37 - A Book You Should Have Read in High School

[L Y N N]

A book you should have read in high school

Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther is one I would list. Though I did read it (on my own) in high school!

As Heather L noted there is a discussion for the 2015 prompt #25 A book you were supposed to read in school but didn't HERE

There also is a Goodreads listopia for "Books Every High School Student Should Read" HERE

Our own listopia for this prompt is HERE

(It has taken 3 tries to get this to post!!) :)

[Ron]

I'm taking this in the direction of author's I wish I had read in school. Growing up a lot of the authors I read were white. We read maybe three books by African American authors.

I'm going the indigenous route and picking: How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001 . I love Joy Harjo's work and think reading her poetry in school would have been amazing.

[Sarah]

It seems like there are two options for how to interpret this: something you were supposed to read in school and didn't, or a book you think should have been assigned and wasn't. I don't know which one I'm gonna go for!

[Brandon]

Sarah wrote: "It seems like there are two options for how to interpret this: something you were supposed to read in school and didn't, or a book you think should have been assigned and wasn't. I don't know which..."

I would add that it could be a book that your high school self would have either really enjoyed or would have benefited from reading.

[Heather L]

There was a 2015 prompt of “a book you were supposed to read in school but didn’t.” Here’s the link to that discussion:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Jackie]

I was a good little student and read what was assigned to me, so I'll probably go with either a book that is often a high school read or that I think I would have liked as a high schooler.

[Meredith]

For those of us with some runway between high school and now - does the book have to have existed when I was in high school? I am reading this with the possibility of what was written later but would have been good ("should" have read) to have read in high school.

[Kaia]

I read everything I was assigned in high school as well, except for chapters in biology textbooks. I'm actually going to read The Odyssey for this. I did finish it in high school, but I've become interested in how translation impacts story since then. There was something recently about a new translation by a woman that changes how characters are perceived. I'll hunt that down and read it, because the school should have look at different viewpoints.

[Wendy]

I did my assigned reading in high school, so I'm going a different direction with this and picking something that I think would have benefitted me at that age.

The Gifts of Imperfection
You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life
Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

[Ron]

Wendy wrote: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Sweet! This one is one of my all-time favorite books. I've read it 'x' amount of times and have like 4 or 5 copies.

[Joshua]

Because I was also a good child and read all my high school books, I'm going to try and pick something fun I could have read at that point. I'm thinking of doing Percy Jackson as it was picking up steam at that time, but I'm not completely sure. I may also give City of Bones it's fair shake again this year through audiobook format.

[JoJo]

Im trying to fit The Plague into a category. Would it work for this one?

[Ashley Marie]

I need to ask my sister for ideas for this one - we had different English teachers in high school and so were assigned different books. Could also ask friends who attended different schools.

[Leona]

We had to do book reports in high school but I do not remember what I read. I was into the Nancy Drew books. I do not remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and I have it on my book shelf as well as the audio book so I will read it.
I graduated in 1956.

[Ron]

I decided to go with this one:



Here's the summary: "explores how white Americans have used their ideas about Native Americans to shape national identity in different eras—and how Indian people have reacted to these imitations of their native dress, language, and ritual"

*****

I wish we had done more books on Native Americans. This one in particular sounds like it would have been good because it goes into the stereotypes of people dressing up as Indians which is an issue I always had.

Growing up we play those games of 'cowboys and Indians', we dressed up as Indians for themed plays. I remember for Thanksgiving in elementary we would create costumes of pilgrims and Indians. They always put me in an Indian costume. Gee, I wonder why (I'm biracial so while I look Hispanic, I have the darker skin of a Native American.) At the time it didn't bother me because as a Kinder-2nd grader you don't think of those things but as I grew up I saw how wrong it was.

[Tania]

There are a lot of classics that I feel should have been high school assignments, but weren't for me at least. I'm planning to read either The Grapes of Wrath or For Whom the Bell Tolls.

[Ron]

One thing that always bothered me was the lack of Indigenous studies. In any of my history classes from elementary up until high school the most we got was a paragraph in a history book and nothing more.

Even though some of these books, okay a lot of them, were published after I got out of h.s., I chose them because they're Indigenous themes I wish we had discussed in school.

Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee (Young Readers Adaptation): Life in Native America

Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea: Indian Women as Cultural Intermediaries and National Symbols

[Denise]

Continuing with what Ron was saying, here's a Canadian First Nations perspective of the residential schools: Out of the Depths: The Experiences of Mi'kmaw Children at the Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia.

I had no idea this was going on until I was in high school in 1996, the PM had made a statement when the last residential school closed in Canada (in Saskatchewan) and I heard about it on the radio. I read this book in 2019, but it was published in 1992.

