Books You Read in High School

[F1Wild]

Michelle, you and Antoine both had fab lists - I guess I was in school during the wrong century. ;-)

[M.]

Manday wrote: "Julie -- I think that recently the focus has moved a lot from reading the classics to reading books that will get students interested in reading and more modern classics. I noticed this as a genera..."

This is definitely true -- as wonderful as the classics are, sometimes it is harder for today's students to identify with them because they were written in a completely different era. One of the books I wrote is actually being taught in high school classrooms right now for that very reason. In some schools it's being used in lieu of books like 1984 & Fahrenheit 451, while others are using it alongside those historic masterpieces. It's dystopian (like Orwell & Bradbury's books), but looks at what OUR future could be instead of what they thought the future might look like from way back in the 1940's & 50's.
It's called The Book.

[Antoine]

F1Wild wrote: "Michelle, you and Antoine both had fab lists - I guess I was in school during the wrong century. ;-)"

Thank you F1Wild. I think it would be interesting if people noted when they were in high school to give the lists more historical context. I never would have read David Copperfield at that age, but I wish I had. By the time I did, it was too late. I probably never would have gone to law school.

[M]

I'm currently a High School sophmore and so far, required reading (not mentioned) has been:

What is the What by Dave Eggers
Peace Like a River by Lief Enger
Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Outcasts United
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
Midnighters by Scott Westerfeld
The Uglies, Pretties, Specials series by Scott Westerfeld
Paper Towns by John Green
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

We've also read a bit of Shakespeare, various short stories and other books already listed above.

[Antoine]

Megan wrote: "I'm currently a High School sophmore and so far, required reading (not mentioned) has been:

What is the What by Dave Eggers
Peace Like a River by Lief Enger
Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier
An..."

I hope you enjoy The Alchemist, one of my favorite stories.

[Max]

Megan wrote: "I'm currently a High School sophmore and so far, required reading (not mentioned) has been:

What is the What by Dave Eggers
Peace Like a River by Lief Enger
Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier
An..."

Great list. I feel like high schools are going much more contemporary as time goes on. There seems to be less of an emphasis on the classics. Of course, that's in no way based on any sort of fact or research, just an observation that could be completely deflated if someone should choose to prove me wrong.

F1Wild wrote: "Michelle, you and Antoine both had fab lists - I guess I was in school during the wrong century. ;-)"

Haha thanks! I don't think I appreciated them when I read them, unfortunately, I was bratty about books in high school. I blame my city's education system!

[F1Wild]

Antoine wrote: "...I think it would be interesting if people noted when they were in high school to give the lists more historical context."

Ooh, like we would give that away..... ;-))

[F1Wild]

Michelle wrote: "...I was bratty about books in high school. I blame my city's education system! "

I think many of us here have similar stories...but thank goodness we all ended up loving the books!

[Shay]

The Epic of Gilgamesh
Don Quixote
The Tale of Genji. I think because it was the first novel ever written.
Songs of Innocence And of Experience
Metamorphoses

Did anyone else have to read The Federalist Papers and the The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates for American History?

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads]

I've read them - but for political science in college.

[Natalie]

First Year:
Merchant of Venice by Wm. Shakespeare, House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mill on the Floss by George Elliott, The Sketch Book by Washington Irving, Poetry by Edgar Allen Poe, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Second Year:
Julius Caesar by Wm. Shakespeare, Tale of Two cities by Charles Dickens, Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott (Poetry),
Third Year:
MacBeth by Wm. Shakespeare, Divine Comedy by Balzac (Drama) Morte D’Arthur by Alfred Tennyson (Poetry)
Fourth Year:
Hamlet by Wm. Shakespeare, Essays on the American Revolution (can’t remember who), Poetry by John Milton, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
More than I can remember - a tough load for a country girl going to a big city high school in the forties.

[Antoine]

F1Wild wrote: "Antoine wrote: "...I think it would be interesting if people noted when they were in high school to give the lists more historical context."

Ooh, like we would give that away..... ;-))"


Oh C'mon, take a walk on the "wild" side!

