Books You Read in School and Liked [Archive]

Chrono

03-02-2008, 3:57 PM

I remember reading lord of the flies in about year 8, (13 years old) and thinking it was fantastic. i think it was the first book that got me looking into themes properly and even questioning morality.

looking back at it, it seems to me to have simplified people into a spectrum of good/evil, or possibly more accurately - good/savage, but the criticisms of society, both leaders and other stand up for me.

anyone else want to mention a book they liked?

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abbey

03-02-2008, 4:23 PM

In grade 10 my English class read Go Ask Alice. Not only was it an extremely easy read, it was pretty interesting and actually relevant, considering it's the journal of a girl who gets into drugs.

In grade 11, we read Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. Some parts were a bit far fetched for something that's supposed to sound like a true story, but it held my interest nonetheless.

Now (grade 12) I'm reading a book called Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley. It's kind of his take on the story of Noah's ark but with some really weird stuff thrown in. It's really well written and not in old English so I'm enjoying it.

MaxAlcolo

03-02-2008, 7:07 PM

Back in grade 11 (that was 2 years ago), wich is our last grade here, the teacher in french class made us read a small part of a book called Le Passager by Patrick Senecal. After that I bought the book and read it all, and it was really good.
It's basically the story of a teacher teaching a few days a week in a college a bit far from where he lives. He has to take the highway, and he starts picking up that guy who's always standing at this random exit to bring him in the city he teaches. Soon he'll realise that this guy is somehow related to his childhood that he forgot all about after an accident, and some weird shit is about to happen.

This author wrote some other fucked up books, and he's so far my favorite. If any of you guys can read french properly, I'd recommend looking around if you can find his books. Aliss is by far my favorite one by him.

timbot

03-02-2008, 8:02 PM

I really loved Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I read it in college, not high school, but that's still school, right? It was my favorite novel for a few years--until I read The Fountainhead. Remains of the Day is about a butler in a house in England reflecting back on his life, and dealing with issues like the moral responsibilities of a bulter working for a morally reprehensible boss. It also has a decent love story for those who are into that stuff. I thought Ishiguro did a great job of capturing this Butler kind of mindset, and I found him to be a unique and very intersting narrtor, and in a few parts I thought it was hilarious.

Ikin

03-02-2008, 8:16 PM

I read Of Mice and Men in English last semester and liked it. I read another Steinbeck, The Pearl, in seventh grade.

I hated Lord of the Flies. :sleep:

Raxo

03-02-2008, 8:27 PM

Jallen

03-02-2008, 9:10 PM

The Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Animal Farm, Native Son, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and a lot of others.

To Kill a Mockingbird and Native Son are very similar, except the fact that in Native Son it is a guilty black man on trial as opposed to an innocent one in TKaM.

The Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm were great satyrical works (Animal Farm of the Bolshevik Revolution and The Lord of the Flies a representation of human nature.)

1984 and OFOtCN were both just awesome books. Not much I can say to down them.

WerrWaaa

03-02-2008, 10:16 PM

I have to add the the fan base for Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm as the few books read in high school that I enjoyed. I also enjoyed the D. L. Moody biography and loved it. Now in college we read mostly shorter works in anthologies, but I've read most of Hemingway's novels for a class I have on him and I have added him to my list of favorite authors because of it.

Miss Freeze

03-02-2008, 10:54 PM

The Giver was one of my favorites, I had to read it three years in a row. Also Gathering Blue, by the same author.

Mr Clean

03-03-2008, 4:26 PM

NVM

03-03-2008, 5:26 PM

I always liked Hatchet, I think my school made us read it about 3 times.

iFuchue

03-03-2008, 6:26 PM

In 7th grade, we read The Outsiders. PONYBOY, OH YEAH.

In 8th grade, we read House on Mango St. It was great.

In 9th grade, we read Down these mean Streets. I loved it.

In 10th(now) it was an indepentant choice, so I read Mr. Mulliner. I love ye olde english humour. I also read Spoiled, Rotten America. I don't know if it's on sale, I got the copy that was for editing. (It said NOT TO BE SOLD, OR DISTRIBUTED. FOR REVIEW) :]

Of course, this is D.C, where no one likes to read on grade level, so everyone complained. :/

Miss Freeze

03-03-2008, 9:25 PM

I enjoyed reading Speak. We even had the auther come and speak at an assembly.

INTUNEevolution

03-03-2008, 10:22 PM

The Catcher in the Rye comes to mind, as well as Cry, The Beloved Country.