[Ron]

Thanks for the book rec, Denise. It sounds pretty interesting. I've wanted to read up on Indigenous people from the Canadian regions but have not had the time.

[Ron]

Decided to go with this one.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People

I figure going with the young reader's edition will be fun so it can put me in the mindset of a middle school/high school student.

[K.L.]

If anyone is still looking for recommendations for this prompt, here are the books I remember being assigned in high school...

Freshman year:
~The Odyssey
~To Kill a Mockingbird
~The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Since I had already read it, I was asked to read Les Miserables instead.)
~Romeo and Juliet

Sophomore year:
~The Great Gatsby
~The Grapes of Wrath
~Dune

Junior year:
~In Cold Blood
~Hiroshima

Senior year:
~Crime and Punishment
~Fathers and Sons
~A Farewell to Arms
~Othello
~Invisible Man

Also, here are some additional books that I taught when I was still in the classroom...

~Julius Caesar
~Ender's Game
~Night
~The Scarlet Letter
~The Red Badge of Courage
~Beowulf
~A Midsummer Night's Dream
~Pride and Prejudice

I know there were a bunch of other titles that I will probably remember later, but hopefully this will be helpful. :)

[Robin H-R]

K.L. wrote: "If anyone is still looking for recommendations for this prompt, here are the books I remember being assigned in high school.

Great idea for recommendations! It got me thinking about my own high school days, and thought I could chip in a few:

Candide
An American Tragedy
Don Quixote
Macbeth
A Tale of Two Cities

[Liza]

Ugh, FINE. I’ll read Catcher in the Rye.

[StefanieFrei]

There was no high school, German school system. So.
There was no book I was supposed to read and didn't - we had to read parts aloud, had essays, and discussions, and whatever. The days prior to youtube versions of book with playmobil. Or internet for everybody. And a book they should have given us?!
So I will probably re-read one of the schoolbooks I had. I hated - a teacher wanted us to read on "youth". Which seems to have been all male.
Well. Else, there are:

Götz von Berlichingen
Macbeth
Damals war es Friedrich
Ansichten eines Clowns
Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa...
Les petits enfants du siècle
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Animal Farm
Educating Rita
Joby
The Graduate ...
What I do not really remember is which book we read for the semester on South Africa - July's People? The Fifth child? Or The Grass is Singing??
Oh, I had to translate some stuff for Latin class. Classy, but mostly forgotten but a few pieces.
I am always appalled at how few books it was and that German schools did not have those book suggestion lists I know from friends from the US.

[Dea]

For this one, I'm reading Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston.

This wasn't a published book when I was in school, but it should have been. ZNH wrote it in the twenties or thirties, based on 1927 interviews with the last known survivor of the last American slave ship. No one would publish it.

It should have been published, but wasn't. We should have been assigned to read and discuss true, unvarnished accounts of enslaved people, but weren't.

It fits.

[Chrissie]

I am interpreting this prompt much like Dea. I have chosen Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools: A Memoir by Theodore Fontaine

I had no idea about residential schools when I was in high school. Hell, the last one didn't close until a good 5 years AFTER I graduated.

I fear this book is going to break my heart but I need to bear witness to what was done to these people. For truth and reconciliation.

[Tanu]

I might read a book by an Australian Indigenous author as we learnt a lot about the Stolen Generations but didn't cover much in English.

[Katy]

I guess this means a book I think I should have read? Because I read everything. I was assigned to read (should have read) by my teachers.😊

[Nadine in NY]

StefanieFrei wrote: "There was no high school, German school system. So.
There was no book I was supposed to read and didn't - we had to read parts aloud, had essays, and discussions, and whatever. The days prior to yo..."


The word is different, but you still have it in Germany. It's the secondary school you would have attended. "High school" is secondary school. In the US "high school" is generally from ages 13 to 18, give or take a year. So just pick a book that you think it would have been good to read at that age.

[Nadine in NY]

Katy wrote: "I guess this means a book I think I should have read? Because I read everything. I was assigned to read (should have read) by my teachers.😊"



Come up with a book you think your teachers should have assigned, but didn't.

[Dubhease]

In 4 years of English, we read:
The Merchant of Venice
Julius Caesar
Macbeth
Hamlet

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Fahrenheit 451
The Chrysalids
1984
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
Brave New World
The Stone Angel
Pygmalion
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Great Gatsby
A Man for All Seasons

We also had to do an independent study the last year of high school. I did mine on The Picture of Dorian Gray

Because I was in French immersion, I had to read books there too.

We read a lot of Guy de Maupassant's short stories. If you like Roald Dahl's short stories and Poe's, you would probably like these.