[F1Wild]

Antoine wrote: "Oh C'mon, take a walk on the "wild" side! "

OK, sometime between the Montreal Olympics and Mount St. Helen's erupting.

[Antoine]

OH, you're good. ;-)

[F1Wild]

Antoine wrote: "OH, you're good. ;-)"

And old. ;-)))

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads]

Ronald Reagan's first term, here.

[Andreea]

Michelle wrote: "Great list. I feel like high schools are going much more contemporary as time goes on. There seems to be less of an emphasis on the classics. Of course, that's in no way based on any sort of fact or research, just an observation that could be completely deflated if someone should choose to prove me wrong."
Personally I would have hated it if we had done only/mostly contemporary books. I can understand that they're easier to teach and that most students are more likely to connect with them, but for the students at the top of the class they're painfully boring. At least I and other people at the top of my class found unchallenging books really really boring.

[Caity]

There's a lot of books on this list that I don't remember ever having to read. Then again, I got to read some books that others most likely didn't have to read because I took a class that had a massive booklist and we got to pick a certain number of books from each category to read. Here's three that aren't mentioned for sure that I read senior year.

The Once and Future King (still not sure if I liked it or not)
On the Beach (scared the crap out of me, but I liked it)
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (that's right, I got to read a Bill Bryson book, and I loved every second of it)

[Max]

Andreea wrote: "Personally I would have hated it if we had done only/mostly contemporary books. I can understand that they're easier to teach and that most students are more likely to connect with them, but for the students at the top of the class they're painfully boring. At least I and other people at the top of my class found unchallenging books really really boring. "

I don't see how contemporary translates into unchallenging. I've never heard anyone call Infinite Jest unchallenging. The Poisonwood Bible isn't any less challenging than To Kill a Mockingbird (I'm not saying it's better or even as good, but it's certainly no less challenging.) And I don't think that a taste for classics makes someone intelligent, either. That's not a shot at you, I'm just saying that it really depends more on the book itself than the time period it was written in for it to be a challenging book, or a good book. A lot of what's contemporary to us will stand the test of time and become future generations' classics, and what are our classics now were once someone else's contemporary fiction. There are just as many intelligent, talented writers today as there were a hundred years ago, they're just a bit buried by books like Twilight. But again, that says nothing about the time period, other than that there's tons more published today than there was before.

Phew, sorry for my long windedness. I've always kind of been a spokeswoman of contemporary literature, I think it gets a bad rep.

[El]

I think classics get a bad rap as well, especially in a high school setting.

[Andreea]

Michelle wrote: "Andreea wrote: "Personally I would have hated it if we had done only/mostly contemporary books. I can understand that they're easier to teach and that most students are more likely to connect with ..."

I don't know what you mean by challenging. To me a challenging book is one that pushes the limits of your knowledge, that you can't understand without some solid background knowledge and without having read it very thoughtfully. In any case, I must say that the books that you've quoted most probably wouldn't interest my former class mates and I because I'm (Continental) European. Despite how universal good books are, the books you mentioned address issues that the American public encounters, at least ones that the American public encounters and finds much more interesting/challenging than the non-American public so we wouldn't have found that many things to discussion (but this is all based on the idea that you somehow thing that "challenging" means "something that challenges your values/way of thinking").

Anyway, I'm by no means one of those persons who only read 19th century literature and claims to be very smart because of it. I read a sizable amount of contemporary literature and for the most part enjoy it, but you must admit that more often than not the contemporary literature that is assigned in schools is either a flimsy YA novel or something that strongly resembles it. On this thread people have said that they've read the Ender series and books by Scott Westerfeld and Coelho in class, not, I don't know, Jose Saramago or somebody equally challenging.

Classics are like a little treasure chest for the student who doesn't have a hard time picking up themes/symbolism and writing good essays. On the one hand, they're generally interesting books, even they don't always lend themselves to a high enough number of opposing interpretations to generate a lot of interesting debates in class, you have a lot more to interpret than in Ender's Game. On the other hand, they're often interesting to read because of their unusual language or format whereas contemporary books, with some very notable exceptions, are easy to read from this perspective.