Abiss

03-03-2008, 11:32 PM

Catcher in the Rye is a rite of passage def, and Great Gatsby and Heart of Darkness are two of my personal favorites. Did anyone ever have to read the short story Salome or is my english teacher just whacked?

Profane Methane

03-04-2008, 4:43 AM

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is a personal favorite of mine. The name sounds like a boring romance, but it's actually the journal of a mentally-retarded patient, Charlie, who undergoes a surgery to increase his IQ. (The title comes from a lab mouse named Algernon, in which the surgery was originally tested on.)

As Charlie recovers and progresses through the effects of the surgery, he begins to write more intelligently, as well as develop and mature both socially and intellectually. It's interesting to read about his constantly changing views of the world, especially when his intelligence surpasses the doctors and professors who actually designed the surgery.
I really enjoyed flowers of Algernon too. Great short story.

Right now my lit class is reading Fight Club. Really great book easily one of the best I have read in class. When you read into it deeper you realize how intricate the story line is.
Unfortunately there isn't many books I have enjoyed in class.

TheHighwaySong

03-04-2008, 8:58 AM

In the 6th grade we read Hatchet, and The Cay.
In the 8th grade we read The Giver. We also read excerpts of Flowers for Algernon and The Diary of Anne Frank. I've been meaning to read Flowers for Algernon as a whole.
In 9th grade we read Night.
This year (11th) I've read The Great Gatsby, and independently for the class I've read Fight Club, and our teacher picked books for each of us to read. I got Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen which I thought was also an excellent book. Very surprising material for my hardass English teacher to read.

I'm sure there's many more, but those are obvious books that I can remember reading in school that I thought were pretty great books.

GCBC

03-04-2008, 9:04 AM

I believe it was in grade 10 that we read As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. I really enjoyed it, mainly because of the stream of conciousness writing style. We also read the short story A Rose for Emily also by Faulkner that I really enjoyed as well. He has such a twisted imagination.

One other short story that I remember enjoying a lot was The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It was the story that initially got me interested in psychology.

koots

03-06-2008, 10:26 AM

I read Of Mice and Men, it's good, but almost too simplistic, then ending was sad.

We're reading Tuesdays With Morrie, it's decent, and Night by Elsie Weisel, so far its good.

I liked Lord of The Flies, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

The Fetus

03-06-2008, 10:31 AM

I liked Lord Of The Flies when I was a freshman (high school). And last year as a sophomore, I loved The Catcher In The Rye. One of my favorites. I liked 1984 a whole lot.

Another good favorite book of mine is Hole In My Life. It wasn't assigned and I didn't read it for school, like in an English class or anything, but I spent most of my time at school reading that amazing memoir.

Cob450

03-06-2008, 12:17 PM

In 9th grade in AP European history we read Candide, by François-Marie Arouet (pen name Voltaire) and we just read it again second semester freshman year of college. It's very subtly funny in a dark way and pokes fun at a lot of philosophies and facets of life around Voltaire's time, the 1700s.

timbot

03-06-2008, 10:58 PM

In 9th grade in AP European history we read Candide, by François-Marie Arouet (pen name Voltaire)

That sounded so pretentious it actually made me laugh. "Or as the commoners know him...Voltaire," he said, leaning forward for dramatic effect, swirling his brandy in his right hand.

But, also, I noticed that GCBC mentioned Faulkner and The Yellow Wallpaper. I read that story when I was in college...I can't remember if it was for any class, though. But it was interesting.
I also read The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner. It took me two attempts to get through it, but I also found it pretty interesting.

horni-horse16

03-07-2008, 2:39 AM

Reading The Giver, Catcher in the Rye, and I am the Cheese in high school was very enjoyable. All three books I've since read over and over.

HappinessMan

03-07-2008, 3:59 AM

I'm reading Night by Elie Wiesel right now, and its becoming a favorite out of any book I have had to read for English.

Chocoholic

03-08-2008, 3:48 PM

In grade 10 my English class read Go Ask Alice. Not only was it an extremely easy read, it was pretty interesting and actually relevant, considering it's the journal of a girl who gets into drugs.

I hated that book. Not to mention the fact that it was actually written by a committee of people who aim to keep kids off drugs and on the straight and narrow. So not only was it a shitty book, it was a conspiracy as well.

