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Books you were forced to read at school!

These are some of the books I've read so far for high school...

Plays:

Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet - Shakespeare
Macbeth - Shakespeare
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Raisin in the Sun - Hansberry
The Glass Menagerie - Williams

Books:

The Chrysalids - Wyndham
Night - Wiesel
Lord of the Flies - Golding
Ender's Game - Card
The Body - Stephen King
Shawshank Redemption - Stephen King
1984 - Orwell
Brave New World - Huxley
 
This topic revives the question that occasionally drifts through my mind as to how many people have read the following books, which as far as I know are read almost exclusively as high school assignments:

the oft-mentioned To Kill a Mockingbird
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
A Light in the Forest (can't recall author)
Across Five Aprils (can't recall author)

I would further have expected these are all specific to the United States, but apparently To Kill a Mockingbird is read in British schools too?
 
Originally posted by Ashlea
The whole over-analysis issue is why I avoided grad school. I feel that my undergrad degree in English is really a degree in b.s., because in class all we would do was pick some positiion on our interpretation of a work, and the rest of the class would argue it. To keep the discussion going, you often end up playing devil's advocate even if you've been convinced that you're wrong. Actually developed skills that were useful in real life, but still . . . not signing up for another helping.


Well, there's always law school! ;)


I'll bet there's not an English major alive who hasn't heard that a dozen times.
 
R.J. - We read To Kill a Mockingbird, but we didn't study it for any exams. I was probably about 13 when I read it (and I have no wish to read it again). I haven't heard of the other three you mention.
 
The Pearl
Of Mice and Men
To Kill a Mockingbird
Raisin in the Sun
Bridge to Terabithia
The Pigman
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Romeo and Juliet
The Lord of the Flies
Animal Farm (currently reading in class)
The Call of the Wild
Tangerine
Ties that bind, Ties that break

I'm only a freshman, so only six of those books are from high school the others I just remember from middle school.
 
The Pearl
Of Mice and Men
Animal Farm
Call of the Wild
Huck Finn
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies
Red Sky at Morning
The Great Gatsby
Farewell to Manzanar
Romeo and Juliet
Julius Caesar
All Quiet on the Western Front
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
1984
various poems and short stories
 
To Kill a Mockingbird
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Beowulf
Jane Eyre
Lord of the Flies
A bunch of Shakespeare's plays

Thos are the only ones I can think of at the moment. We also had a big text book with short stories that we read too (like Sir Gawain & the Green Knight).
 
headpodd said:
Was just wondering what novels, plays, poetry was on your school syllabus.

Literature:

Hamlet
Romeo and Juliet
The Tempest

An Inspector Calls
Tale of Two Cities
Heroes by Robert Cormier

Poetry:

Seamus Heaney *loved this*
Gillian Clarke
Simon Armitage
Carol Ann Duffy

This was for my GCSE's, I actually *loved* it all (I think I was the only one lol) and got a good grade at the end of it, the only reason I didn't take it at A level is beacause you have to do role-playing / acting etc which I detest, typical :rolleyes:

Alice
 
Here are all the books I remember reading in school:
Romeo and Juliet
Animal Farm
The Great Gatsby
Old Man and the Sea
The Crucible
Tuck Everlasting
Bridge to Terabithia
To Kill a Mockingbird
Julius Caesar
Antigone
The Outsiders.
A Raisin in the Sun
The play version of The Diary of Anne Frank (and then watched the movie and a few documentaries...)

That's all I remember!
 
So far, it would be this:

German:
Kafka - Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis)
Eichendorff - Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (Memoirs of a Good-for-nothing)
Sophocles - Antigone
Lessing - Emilia Galotti
Büchner - Woyzeck
Schiller - Die Räuber (The Robbers)
Hauptmann - Bahnwärter Thiel (Lineman Thiel)
Hórvath - Jugend ohne Gott (youth without god?)
Dürrenmatt - Der Verdacht (The Quarry)
Poetry, mainly by Goethe and Eichendorff
A whole bunch of children's fiction, which isn't worth mentioning..