[[deleted user]]

32 books in the list read in HS...

Pretty much everything was mentioned...Though here are a few more.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
The Great Brain by J.D. Fitzgerald
Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang
The Flames of Rome by John (?) Meyer
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
The Wave by Todd Strasser
The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
The Best of Father Brown
Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

There's more, but I liked all in the list. ^^

[El]

Cry, the Beloved Country was written by Alan Paton.

[[deleted user]]

Oops, I meant to say Alan Paton, but I guess Al Sharpton was on my mind. XD -edits-

[El]

Sorry, Tee, I didn't mean to be one of those people. I just didn't want anyone trying to find an Al Sharpton version of the book since it doesn't actually exist. :)

[~~*Julie]

wow- I feel a little dumber after reading this post--- I wprobably have not read more than half of these books- I am ashamed of my high school!

[Jodi]

I can think of one more......
The Scarlet Letter

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads]

I think it was mentioned in the original post. Great book.

[Ralph]

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The Outsiders
I really liked these.

[Marti]

Michelle and Andreea
Classics are just that .... Classic literature that has stood the test of time for its universality. That does not mean that some of the newer books that were listed do not meet this criteria as of yet. They haven't had the gift of time.

I think that there are many kinds of literature - enough to meet all the needs and wants of almost everyone. I find it is condescending to presume one type of literature that one prefers is better than another. I am disappointed in people when they judge a person based on a book...

Having said that: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Outsiders, Siddhartha, Lord of the Flies, The Scarlet Letter, Our Town are the books that I remember reading that opened my mind to new world - another key element of good literature. That and the Hobbit which I "borrowed" from my brother.

[[deleted user]]

Here's a few I haven't seen yet.

The Bridge at San Luis Rey
Hiroshima
Is Paris Burning?
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

[Reyelee]

I dropped out of school in grade 9 and went very sporadically during high school, so I don't think I ever read any of the books that were required. I read books all the time on my own, but my selection shows that it was my choice :P
I read The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle. These come to mind because they've just made them into t.v. shows. 17 years later, of course. Yes, I watch them too :P
Any books I could find by Parke Godwin.
The Gate to Women's Country, and Beauty, by Sheri S. Tepper.
The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson.
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Some of these might have been during junior high.
I was averaging 3 books a week, but these are the ones I remember most during that time.

[Judy]

I read some odd ones in a wonderful English class in 10th grade:

Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides

[Rebecca]

Susanna, I can't help but think your teacher was nuts. Or something. Who ever heard of reading all that in one week. How could you possibly do it justice? Why bother if you're not going to do it right? I'm a former English teacher: color me "appalled."

By comparison, my daughter's got all Spring break to read Pride and Prejudice and with that kind of leisure looks forward to it.

In high school, I was lucky enough to have lots of teachers who let us read in class and gave us good books that they knew we'd enjoy. I remember choking with laughter at Catch 22 while others were trying to read their own books in class. We acted out The Tale of Two Cities, believe it or not, and it was fun. And I got to read some fairly delicious Russian novels in a class featuring international literature. Turgenev was one of the authors, though I can't remember which title we read. It was all exciting!

[Emma]

Reading this thread has reminded me that I want to pursue some of the classic literature mentioned. Although I was always in accelerated and AP English classes, I feel I was never exposed to enough international literature, especially the Russian authors that Rebecca mentioned. There is definitely a gap in my literary education!

[Karen M]

The one book that stands out in my mind was Hawaii by James A. Michener which lead to my reading six more of his books. I believe I was also into Frances Parkinson Keyes and Daphne du Maurier and Agatha Christie.

[Kym]

1984, War&Peace, Animal Farm, Great Gatsby, The Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman, Grapes of Wrath, Flowers for Algernon, The Lord of the Flies, Hamlet

Seeing this list kind of makes me want to go back and read some of these! :-)

[Debsp]

One book that I keep thinking back to The Day of the Triffids. I want to read it again now to see if I remember most of it!

