

[Kevin]

Rinn, you had to read Angela's Ashes? I'm so surprised! I had no idea it was used in schools in England. I'm from Limerick, i.e. where it's set. In fairness, the place is a lot better now... Marginally :)

[Kevin]

I books I read as part of school are as follows (or at least the ones I can think of);

Goodnight Mister Tom.(excellent)
Of Mice and Men.(excellent)
To Kill a Mockingbird.(excellent)
The Merchant of Venice.(pretty good)
Macbeth.(amazing, still my favourite of S)
The Empire of the Sun.(not great, very boring and repetitive writing)
How Many Miles to Babylon.(pretty good)
Sive(fairly excellent)
I also had to read two Irish language books called A Thuig Ná Thit Orm and Hurlamaboc

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

I always thought Angelas Ashes made Limerick sound better than it is. ;-)

[Kevin]

In fairness, it must look like a palace through the eyes of a man from Tallaght... :)

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

Its a close contest isn't it. :-)
Sadly no literature about Tallaght has emerged ( none of us can write ;-) )
Did thet really make you read that much in school. I forgot about Shakespeare stuff.
We did Merchant of Venice and Othello( Loved Othello). The only Irish book we did was sections of Strumpett City(one of the best books I've ever read).

[Rinn, (Retired mod) Captain of the SSV Normandy]

Kevin wrote: "Rinn, you had to read Angela's Ashes? I'm so surprised! I had no idea it was used in schools in England. I'm from Limerick, i.e. where it's set. In fairness, the place is a lot better now... Margin..."

Yep, we read it in Year 8 - I'd already read it by that point though :P We also watched the film and I remember my teacher getting really flustered and fast-forwarding through the 'inappropriate' bits... poor woman, you can imagine what that was like in front of a class of 30 13 year old girls...

Oh and in primary school I remember reading Goodnight Mister Tom and Chinese Cinderella.

[Kevin]

I had a seriously good English teacher up through secondary so we read at least one book every year then the few extra for the Leaving. We read Empire of the Sun for our comparative but afterwards we voted on changing it since everyone hated it. So How Many Miles to Babylon was a handy alternative.

Re. Shakespeare, I have to get around to reading Hamlet and then Othello soon. I've only read Macbeth, King Lear, The Merchant of venice and As You Like it. King Lear is alright but Macbeth is just sheer broilliance.

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

I really loved Othello and Hamlet. So good. But MacBeth would shade it for me.

[Ryan]

I wish I had been a better student. So many books I refused to read now beckon to me from my to-read shelf.

[Lancer, Warden of the Slums]

I'm from Canada so mine may differ. I did catcher and the rye, to kill a mockingbird, a strange YA sci fi book called Alien Wars, The Color Purple, Canadian book called Lost in the Arctic I believe (this could be incorrect) and my favourite of them all Oryx and Crake. I have always meant to go back and read the rest of the trilogy but have just never got to it

[Emily]

I'm also from Canada and generally what my school did was read one Shakespeare and one non-Shakespeare per year. So I read Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Merchant Of Venice, as well as To Kill A Mockingbird, The Help, Life of Pi, and The Pearl. Sometimes we would read various short stories as well, so I read a bit of Poe.

TKAM was my favourite by far, though. I had already read it so it was a re-read for me when I had to read it for class but I love that book so I didn't mind. :)

However, different classes sometimes read different things, so I know others read Animal Farm, and as I was graduating, they were changing the books around a bit so I know some of the younger years got to read The Hunger Games and The Fault In Our Stars.

[Rinn, (Retired mod) Captain of the SSV Normandy]

I feel like I may have also read, or at least partly read, To Kill A Mockingbird, because I do remember watching the film...

[Lancer, Warden of the Slums]

I really enjoyed to kill a mockingbird ass well hut Oryx and Crane was more up my alley. I graduated in 2005 and lots of people in my class did not enjoy it. But I guess they didn't enjoy reading in general so they complained about everything we had to read where it was my favourite part of highschool :)

[Emily]

Yeah, that was the same for me! Most of the other students would complain about having to read while for me it was the best part.

I remember I took an additional Literature class and we were reading The Hobbit but the class complained about it so much that my teacher basically gave up on it. It made no sense to me - the class was completely optional, so I don't know why they took it if they didn't want to read books! It didn't completely ruin things for me, but definitely made it less fun.