Huis Clos
La Cantatrice chauve / La Leçon
La peste

We also had to independent studies in French class. Everyone did something by Sartre, Camus, or Beckett. So, if you want to read French existentialism, pretend you were in my class.

[Dubhease]

Both my Gen Z kids had to read The Marrow Thieves in Indigenous studies class. If you want a YA read.

[Nadine in NY]

Dubhease wrote: "Both my Gen Z kids had to read The Marrow Thieves in English class. If you want a YA read."



I loved that book!!! Lucky kids! Did they like it?

[Nadine in NY]

Dubhease wrote: "In 4 years of English, we read:
The Merchant of Venice
Julius Caesar
Macbeth
Hamlet

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ..."


Now you've got me thinking about what books I had to read in high school ... I don't think I can still remember every book. I know we did NOT read Macbeth or Othello. I know I had to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (hated it) & A Separate Peace (liked it) but I think that was before high school. I know I read Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, & Animal Farm back then, but I think I read those on my own, not assigned for class.


To the best of my recollection, and I'm CERTAIN I'm forgetting some:
Romeo and Juliet (this may have been before high school)
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Hamlet
The Tempest

A Tale of Two Cities (REALLY hated it)
Great Expectations (hated it)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass (I think this one was a "free choice" book I read in Freshman year)
The Apology of Socrates by Plato (I'm not really sure about this - I know I read a book titled "Socrates" written by Plato, I can still picture the cover, but I don't know if it was the Apology in full - it may have been excerpts in a collection specifically for schoolkids)
The Crucible
The Glass Menagerie
Hedda Gabler
Lord of the Flies
Uncle Tom's Cabin (hated it)
Ethan Frome (hated it)
Billy Budd, Sailor (hated it)
The Cherry Orchard
The Scarlet Letter
The Red Badge of Courage
The Great Gatsby
Of Mice and Men
The Grapes of Wrath (REALLY hated it)
Crime and Punishment (I was amazed by this book and I went on to read every Dostoyevsky book our library had)
Native Son
Cat's Cradle

[Jennifer W]

I know after all this time I shouldn't be shocked that so many people read so much more advanced stuff than my little podunk school assigned, but it still kills me how much literature I wasn't exposed to.

I know I'm forgetting a bunch, but these are what I remember reading in high school:

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Children of the River
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
Othello
Hiroshima
To Kill a Mockingbird
Flowers for Algernon
Animal Farm
The Crucible
Antigone
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

We did a lot of independent reading, but it never would have occurred to me to read Dickens or Russian authors or anything like that. It just wasn't around in my school.

[Dubhease]

Nadine in NY wrote: "Dubhease wrote: "Both my Gen Z kids had to read The Marrow Thieves in English class. If you want a YA read."



I loved that book!!! Lucky kids! Did they like it?"

One loved it. Not sure if the other did. I need to edit my comment, because it wasn't in "English class". Our school board (or province) makes kids take an indigenous course in grade 11, but to fit it into the crowded high school curriculum, they scrapped Grade 11 English. This annoyed me because while my kids are both doing science and math at a more complex level than we had in high school, I feel English has really, really been dumbed down. Like, they both read no novels, just short stories in Grade 9, while I was reading Shakespeare.

I have no problems with a required indigenous course. I think my daughter loved the book because reading it was a more fun part of the course.

Scrapping Grade 11 English is also causing problems. My other kid is struggling with Grade 12 English and reading Hamlet and the Great Gatsby because of the dumbed down courses in Grade 9 and 10 and then missing a year. It's like this year, when their marks count towards universities, they are only now reading "classic books" and some can't handle it. I guess education goes in cycles. The independent studies that existed when I was in high school lasted for a few years and was scrapped.

[Nadine in NY]

Jennifer W wrote: "I know after all this time I shouldn't be shocked that so many people read so much more advanced stuff than my little podunk school assigned, but it still kills me how much literature I wasn't expo..."



I was really disappointed by how LITTLE has been assigned to my kids in high school. I read some great books that I never would have read otherwise (yeah I also read some books I hated). I wonder if modern policy in the US has moved away from big lists of assigned reading for today's schools.

[Ron]

Nadine wrote: I wonder if modern policy in the US has moved away from big lists of assigned reading for today's schools

I wonder this as well. With so many book bans in place, I'm curious as to the material that English teachers are actually allowed because they seem to have their hands tied behind their backs.

[Diana]

I know I can't remember all the books I had to read back in high school, but I do remember that we generally had a book that was assigned to read, one we were reading as a class, and then one we chose from a pre-approved list. So at any point we had 2 or 3 books we were reading at one time. Plus we had summer reading ever. I remember being exhausted and burnt out on reading lol.