I've liked very few books we've had to read in school. The only ones I can actually remember I liked were A Wrinkle in Time, To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm, and Grapes of Wrath. I liked Anthem but it was way too short and way too simple for me to really, really like it. The Lottery was a pretty sweet short story as well.

We're supposedly going to start reading some Edgar Allen Poe soon which gets me pretty damn excited. I love Poe.

abbey

03-08-2008, 3:56 PM

I hated that book. Not to mention the fact that it was actually written by a committee of people who aim to keep kids off drugs and on the straight and narrow. So not only was it a shitty book, it was a conspiracy as well.
Really? I thought my teacher actually picked an okay book but now I see it was a trick. :mad:

Chocoholic

03-08-2008, 4:03 PM

Check this out (http://www.shutitdown.net/text/askalice.html)
Of course it has some basis in truth (there's no doubt that this kind of stuff happens) but the majority of it is just some counselor writing down horrific things they expect a "hardcore druggie" would encounter.

This sounds awesomely hilarious though:
The follow-up to Go Ask Alice, was titled Jay's Journal by Anonymous, and was, if possible, even more unbelievable than its predecessor. The book details 15 year old Jay's decline from a successful student with a genius level IQ, to a kitten-slaying, devil-worshipping suicide victim.

Triple J

03-09-2008, 7:30 PM

Al Capone does my shirts and Speak really stand out

jewishjosh

03-09-2008, 9:48 PM

In elementary school, A Wrinkle in Time and the Silverwing series stand out.

In high school, Lord of the Flies has been my favourite that we had to read as a class. In the "books you hated" thread everyone agreed that reading a book for pleasure beats reading it for school, but LotF was an exception. Other notables that I've done for book reports but not as a class include Catcher in the Rye, 1984, and Slaughterhouse-Five. (We do Catcher and maybe 1984 as a class next year.) Animal Farm (as a class) was also good but 1984 was way better.

Also, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. I read it for pleasure and loved it, then found out we'd be doing it as a class, so it sort of not really counts as a book I read for school and liked.

I too have actually read Candide (for pleasure), at the suggestion of my political science teacher. It felt way more like a social commentary than a story, but I did enjoy it a lot (for that reason).

abbey

03-09-2008, 10:05 PM

I agree with you there, A Wrinkle in Time is a very good book. I read it in grade 8.

GCBC

03-09-2008, 10:35 PM

I agree with you there, A Wrinkle in Time is a very good book. I read it in grade 8.

What happens in that book? The title sounds familiar, but I was in 8th grade in like 1997, so I can't remember...

abbey

03-09-2008, 10:39 PM

It's about these kids whose father gets sucked up in some sort of worm hole or something. It's hard to explain without making it sound retarded, but it's a really good book. There's a synopsis on the amazon page for it. (http://www.amazon.com/Wrinkle-Time-Madeleine-LEngle/dp/0440498058)

Crabstick

03-11-2008, 11:07 PM

I read Ender's Game for school when I was 15, thought it was pretty good. Since then I've read the 2nd and 3rd books in the series, and I think they're good, but they tend to drag on. Dunno whether I wanna read the 4th one.

Dresden

03-12-2008, 2:26 AM

Got to read Fight Club in my freshman year English (college). Fahrenheit 451 was pretty decent too, back in 10th grade.

AmareEstMors

03-12-2008, 7:21 AM

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Old School by Tobias Wolff were definately two of my favorites. It might be cheating that I designed my entire senior year course outline and put Wuthering Heights in it because my best friend said it was good, but technically I read it for school.

INTUNEevolution

03-13-2008, 9:45 PM

^wat? Wuthering Heights was so bad, I can't even stand it.
Guys!!!!! Great Gatsby is soo good!

GCBC

03-13-2008, 9:52 PM

http://www.chrisburke.org/images/homepage.jpg

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amjoyce

03-13-2008, 10:20 PM

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was an amazing book as well as 1984. I don't know why but I developed a thing for utopia/distopia based books after those.