[Rinn, (Retired mod) Captain of the SSV Normandy]

I also had to read a load of poetry, which put me off for life. Pulling apart every sentence for a hidden meaning was NOT fun. Even Seamus Heaney's poems about potatoes...

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

I hate Seamus Heaney. I had that depressing rubbish forced down my throat in school and we were supposed to be extra impressed because he was Irish. Painful.
Oddly one of the biggest selling books in Ireland last year was a book of poetry called Soundings which was a rerelease of the Leaving Cert (A Level equivalent I think) poetry text book from about 10 years ago. Someone must have liked it but I didn't .

[Rinn, (Retired mod) Captain of the SSV Normandy]

It was very depressing! It was him and Carol Ann Duffy that we had to read a lot of, plus a section on war poetry.

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

We had all the irish stuff. Yeats , Kavanagh, Kinsella etc. It made reading the earlier stuff seem like a break. Much preferred Shakespeare, Donne and Milton

[Cupcakes & Machetes, Hybrid Creature]

We read The Count of Monte Cristo, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black and To Kill a Mockingbird (which was my favorite.)

[Mark]

there is a movie coming out of z for zachariah!?

[Mark]

thanks everyone for your comments, i was expecting alot of kill a mocking, animal farm and .....
I am quite suprised at the amount some of you read!
I cant really say i enjoyed reading at school, its in retrospect i realise how lucky i was with my teacher!

[Mark]

lord of the flies is the 1 i couldnt think of!!
i may add these to my to read list now.

[Ty]

Mark wrote: "there is a movie coming out of z for zachariah!?"

Yeah, it was at Sundance this year and will be in theaters in August. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k5tl...

[Sarah]

As a teen in high school, I recall having to read The Crucible, The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill A Mockingbird, Heart of Darkness, The Grapes of Wrath, The Odyssey, and Animal Farm. We read They Cage the Animals at Night when I was a pre-teen and that book has stuck with me when the others did not.

[Audrey, Queen of the Potato People]

The Hobbit, Lord of the Flies (three times!), Their Eyes Were Watching God, Ordinary People, Invisible Man, Crime and Punishment, Wuthering Heights, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, Frankenstein, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, My Antonia, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, The Color Purple; Hamlet, Macbeth, As You Like It from Shakespeare; probably others I can't remember.

Most of these I found torture (aside from a few gems), and I didn't get along well with English teachers. Meanwhile I read plenty on my own.

[Kirsty, Jedi Master]

Of Mice and Men, Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, The Rover, Dispatches, Frankenstein, Dracula,

Plus a load of dreaded poetry by Seamus Heaney and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

And probably some more I can't remember!

[Freya, Dragon Rider]

I think secondary school was:

the hobbit
taming of the shrew
great expectations
great Gatsby
merchant of Venice
pride and prejudice
journeys end

we read more but I can't remember

[Tom]

The only actual book we read was kes
after that it Was all poetry and Shakespeare
even then for romeo and Juliet we just watched that crap film with Leo Di capricious about 6 times

[Tom]

Haha meant to say caprio obviously

[Emily]

Tons of Shakespeare, The Great Gatsby, Native Son, Angela's Ashes, Tis.

[Lancer, Warden of the Slums]

I never read Angela's ashes but I really enjoyed the movie. That may be because I never read the book guest so nothing was being ruined.

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

Don't mention Angelas Ashes to Kevin . Its set in Limerick and most Limerick people hate it

[Lancer, Warden of the Slums]

Hahaha being a Canadian with zero ties to the community I am not affected. It's something that I never really have to deal with, because no one is going to make a movie about Winnipeg :)

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

Give it time ;-)

[Kevin]

I actually don't mind Angela's Ashes but then again I am from the country and saved from city life. I've been at the Frank McCourt museum loads of times for various things as well. Lots of Limerick people have fought with McCourt over his work though, most notably Richard Harris( he played Dumbledore in the first two HP films). Lots of claims that it was no way as bad as the book depicts.

Lancer, how the hell does a Canadian get to watch Angela's Ashes? Haha

[Lancer, Warden of the Slums]

My parents somehow came into possession of it on VHS at some point and I watched it. I happen to enjoy stuff from that era (Cinderella Man was good too)