Here's what I do remember:
Mythology
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Romeo and Juliet
West Side Story
The Illustrated Man
A Raisin in the Sun
The Pearl
The Diary of a Young Girl
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Julius Caesar
A Farewell to Arms
The Crucible
The Scarlet Letter
Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.
Our Town
Becket
The Holy Bible: King James Version
Beowulf
Grendel
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Macbeth
Othello
The Canterbury Tales - We read the dirtiest stories and skipped the rest

[Nadine in NY]

Diana wrote: "I know I can't remember all the books I had to read back in high school, but I do remember that we generally had a book that was assigned to read, one we were reading as a class, and then one we ch..."


You had to read the Bible for high school? Did you go to a Christian private school?

[Ron]

Diana, I had to read the KJV Bible too. Mine was for a regular public school, well magnet school anyways, I don't even remember the assignments for them.

[Diana]

Nadine in NY wrote: "Diana wrote: "I know I can't remember all the books I had to read back in high school, but I do remember that we generally had a book that was assigned to read, one we were reading as a class, and ..."

Nadine, no. It was public school. We had to read a few chapters during Senior AP English. Granted I did go to school in the bible belt, but the purpose wasn't so much in attempting to teach Christian values as it was to teach biblical allusions, motifs, etc., and how they're used in other literature.

Ron, I don't remember mine either. I remember balking at the idea and generally disagreeing with being forced to read it because I wasn't religious and thought our time could be better spent. I felt that way about most of the books we were required to read. It was a perfect setup for a stubborn teenager.

[Nadine in NY]

Wow color me naive. I am shocked that public schools would assign the Bible for English class.

Part of our Social Studies curriculum included comparative religions, but that still didn't have us reading from any actual religious texts. That's messed up.

[Ron]

Diana wrote: Ron, I don't remember mine either. I remember balking at the idea and generally disagreeing with being forced to read it because I wasn't religious and thought our time could be better spent

I know what you mean. Same here. My parents, being devoured Catholics at the time, even went in to question it because it was the KJV Bible which they disagreed with.

I wish I could remember the assignments but the whole God thing didn't sit well with me at the time so the memories of that are pretty much gone. It would be interesting to remember though.

[Diana]

It was extremely messed up. This was back in the late 1990s. I'm not sure if the AP programs in that district still do it or not. Given the current state of school educational programs, I wouldn't be surprised to find them full on teaching the bible at some point in the future.

[Jessica]

I did my assigned reading in high school, so I went with something that you would have been assigned in high school and perhaps weren’t. I chose Lord of the Flies because I have never read it.

[Ellie]

We had a lot of freedom to read what we wanted in high school (Scotland in the 90's) but some books I remember we did as a group were:

1984
Of Mice and Men
East of Eden
The Glass Menagerie
A Streetcar Named Desire
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet
A Passage to India
Howards End

And poetry of Wilfred Owen and Edwin Morgan but I wouldn't know what collections they were.

I hated Of Mice and Men and A Passage to India, so I'm surprised they didn't put me off reading!

[Christina]

The Reader we definitely started in German class but I don't think I actually finished it... and Junk we were supposed to read in English class but I don't think I even started it oops

[Ruth]

I'm glad they didn't repeat "a book you should have read in high school but didn't" because there are exactly ZERO books that fall into that category for me! I've always been an avid reader, and if a book was assigned, I read it- even the textbooks. The only thing that annoyed me was reading a specific number of chapters per week- that always ruined a book for me. I just want to delve into it and enjoy it! But if I read too far ahead, I'd forget what happened in chapters 3-6 specifically and not be able to join in class discussions. So often I'd devour the book and then re-read the appropriate chapters on time to keep up with the class.

I was in high school from 1985-1990, and I'm not comfortable with filling the prompt with a book too new to have been assigned back then.

I might just re-read something I did read in for class in high school. I was supposed to read Romeo and Juliet for 9th grade English. I did read it back then! That doesn't mean I can't use it to fulfill the prompt now, does it? Or I might read another Shakespeare play that could have been assigned to me, that was assigned to other students in other schools at the same time. I'll have to see whether I'm in the mood to re-read something I've read (and try to find all the dirty references I probably missed the first time around) or something that I'm unfamiliar with.

[Jennifer W]

Ruth wrote: "I'm glad they didn't repeat "a book you should have read in high school but didn't" because there are exactly ZERO books that fall into that category for me! I've always been an avid reader, and if..."

I guess I interpret those prompts differently. I take them to mean to read a book that was commonly assigned as school reading, but your classes never did. As I mentioned above, there's a ton of books that fit into that category for me. Last time, I read The Diary of a Young Girl for that. The trick for me is narrowing down what book to read: 1984? Brave New World? The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Many, many choices!