HoneyAndCinnamon

03-14-2008, 12:35 AM

I read it for school but its my FAVORITE book ever, Night by Elie Wiesel.

natalie137

03-14-2008, 5:44 AM

I loved To Kill A Mockingbird and Wuthering Heights. I also have a very good teacher for both these books, so maybe I'm a tad biased

purifiedinfire

03-16-2008, 12:59 AM

I read the Odyssey on my own in 5th and 6th grade, and was assigned to read it in 9th grade. I thought it was great both times.

thatswhatyourmomsaid

04-23-2008, 2:48 AM

Private Peaceful by Michael Murpugo

I might be a little biased because I read this book before we studied it in class (which I think can ruin a book, no matter how good it is), but it was a really sad portrayal of a young boy's life in the country, then he and his brother having to go off to war (WW1)

Really sad, but it's a great book. I recommend anything else by Michael Murpugo, except A Twist Of Gold, that was a little boring, and I didn't end up finishing (which is a big thing for me, because I very rarely not finish a book, I've only done it around 3 times in my life)

Oodge

04-24-2008, 8:47 PM

I thought it was mediocre. Although there was a plot and it had a purpose it kind of... Missed its mark somewhere. I hated all the characters. I just didn't like it. Though I may be biased because before reading Private Peaceful we had to read Why the Whales Came (also by Morpurgo) and that was a steaming pile of shit.

Azn Poser ^_^

04-25-2008, 2:22 AM

In 7th grade, we read The Outsiders. PONYBOY, OH YEAH.

I read The Outsiders in Year 9, and I loved it. It was so well-rounded and satisfying.

YourOnlyGod

04-25-2008, 3:33 AM

1984 was a masterpeice!!!!

Dime

04-25-2008, 12:58 PM

I think it was first or second grade, I loved those Frog and Toad books.

Brimstone

05-04-2008, 6:27 PM

Along with things everyone likes (Flowers for Algernon, To Kill A Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies) I really enjoyed One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and The Killer Angels, the latter was about the Battle of Gettysburg primarily from the view of generals Lee, Buford, Chamberlain and Longstreet.

Ambutt

05-07-2008, 10:51 PM

Reading is totally my favorite passing time. Usually the books that out teachers make us read are very dull, and i dont like to follow along. BUT the outsiders was a very great read, and i wanted to actually finish this time.

thisiswhoiam

05-10-2008, 10:55 PM

1 The Outsiders it is a book about greasers in the 60s and is just a really good book read itin 8th grade

lollercaust

05-15-2008, 9:46 PM

Night - It's quite a good read, although depressing, to realize and understand the atrocities of the Jewish Holocaust.

Hamlet - I was slowly losing hope for Shakespeare books after Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, but once I read this I forgot about all that doubt. I loved the way it played out, the irony, the precursoring, and so much more about it. We've seen about 5 different enactments of it from movies to actual performances in Boston, and I still love it.

Existentialist books in general - The Metamorphosis, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead, The Stranger... I find them very interesting. Especially The Stranger. After learning about Existentialism, I think that is the category I belong most in. And I think that's why I love the books so much. I feel like I could be Meursault (probably spelled his name wrong), and I connected with those books more than any others.

Lord of the Flies - An extremely significant book, of course. Showing the degradation of civilisation when abandoned. It's one of the few books that I actually think everyone should read.

Ricette

05-16-2008, 1:28 AM

Zanna

05-16-2008, 3:03 AM

i'm in year 12 and we just finsihed studying 1984, i've read it before this year so i don't know if that counts but i love it all the same and it was really good studying it.
last year the standout was Night which is just amazing.
year 10 we had a few good ones To Kill A Mocking Bird and Animal Farm were the best.
year 9 was Romeo and Juliet and Lord of the Flies but we had a really bad teacher and she kind of killed them all for most people, which was really sad because they're such classics.
year 8 we did Holes and the Outsiders which were both really good.
year 7 i dont remember which books but i know they were crap.
actually looking back we've done a lot of good books, there were some crap ones in there as well but this is a pretty good selection.

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abbey

05-16-2008, 6:58 AM

I read Oedipus this year and I really liked it. It's a super short read (took me about an hour) but the storyline is really clever. The language is also easy to understand so it was a nice break from Shakespearean plays.

Yimmit

05-16-2008, 10:20 AM

The book 'You Don't Know Me', by David Klass.

notafan

05-18-2008, 10:27 AM

I read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn my freshman year of high school, and enjoyed a lot of it. Plus my class had amazing discussions on it because it's one of those books that can be interpreted in so many different ways.

AnnaNemyss

05-20-2008, 11:40 PM

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and The Giver were definitely my favorite reads in high school. I also liked A Wrinkle In Time and a collection of Emily Dickinson's poetry we had to read. Honestly, as long as it didn't have to deal with Hemingway, it was all good.
Animal Farm would have been a pretty good one, if the movie hadn't ruined it for me.

