Buzzfeed's 23 Books You Didn’t Read In High School But Actually Should

[Esther]

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald**
2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee*
3. Night by Elie Wiesel***
4. Lord of the Flies by William Golding*
6. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger*
7. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck*
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell**
10. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley***
12. Animal Farm by George Orwell*
15. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley**
20. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

I have read 11 will probably get to the rest at some point.

* read in Secondary school
**read on my own as a teenager
***read as an adult

Death of a Salesman I have never read on purpose but it is a set book for the English matriculation exam so I read it multiple times with students when I was giving private English lessons.

[Myst]

I've only read 5/23. >.< But to be fair, different schools and countries have different curriculum's.

In school I read:
Lord of the Flies
To Kill a Mockingbird

I *think* I may have read Brave New World, but I honestly don't remember. All I know is my last year of HS was in a new school where the emphasis was on football and not education.

After I graduated I've gotten through:
Frankenstein
Of Mice and Men
Animal Farm

I've never heard of:
Night
Waiting for Godot
Their Eyes Were Watching God

[Greg]

Myst wrote: "I've only read 5/23. >.< But to be fair, different schools and countries have different curriculum's.

In school I read:
Lord of the Flies
To Kill a Mockingbird

I *think* I may have read Brave New..."

Definitely Myst! Different countries especially have very different curriculums. I love hearing what people in other countries read in their literature HS classes. I've made great discoveries that way. Luckily, many at work were originally born in other countries, from India to Taiwan to Iran.

[Manuel]

Out of this list, I've read:

2. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
12. Animal Farm - George Orwell

Not a lot, but I read those out of sheer interest, not because I had to

[Claire]

1. The Great Gatsby - School
2. To Kill a Mockingbird - read
3. Night - Read
4. Heart of Darkness - Read
5. Waiting for Godot - School
6. Brave New World - school
7. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - not
8. Death of a Salesman - not
9. Beowulf -not
10. Lord of the Flies - high school
11. Of Mice and Men - NOt
12. Nineteen Eighty-Four - High school
13. Frankenstein - not
14. Animal Farm - High school
15. Mrs. Dalloway - University
16. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Reac
17. The Bell Jar - read
18. Slaughterhouse-Five - read

So I have 4 more to go. But I read a lot of other classics at high school and university. The list is extremely orientated towards English literature:-)

[Brooke]

half the books i haven't read and the other half i didn't care for. To Kill a Mockingbird is the only one i semi enjoyed.

[Libuska]

I have read:

2. To Kill a Mockingbird (first read as a child, reread at high school)
5. Heart of Darkness (university)
13. Waiting for Godot (university)
21. Beowulf (at least part of it) (high school)
22. Metamorphosis (high school)
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God (high school)

This list includes a lot of books I'm not very interested in and leaves out many classics I do like. I love To Kill a Mockingbird though: that's one of my favorite books. And I'm definitely interested in reading Frankenstein.

[Leslie]

Bibi wrote: "I have read:
This list includes a lot of books I'm not very interested in and leaves out many classics I do like. I love To Kill a Mockingbird though: that's one of my favorite books. And I'm definitely interested in reading Frankenstein...."

What I find fun about such lists is what books are chosen. I agree that it leaves out many I would have chosen but then again, I would be hard put to choose only 23!

[John]

Sorry for my incompetence but how does one access the list?

[Leslie]

John wrote: "Sorry for my incompetence but how does one access the list?"

Click on the link in message #1. Or I suppose one could Google the list's name...

[Libuska]

I feel like the list is a bit biased, though. It doesn't seem very well balanced in terms of genres and themes: I see lots of political books/dystopians, hardly any Gothic, humor, romance, or suspense/thriller/horror books, and (as far as I can tell) no fantasy, children's books, mystery, poetry, or short story collections.