ABANDONED. Read excerpt in High School - Protagonist teaches self to read and uses to impress girl in dystopian society

[Jonathan]

So back in high school for me, roughly around 1999, we were doing a section
on dystopian books and totalitarian themes. We were in the process of
reading Animal Farm and during one class, we were given a handout that had
a chapter from this book. I've been trying to find it on and off again
since then and have completely forgot the title. Here is what I can
remember at best:
-The main character comes across an abandoned house or library deep in the
woods where he learns to read out of sheer curiosity.
-Reading itself is forbidden or outlawed or just not bothered to be taught
any more as a means of suppression. So he needs to keep the location a
secret.
-He uses this to try and impress a girl that he has feelings for by
teaching her how to read as well. He also brings her to the house for
these lessons.
-I believe she is involved/engaged/betrothed to someone involved with the
government or works alongside the main character
-At some point, she is supposed to meet up with him at the secret location
and doesn't. If I recall correctly, it's because she blabbed or her
boyfriend/guyfriend/husband/fiance found a book that she took home with
her.

I had initially thought it was "Fahrenheit 451" but none of it seems to
fit. I had stumbled across a book titled "Mockingbird" by Walter Tevis
which sounds like it could be the book, but I cannot recall androids or
drugs.

Any help with this title would be greatly appreciated.

[Kaion]

http://www.librarything.com/tag/dysto...

[Tathariell]

The Book Thief? Haven't actually read it, but our town just did a community book group on it, and the description seems very similar.

[Historic_Heroine]

It's definitely not The Book Thief. Book Thief takes place in Germany during WWII and really doesn't have any similarities to this description at all other than doing some reading in secret.

[Lanica]

What about The Last Book in the Universe?

[slauderdale]

I wonder if this is Anthem by Ayn Rand. One tends to think of those honking monsters The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but this one's a short novella and would be an easy find and a quick flip-through if you want to check it. I don't have the book on hand so I'm not sure if the main character learns to read from scratch per se, but he certainly discovers "lost" words from the ancient books he's reading (view spoiler)[culminating in his recovery of the word "I" and, therefore, the concept of individualism (hide spoiler)]. His "name" in their society is Equality 7-2521.

And there is a girl/woman (whatever their respective ages are) that he brings in on the whole thing as well, although I don't remember all the details about who else the two of them might be connected with in their repressive collectivist society. I think they are both ultimately cast out together. (If she isn't, he definitely is, but even if he gets cast out alone, I think she joins him.)

Anthem is very much the kind of book that teachers would assign or suggest as a reading option (that might even be how I read it, as a summer reading book.) Author is literary, or at any rate often lumped into the literary/classic category, and the book itself is short. And, of course, eminently dystopian.

[Historic_Heroine]

I found Anthem while I was searching too and was wondering if it might be it. It didn't sound quite right based on the description, but it definitely seemed like a good possibility!

[Jonathan]

slauderdale wrote: "I wonder if this is Anthem by Ayn Rand. One tends to think of those honking monsters The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but this one's a short novella and would be an easy find and a quick flip-t..."

Thank you for your suggestion. I looked into Anthem and it seemed very very familiar. So it's very possible that was where the excerpt we read was from. It's been over 15 years so it's also likely my memory is a bit fuzzy for a one-off assignment back in High School. Thank you for the suggestion though, it was a good read to check out.

[Justanotherbiblophile]

Are you still looking for suggestions?

If you think there's a good chance that this is your book, you can put this request in the "Possibly Solved" folder, by clicking the 'edit' link next to the subject line / title.

If this turns out to be the book you're looking for, come back and tell us that we were successful in our guesses. We keep the old requests (please don't delete it), so new people who're using a search function can easily find the same book, based on your keywords/description. We move these finished requests to one of the "Solved" folders, the same way as above. (In addition, I like to edit my requests to show the title and author at the top of the original post, so it shows up in google results easily).

If it turns out that this wasn't your book, or you want more suggestions - you can put this query back into the "Unsolved" folder at any time, and bump it (although we ask you to not bump it more than once a month) to put it back to the head of the queue, so it doesn't get buried in the older requests.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Jonathan, any updates on this?

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

No response. Moving to Abandoned.

[Lisa]

Anthem by Ayn Rand?