[Ginny]

When I was in high school,my teacher had me read The Once and Future King. I had to give a report on it in front of the class. I remember all I said was the standard "My book report is about The Once and Future King..." and the teacher went on for twenty minutes about how great the book was. I got an A on the report. She also had me read The Robe. My daughters are in high school and mentioned they had to read Forgotten Fire and The Things They Carried.

[Yuliya]

I'm from Russian school, so it was mostly Russian classics - Tolstoy Leo Nikoleyevich, Chehov A., Turgenev Andrei, Pushkin Aleksandr Sergeevich, Lermontov, Gogol Nikolai, Griboedov A., Fëdor Dostoevskij and so on!

[Chris]

East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Longest. Summer. Of. My. Life.

[Rosen]

We read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

I was always trying to get Point Horror books added to the school syllabus. Thank goodness I was unsuccessful.

[Denise]

The only ones I can think of that we had to read that I didn't see on here are:

A Bird In The House by Margaret Laurence
A midsummer Night's Dream
MacBeth
White Oleander

[Rachel]

I'm in the UK, so what we were required to read is probably a little bit different.

For GCSEs (the exams you take at 16), I remember Great Expectations and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and I think we read Lord of the Flies too. At a younger age we read Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, and Moonfleet, both of which I loved and read ahead on. For A Level English (exams taken at 18) we had an eclectic mix -

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
All My Sons - Arthur Miller
The Duchess of Malfi and
Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale. I'm sure there would have been another fiction book as well, and also we had to read this very odd travel book which I can't remember the name of, but it was humourous writing about travelling through Africa.

In Russian Studies we got to read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which I particularly loved! I loved most of what I read except none of us understood the Duchess of Malfi, and the class revolted, hence why we got to read All My Sons!

One day when the teacher was late, we decided to start reading A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof anyway, and all put on (probably terrible) American accents - I was being Brick, and it was the part where there's some swearing, and we all thought it was the funniest thing ever - oh dear!

[Alycia]

Wow, this was a trip down memory lane; I'd forgotten I'd read many of these. I also recall having to read
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories - Flannery O'Connor
The Crucible - Arthur Miller
Our Town - Thornton Wilder
Nicholas and Alexandra - Robert K. Massie
Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

[Stephanie]

Probably one of the worst books I ever had to read my Junior year was The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.. I had to force myself to finish this book.

[Mickey]

Some books that haven't been mentioned yet that I read in my high school classes (They were organized in common themes: Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Himself, Man vs. His Dreams)

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Civil War Stories by Ambrose Bierce
The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway
To Build a Fire and Other Stories by Jack London
The War on Powder River by Helena Smith
The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie Jr.
Babbit by Sinclair Lewis

As you can tell, I grew up in a small rural town out west and the literature teacher at the high school was a cowboy. Although he was forced by the powers-that-be to read a Shakespeare play with us every semester, the rest of the time we read what he enjoyed. (I still agree with him on Lonesome Dove, but I wish I'd at least heard of Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot before leaving high school.)

[Liz]

Susanna wrote: "Ronald Reagan's first term, here."

Okay, I'm game ... I was a high school senior when President Kennedy was assassinated! And, sad but true, I cannot think of a book assigned that I would like to re-read!

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads]

Rebecca wrote: "Susanna, I can't help but think your teacher was nuts. Or something. Who ever heard of reading all that in one week. How could you possibly do it justice? Why bother if you're not going to do it ri..."

It was insanely ambitious. Luckily I had help with it at home (my parents are English professors), but it was ridiculous.

[Crystallc87]

I didn't see some of these book on your list and I really enjoyed these in school. Some of them are repeated. I don't remember the authors...
1. The Giver
2. The Hatchet
3. Bridge to Taribithia
4. The Pearl
5. The Odyssey
6. The House on Mango Street
7. Of Mice and Men
8. The Red Badge of Courage
9. Romeo and Juliet
10. The Old Man and The Sea
There are a bunch more but I can't remember them all. But my favs were, The Giver and Bridge to Taribithia. I know there were more that I really enjoyed but I cannot remember them all :( I enjoyed all the books on that list, however.