ShockWave

05-22-2008, 1:31 AM

I read The Life of Pi in Grade 12. It was a good read.

Cas

05-22-2008, 12:38 PM

In elementary school we read "The Giving Tree" and even now I cry every time I read it.
We also read a Wrinkle in Time in elementary school, and I couldn't really understand it so I didn't like it and am unwilling to pick it up even now that I'm older.

Let's see...I liked pretty much all the books we read in Middle School. Dragonwings, Alice in Wonderland, Big Red, To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm (:hail: Animal Farm,) House of the Scorpion, Woman in the Wall, The Pearl...well, I didn't like the Pearl too much, but it was alright.

As for HS, we just finished Black Boy, which was awesome. We just received our Of Mice and Men today, and from what I've read so far it's really good.

INTUNEevolution

05-28-2008, 3:09 PM

I read The Good Earth for Academic Decathlon.

That book was absolutely amazing. And I raped that portion of the test. Well, all portions of the test (12 medals, in the top 10 in the state :p)

dorphl

05-28-2008, 11:56 PM

I read my favorite book ever in high school when I was supposed to be reading Pride and Prejudice. A mind-altering look at the American Dream, by Hunter S. Thompson. I am referring, of course, to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Chrono

05-31-2008, 8:29 PM

fear and loathing was an interesting read i have to say, but not one of my favourites

also if you didn't like pride and prejudice, try watching bride and prejudice, it put a slighty different spin on the whole idea, very clever

htr907

05-31-2008, 8:55 PM

Call of the Wild and Where the Red Fern grows were Great Books, and so was The Diary of Ann Frank

Iiro

06-01-2008, 8:52 AM

Kumi-Tarzan. Fucking amazing book.

Counterfeit Dreamer

06-04-2008, 9:26 PM

Grendel, which was assigned to us my senior year in high school, became my favorite book. It is really interesting It tells the story of Grendel from his childhood to his death. Great book. Interesting take on a Beowulf monster.

I didn't expect to see this here, but I totally agree. I liked almost every part of this book (the bit with the Dragon got rather annoying after a while). It was a refreshing read after Hamlet - which isn't bad, until you're beaten to death with it.

The book had a lot of interesting commentary about society in general, but I think what I really loved was the fact that Gardner managed to turn our (or at least my) point of view around so that Grendel no longer seemed like a creature to hate.

Pie_Dee

06-05-2008, 1:18 AM

Nineteen Eighty-Four, Flowers for Algernon, Pride and Prejudice and The Dandelion Clock are all great books.

ShaunAnator

06-05-2008, 6:36 AM

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien was a really good book even though when we were forced to read it I had already read it at least twice and well into the Lord Of The Rings. The story accelerates at a larger rate than LOTR and still had a lot of its character.

TheCuriousGalaxy

06-16-2008, 9:01 PM

Pretty much one of my favorite books: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Also good was The Stranger by Albert Camus, 1984 (although I didn't read that for school), Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto, and probably more if I think about it.

CoffeeandTV

06-17-2008, 11:42 AM

I have to say Siddhartha is an amazing book, and would recommend it to anyone, if you have the chance, read it.

Laurence

06-21-2008, 1:45 AM

We just did Of Mice and Men in grade 11. I didn't really like it, plus I only got a B- for the assignment, which filled me with even more rage, and I tried to start Grapes of Wrath but I just can't. Other classes got to read Animal Farm, which would have been loving awesome, but alas.

We did To Kill A Mockingbird in grade 10 but I had already read it like, 3 times by then anyway. I think we do the Great Gatsby next year if I get the same teacher but I'd want to do 1984 because, well, just because.

Balkothdr

06-22-2008, 7:56 PM

I'm seeing a lot of stuff listed that I actually didn't really like that much. To Kill a Mockingbird, Pride and Prejudice, and stuff like that I didn't really enjoy. But Brave New World, Beowulf, parts of the Canterbury Tales, Animal Farm, and Catcher in the Rye, now those I liked. I'm also seeing a bunch of great ones I read by myself and wish my school would choose instead of crappy Last of the Mohicans and whatnot.

Lush

06-25-2008, 12:40 PM

We did both 'The Telltale Heart' and 'The Raven' by Poe in school. They aren't books, but they're both awesome. There needs to be more Poe in schools.
Books I liked; Ender's Game was really good, 1984, the Chrysalids. I didn't mind the Diary of Anne Frank. It was interesting as a piece of history.
I am pretty sure that all the English teachers I ever had were completely uninterested in the actual literature behind any of the books we read, which is unfortunate because we didn't go into any kind of depth behind the story that I can remember.

