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Last year, I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time since High School. It absolutely blew me away, as the prose just flowed like quicksilver. I couldn't find a single sentence to critique. It's interesting, too, that I started reading it after finishing The Hunger Games trilogy, which was fun but had some really clunky writing.

In the last few days, I've been reading Fahrenheit 451 for the first time ever. It's something I always wanted to read, but never got around to it for whatever reason. And it's amazing, saying everything about the importance of books and literature that I could never quite say. I told a friend of mine that I was reading it and she said it was required reading in High School for her. I'd never heard of that before, at least for this book.

So my question to you: what were some of you required High School reading? Was there anything that you enjoyed or absolutely loathed? Heck, if you want to mention Shakespeare plays you studied, do share.

From what remember, some of the other works that I studied included:

Who Has Seen the Wind, All Quiet on the Western Front, Romeo & Juliet, MacBeth (or as one former English professor of mine said, "That Scottish Play." He was a former stage actor and very superstitious about this to the point of covering his ears if anyone dared say the title of the play), Julius Caesar, Oedipus Rex. I remember reading The Outsiders in Junior High, which is another book I'd like to revisit some day.

Man, it seems like forever ago, but they made us read Fahrenheit 451 (we also got to watch the movie version in class after we were done reading it, as a "reward"), Brave New World, Animal Farm, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, The complete works of O Henry, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, Great Expectations, Of Mice and Men, Flowers for Algernon, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales (with bonus for reciting the opening prologue in Olde English), Murder on the Orient Express, Heart of Darkness, Gone with the Wind, The Captain from Connecticut, Last of the Mohicans, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Frankenstein...

ALL kindsa Shakespeare in there too - Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, The Scottish Play, Hamlet...


... some of those might have been Jr. High, actually..

The Wars by Timothy Findley, which everyone should read.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: mixed feelings
Hamlet by Shakespeare
Macbeth by Shakespeare
Much Ado about Nothing also by the Bard
Death of Salesman by Arthur Miller

I'm sure there was another novel, but I can't recall it... Death of Salesman was something I hated at the time but appreciate now. High school taught Shakespeare awfully but luckily I had already fallen in love with his writing, so it couldn't ruin it.

Oh man GB, you got to read Flowers for Algernon? Lucky bastard. That's one of my favourite books. Always wanted to read Animal Farm and Great Gatsby. And I recall reading Lord of the Flies in Jr. High.

Ah, Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Hit me as soon I as I read it in GB's post. That's the other novel. Absolutely loathed it, and continue to do so.

I enjoyed most of my high school reading. The only thing I had a huge problem with was from my second year. My honors teacher thought we needed a "little break" and let us read some piece of shit whiny teen lit called _Staying Fat for Sara Burns_. It was full of cliches and crappy dialogue. Oh, an my favorite part? A character in that book admired and quoted a character from one of the author's other books. I guess you have to start quoting yourself when no one else thinks it's worth mentioning...

People who liked it got mad at me in class. I told the teacher that it was insulting to make us read this when the regular level classes got to read classic literature and poetry all year. It was a painful couple of weeks.

ThatNickGuy said:

Oh man GB, you got to read Flowers for Algernon? Lucky bastard. That's one of my favourite books. Always wanted to read Animal Farm and Great Gatsby. And I recall reading Lord of the Flies in Jr. High.

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That was another one they showed us the movie version after we were done reading, it was called "Charly."

They also had us read the Hobbit in Jr. High.

There were also some books I didn't care for that we read... I usually didn't read them after the first couple chapters and then cheated on the test.

Chad Sexington said:

Ah, Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Hit me as soon I as I read it in GB's post. That's the other novel. Absolutely loathed it, and continue to do so.

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Lord of the Flies is one of the best books ever written.

I was actually thinking about this the other day. I really want to go back and actually read some of the books that I "read" in high school. I have a copy of The Great Gatsby that I need to go through. I read Animal Farm about a year or so ago and that was great. Probably once I'm done with Dance With Dragons I'll go back to some classics.

ThatNickGuy said:

Who Has Seen the Wind, All Quiet on the Western Front, Romeo & Juliet, MacBeth (or as one former English professor of mine said, "That Scottish Play." He was a former stage actor and very superstitious about this to the point of covering his ears if anyone dared say the title of the play), Julius Caesar, Oedipus Rex. I remember reading The Outsiders in Junior High, which is another book I'd like to revisit some day.

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I have a story about that. Back in undergrad, our department did a production of Mamma Mia. Since we're in Taiwan, a lot of people didn't know about the Macbeth superstition, so during a random discussion in rehearsals about Shakespeare, people started saying "Macbeth" out loud. I told them it's considered bad luck to say it in a theater setting. One girl said, "Really? You're kidding! Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth!"