English:
Nick Hornby - About a boy
Shakespeare - Macbeth
G. B. Shaw - Pygmalion
Short stories by Auster, Updike, Poe...

Latin:
Horace - various Odes and Epodes
Virgil - excerpts of the Aeneid
Sallust - Coniuratio Catilinae (Conspirancy of Catiline)
Ovid - excerpts of the Metamorphoses

I missed Caesar because I came into the Latin class with only 2 instead of 4 years experience.

And during the five years of French lessons we read hardly anything, just some short stories. Instead we spoke about des chansons.
 
James Joyce

You have not suffered until you have been forced to read 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' - by James Joyce!!!!
I have never read anything so boring in all my life. I remember our teacher asking us to read 'the next couple of chapters' for our lesson the next day. Sounds ok doesn't it? Only turned out to be about 120 pages of rambling, train-of thought philosophical tangents about being an irish catholic!!! I have never read so little of a book I've had to write an essay on!!!
 
There were so many they are too boring to remember, but there are two that stick in my mind. 'Tess of the Durbervilles' and 'Good night Mr Tom.'
When we first began reading 'Tess' I so didn't get it, but as we battled on and the teacher explained it, I felt myself really getting into it and as it turned out I loved it. I even got an A for an essay I had to write on it. :p
I also (and you're all going to frown upon this) stole a copy from school :eek: and bought it home. It's still in my cupboard some where. And as for goodnight Mr Tom, well that was so good it was heart wrenching.
cry3.gif
 
i read lord of the flies, which i really enjoyed, and great expectations, which i didn't. not a real dickens fan. i can't remember what i read in grade 11. so that speaks volumes. and we also read midsummer nights dream, romeo and juliet and hamlet, and i loved all of them. we also read an enormous amount of short stories. i always enjoyed the assigned reading. hated grammar. it probably shows. :eek:
 
Ellie82 said:
Generally speaking, there's something about being forced to read a book that kind of ruins it for you.
Can anyone relate?

I completely agree. I feel exactly the same about this. And I forgot to mention the French novels we studied in A Level French: Therese Raquin and La Porte Etroite (sorry, don't know how to get the accents). Awful. And depressing, yet again - I'm sure the people who chose the books at our school were suffering from depression.
 
I won't give you my list because I don't think you have heard of many of the titles or authors on it. I did not have a problem with the books themselves - I read and enjoyed most of them before or after the school told me to read them- but with the imposition. For me, someone telling me what to read and forcing me to read a particular book is as awful as telling me what films to watch or where to go on holidays.
 
ok, but how would you suggest the schools/teachers address reading then? i mean i assume we all agree that literature in schools is important, and i think that if it were left to the students the vast majority would pick something unacceptable, and how in the world would the teachers approach the subject. if you have 32 students who each choose a different book....? my god. and if the students chose from a list, wouldn't some of them still be reading something not of their choosing?
 
Pretty much the same as everyone else; I have read the following:

The Diary of Anne Frank - Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth & Othello - William Shakespeare
One More River - Lynne Reid Banks
The Last Rabbit - Jennifer Curry (Editor) - An anthology of poetry on the natural world and threats to the environment
 
I don’t think the 32 students would choose different books. If we assume that there are equal numbers of boys and girls, you would probably get 15 boys choosing the same book, 15 girls choosing the another book and the 2 remaining students choosing something completely different. I have seen their choices when schools were running a programme where a sponsors pay for 3 (one per term) books given to Year 7 students for them to read and keep. Students were asked to choose the books they wanted to receive and it was a really short list. It was much longer in schools were teachers choose the titles to go on the list.
 
The Pearl
Animal Farm
Jane Eyre
A Separate Peace
Red Badge of Courage
Lord of the Flies
Great Expectations
Huckleberry Finn
Grapes of Wrath

Beowolf
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
 
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