Oodge

07-15-2008, 1:36 AM

I've tried and failed to read Shakespeare before (It's just not clicked with me) but we recently did Othello and it was really good

DruNkiN_mONkeY350

07-15-2008, 4:06 AM

I liked Outsiders alot. To Kill a Mockingbird wasnt bad either.

heythatoneguy123

07-15-2008, 7:07 AM

I really liked back in 4th or 5th grade we read A Wrinkle in Time it was pretty good. Other than that I really havent liked any other books I didnt choose to read Like on a book report. To kill a mocking bird was alright, not as bad as everyone says.

Ivan

07-20-2008, 11:45 PM

The Catcher in the Rye, it's now my favourite book. Just a shame that it's caused some things I don't agree with...
Also have to read 1984 sometime in the next few weeks, I've done some research on it and it doesn't seem all that bad.

Mr_Beast

07-24-2008, 7:39 AM

I loved the Changeling, who knew having irredeemably flawed and selfish characters as the protagonists could be so awesome. Also, the whole play is peppered with fairly juvenile phallic innuendo which I found to be greatly enjoyable. Heh, willies.

TuckerLOL

07-24-2008, 9:00 AM

Of Mice And Men. It actually brought tears to my eyes. Although I bought the book myself, we just watched the film.
Also, Shelter. It was a script. It made me think about leaving home, 'cause I was seriously unhappy, at that point, but I loved it. The only thing that spoiled it for me was the way the teacher took ages to read a page and yelled at me if I read ahead.

Melon

07-25-2008, 8:12 AM

^You sound like me, Tucker! Though after seeing the film (well, the first hour) of Of Mice And Men I didn't read the book because I never got round to getting it, but I went to a very good stage production of it. Also I was always getting told off for reading ahead in English - though our script was The Crucible. We read some other book about homelessness as well, though I didn't like that so much.

Not sure how grades translate to years in England but...

In Year 6 (aged 10/11) I read "I Am David" and really, really liked it. That wasn't for school, as such, but I read it at school and was encouraged by my teacher to keep with it.

In Year 9 was "Macbeth" which got me into Shakespeare in general :) I was fully expecting to hate it, but didn't.

In Year 10 drama we did a lot of work around "Animal Farm" which caused me to read it. I wasn't overly impressed by it (and fed up with it anyway, thanks to the extensive exploration we did in class) but it led me to read 1984 which I love to pieces!

Also in drama, in college this time, we did "Fen" and "Trojan Woman" amoung other things, but those were the two I particularly liked and I read them far more than was nec. to perform/study.

EDIT: Oh! And my maths teacher in college recommended "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time". It's about a boy with Autism investigating the death of his neighbours dog, and all the personal trials he struggled with to do so. It's really heart rending.

blubeth

08-05-2008, 5:02 PM

Watership Down by Richard Adams was an extra credit project in junior high. I ended up really enjoying it.

Eritrea

08-05-2008, 5:06 PM

We were assigned to read Harry Potter and the philosophers stone in year 7(12 years old), which was great for that age. Still, the only book I read for school and enjoyed alot was To kill a Mockingbird.

mohaas05

08-05-2008, 7:29 PM

I read the Odyssey on my own in 5th and 6th grade, and was assigned to read it in 9th grade. I thought it was great both times.

Are you serious? I HATED the Odyssey. It was bad enough that it was like a thousand pages, but most of it was in an indecipherable form of English. It was a total mindfuck from hell.

But anyways...:ahe:

Probably the only interesting thing that ever kept me awake in school was to kill a mockingbird.

hoopymo

08-05-2008, 8:45 PM

Empire of the sun was a great read in high school.

RobType0

08-07-2008, 8:00 PM

I really enjoyed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as Of Mice and Men. And I know this isn't strictly relevant, bit I actually liked most of the poems in the anthology I had to read for GCSE English Lit.

FA5TeddyFEL5ON

08-10-2008, 12:34 PM

I really enjoyed Albert Camus's "The Stranger", but for some reason a lot of people didn't like it... Anyway, I also like "Catcher in the Rye".

Habitu

08-22-2008, 11:17 PM

The book I read in school and liked was actually just last year. It was titled "The Princess Bride".