That day she fell down on stage and hit her eye on part of the sets, cutting her eyeball and almost blinding her. She was able to recover in time to perform, although she almost had to go on stage wearing an eyepatch.

Yes yes, correlation, causation, and all that. But in our production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona the next year, she was the one telling people not to say Macbeth out loud.

As for stuff I've read in my English classes:
Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry
Flowers for Algernon
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
Lord of the Flies
The Crucible
The Odyssey
Inherit the Wind
Shakespearean works including Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and others I can't remember.

Other texts read in other classes:
1984
Frankenstein
A Streetcar Named Desire
Death of a Salesman
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Batman, Superman, Green Arrow...

sixpackshaker said:

Batman, Superman, Green Arrow...

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. . . Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler . . .

Cheesy1 said:

. . . Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler . . .

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There's words in those? Measurements don't count.

sixpackshaker said:

There's words in those? Measurements don't count.

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. . . they don't?!

Cheesy1 said:

. . . they don't?!

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They "matter" but don't count as words...

Books I was supposed to read in high school:
Invisible man
Robinson crusoe
Huck Finn
The oddessy
Wuthuring heights
The snow leopard
Walden
Double indemnity
The handmaids tale
Great gatsby
Maus
Dublin tales
Half of the crossing
Plus a ton of poems

What I read in high school:
Some poems
Huck Finn
Maus

sixpackshaker said:

They "matter" but don't count as words...

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Shhh, don't worry Miss January 1994. I think your numbers matter!

The only book I really remember being required reading in high school, aside from our English texts (which was where we got our Shakespeare), was "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". That was it. Our English curriculum was a real winner. Though I did read a few of Dickens' works, as well as Leon Uris', on my own throughout high school - when I wasn't busy reading every scrap of military fiction and/or military non-fiction I could get my hands on.

One of these days I really should go back and read some of the classics.

Cheesy1 said:

Shhh, don't worry Miss January 1994. I think your numbers matter!

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Ah, Anna Marie Goddard.

I don't remember all of them. There was more emphasis on Shakespeare (I guess cause it was cheaper). Outside of Shakespeare, I remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird, The Odyssey, The Iliad, Walden, A bunch of Poe's works, and Anne of the Green Gables.

I know we had to read parts of The Canterbury Tales, but I didn't read it.

Since then, I've tried to get to most of the classics. I haven't dared to touch James Joyce or Dostoevsky yet. I will someday. I read a little Ulysses and

drawn_inward said:

I read a little Ulysses and

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I know your pain. <shudder>

My favorites in high school were probably on the free-choice list. We always had 3-4 books to read and could tack on extras from a list of suggestions. I chose Catch-22, which was so funny and sad. I also chose to read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn again and use it for a class presentation.

Two books I remember enjoying but don't remember much about we're Crime and Punishment and Waiting for Godot. I would like to go back and read those again.

Emrys said:

I know your pain. <shudder>

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*shiver* I took a James Joyce class in my last year at York. The first half of the year was enjoyable enough, with Dubliners and Portrait of an Artist.

The second half of course, from January and on, was completely Ulysses. There wasn't a single sentence that even made sense to me.

I had to drop the course because of that book.

I'm a classical literature nerd, so I probably loved a good chunk of what everyone else hated.

My required reading in school (that I can remember) consisted of:
The Scarlet Letter
Of Mice and Men
The Ransom of Red Chief
Animal Farm
To Build a Fire
The Call of the Wild
My Side of the Mountain (I think this was one of the required ones?)
I'm sure there was probably more "forced" literature (and poetry), but that's all I remember aside from lots of short stories.

Notice? No Shakespeare. Never understood that.

Now, as to my elective reading? That would be several hundred books, and then some.

--Patrick

I think for the most part I read most of what GB listed. Lots of Shakespeare, too. I liked most of what we read, I think Animal Farm and Gatsby were the only ones I didn't care for. I loved Lord of the Flies and 1984.

The only ones I remember hating were Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm. Actually, both of those may have been before high school.
Required reading that I can remember... that I also mostly enjoyed:
The Great Gatsby
Fahrenheit 451 (We watched a movie too... and I remember not enjoying that.)
Romeo & Juliet
MacBeth
Oedipus Rex
Beowulf
Catcher in the Rye

I've always loved reading Beowulf. I try to read it once a year or so, usually, though sadly I've missed that the last couple years due to reasons.

I read F451 in high school or Jr high can't remember but that but is on my top 10 list