Haggis McSpud

08-22-2008, 11:26 PM

My favorite book was the one I did for my As Level coursework last year; Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, I had to read loads of criticisms and interpretations of the book so when I went back and read it again over the summer I could really appreciate the literary genius behind the seemingly simple storyline.
Also I've loved all the Shakespeare I've done throughout high school; The Tempest or The Merchant Of Venice are by far my favorites.

sly939

08-24-2008, 7:08 PM

I really liked To Kill A Mockingbird, and also we read one called The Trojan War which was really good.

Ikin

08-25-2008, 8:24 PM

Are you serious? I HATED the Odyssey. It was bad enough that it was like a thousand pages, but most of it was in an indecipherable form of English. It was a total mindfuck from hell.

I actually found it pretty easy to understand for a thousand-something year old poem.

Mel

08-25-2008, 9:01 PM

I liked Tartuffe by Moliere, The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. They're all books I got to read in college english classes. Now that I'm in University I don't need english anymore! Durhhh. But I really miss reading things. I like when they assign books I wouldn't normally pick up to read. Because then they turn out to be awesome. :)

Sesshy

08-26-2008, 9:45 PM

I really liked reading To Kill a Mocking bird in 7th grade. I also read Twelfth Night (What you Will) My Sophomore year, and really loved that. Also, as a Freshman I read The Iliad and The Odyssey and loved both,

JohnDoe

08-26-2008, 9:52 PM

Theres two books which I really enjoyed in school and I can't really pick a favorite.

The Chrysalids
Science Fiction style book I read in grade 10. It had a really good plot line I thought. I finished the book the night after we were given it. ( It wasn't a very long book.) I'm not going to give away any details about it, but you should definatly check it out if you haven't read it before, it's a good read.

The Outsiders
Another awesome book that I read in like grade 7 or 8. It was such a bad ass book then even made a movie of it and our class also got to go see a play of it. I liked the huge brawl the socs had with the greasers. That was badass. :smile: But yeah, this is another one you guys should definatly check out, or at least watch the movie.

Shimigami

09-02-2008, 12:28 AM

In 7th grade, we read The Outsiders. PONYBOY, OH YEAH.

"DO IT FOR JOHNNY, MAN"
We read it in year 8, and its still one of my favourite texts.
I had a really great teacher in year 9, who realised it would difficult to engage my peers in literature, so he chose The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Tomorrow, When The War begins as our texts, and threw in some Monty Python to top it off.
This year we read Under Milkwood, by Dylan Thomas. Usually I don't enjoy poetic passages, but this one I've really really loved.

InTransit

09-02-2008, 10:27 PM

I did English Literature for High School TEE so we spent sooooo much time analysing books that it was rare that I still enjoyed anything afterwards.

One I did enjoy even after spending a whole 12 months picking it apart is Cloudstreet by Tim Winton. This one actually got even more enjoyable as we went a long looking at the different parts because he puts so much information into his stories that it's easy to miss the littler things that don't impact the main story line. It probably helps that it's set in the city I live in as well. But this got me into reading the rest of his books which I've loved every single one of them.

I'm also a huge fan of Shakespeare. We did a lot of work with his sonnets which I found absolutely beautiful.

Gryphon

09-03-2008, 1:06 AM

To Kill A Mocking Bird, Romeo and Juliet and The Night were the only books I read in high school that kept me interested. One book I read in elementary school that I will always like was Maniac Magee.

BigDave

09-05-2008, 7:51 AM

Even though there not books i really loved Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. Seriously once you can get your head around the old english you can understand that Shakespeare wrote some really amazing things. Just on the Human Condition and the interactions between people.
I also appreciate Catcher in the Rye now but when i first read i couldnt stand it, didn't even finish. But know i appreciate the feelings of rebellion and just being an all round misfit.

Absolutely hated Charles Dickens though. No one can drag out a story like old Dickie.

Beven

09-05-2008, 7:58 AM

The est books that I've read in school wold defiantly be The Giver, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, and the my favorite book that I've read in school is with out a doubt 1984.

JohnDoe

09-06-2008, 8:25 PM

The est books that I've read in school wold defiantly be The Giver, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, and the my favorite book that I've read in school is with out a doubt 1984.

Oh fuck, how could I have forgotten about The Giver. I think I read that bad boy in like grade 6. That is a seriously good book and I actually want to go out and buy it right now just to read it again.

Hysteria__

09-06-2008, 10:40 PM

The Giver, Lord of the Flies, the Outsiders, and Maniac Magee come to mind (after reading this thread). To Kill a Mockingbird was pretty sweet as well.

EDIT: Hatchet was great as well, Gary Paulsen is awesome.

EDIT EDIT: They're all coming back to me now. Shiloh.

Antisaint

09-07-2008, 12:06 AM

Fahrenheit 451 was pretty incredible, as was the Mythology book we read (it was literally titled Mythology).

tds019

09-09-2008, 5:27 PM

extremely loud and incredibly close

MaffeMike

09-13-2008, 12:20 AM

Achmed Im Bahnhofsviertel Needed to read that for german... Freakin hard, but still a cool look on how the drugs business in Berlin is going on and how people get there. It's very emotional

Urser

09-15-2008, 1:49 AM

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Parvana's Journey. It's about a young girl in Afghanistan going to search for her mother while there's a war going on. The ending is a bit far fetched, but there are a lot of tear jerking moments in it.

Alcoholic

09-15-2008, 3:41 AM

My favorite from school was easily Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Very cool story with a ridiculous amount of in-story ironies, swordplay, heads being cloven in half, an important appearance by Locksley (you might know him as Robin Hood?), and several tales of different people woven into one great rope. Check it out.

And Beven likes The Giver and the Catcher*, heh heh.

*in the Rye

3inchesofpain

09-15-2008, 3:59 PM

I quite enjoyed reading of mice and men.
An inspector calls however is a dreadfully boring read.

veveze

10-03-2008, 8:53 PM

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Favorite book of senior year. I also read Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights,The Golden Compass, and The Giver but those I really read on my own time and for summer reading--I just so happened to have to read them in school later on. But Brave New World was amazing, it is one of my favorite futuristic depictions and at the time it was so realistic. I love reading books in school because we get to analyze them so I understand them better than I would have if I read them on my own. There are a bunch of other books I read in school like Animal Farm and The Odyssey and The Hot Zone--I could go on, I'll stop myself now. I'm an avid reader, always have to have a book.

loneassassin

10-04-2008, 2:44 AM

Well, I read a lot during high school three of my four English teachers would make us read the book in two week, review the third week and close out the month with a huge test. Here are some of my favorites:

Slaughterhouse Five: This was a book my 11th grade teacher suggested to me for my book report and I liked it so much after I returned it to the library I bought my own copy.

1984: I just liked it, plain and simple.

Animal Farm: Soviet totalitarianism at it's finest.

Hamlet and Henry V are my favorite Shakespeare plays that I read in senior year. I also enjoyed the movie versions from Kenneth Branagh a lot.

To Kill a Mockingbird is probably in the top three books I have ever read.

Pencil

10-08-2008, 1:36 PM

I read The Kiterunner this year, and I liked it so much that I read it again in my free time. The story is beautiful and it reads quite easy.

Meako

10-08-2008, 5:34 PM

I have to say that I loved reading Speak, but I couldn't stand To Kill a Mockingbird. If no one has read Speak I recommend you do. The story is about a girl in her first year of high school where she is a social outcast. She has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from being raped at a summer party by the most popular guy in school.

Bayview05

10-08-2008, 5:41 PM

The only decent books I have read in my English classes are Les Miserables and Bless Me, Ultima. Both are a very good and interesting read. Everything else (Especially Great Expectations) was total shit.

javaD

10-08-2008, 6:07 PM

Catcher in the Rye, The old man and the sea, El principito (I go to a bilingual school), El alquimista and Fight Club

timbot

10-08-2008, 10:07 PM

I love reading books in school because we get to analyze them so I understand them better than I would have if I read them on my own. I'm an avid reader, always have to have a book.

You are my new favorite person here because of this post.

veveze

10-08-2008, 10:30 PM

Thanks Timbot! I'm glad my reading habits have warranted me internet popularity :lol:. It was a long time coming.

pillowlover15

10-09-2008, 12:55 AM

I read call of the wild in 6th grade, when the main dog I forget their name got attacked by wolves or something like that I was devastated. :wail:

lobster bisque anyone?

10-09-2008, 8:42 PM

I read call of the wild in 6th grade, when the main dog I forget their name got attacked by wolves or something like that I was devastated. :wail:

The dogs name was Buck.

In class, we've been reading Milkweed by Jerry Spinneli. Its really good, its about a little gypsy theif/orphan living in Warsaw in 1939.