Mine was “Brave New World” Aldous Huxley
On The Road, Kerouac. I hated it in HS though - and loved it when I had to read it in college.
"The Crucible" by Arthur Miller
Film was OK too.
To Kill a Mockingbird.
I read that book all the way through on the day it was assigned, which actually made the classwork a pain in the ass. The teacher was walking the class through it so… damn… slowly, and I would have to answer really detailed questions about stuff I’d read weeks ago… ARGH!
I loved the book though.
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Ouch, I remember how that felt grendel72. I would always read the book within the first day or two, then the teacher would take months to get all the way through the book. Even then, some kids still thought the teacher was going too fast. Frusterating, to say the least.
As to the OP, I will be forever indebted to my 10th grade English teacher for reading us the short story “The Thanksgiving Visitor” by Truman Capote. I had never heard someone write with such unbridled eloquence. When he got to the sad ending of that story, I was trying as hard as I could to choke back tears. I immediately scoured the libraries and used bookstores for all the Capote I could find. The man was truly a genius.
Of Mice and Men by and Animal Farm were both great novels I may never have read without my 6th and 9th grade English teachers, respectively. They also inspired me to seek out other books by the same authors. The Grapes of Wrath blew me away. I wish they’d have made us read that one in school.
Too many to mention, but here goes:
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Separate Peace
Native Son
Ordinary People
The World According to Garp
Pride and Prejudice
and, if you can believe it, War and Peace - once I was given permission to skip the war parts if I wanted and to think of the whole thing as a big soap opera, not a high-faluttin’ work of art; plus there was a guide to Russian names in the back
A Clockwork Orange
Loved 'em all.
Nicholas Nickleby
Hearts of Darkness
Hamlet
When I was in the fourth grade, we had to read The Pearl and The Red Pony, by John Steinbeck. I hated them both. In the seventh grade, we had to read Of Mice and Men. I detested it. I decided John Steinbeck had to be the worst author in the world, and I swore never to read a single word he wrote again, even if I had to take a zero on a test at some point. I figured I could always make it up by working hard on the books in the rest of the class, I hated Steinbeck so much. However, it never came up until my Junior year in highschool, when I learned to my horror that we would only be studying one book in class that semester: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Earlier oaths not withstanding, I decided to buckle down and just read the damned thing… and it was the most incredible book I had ever read. I was floored. I was shattered. I laughed, I cried, and I actually thought about the book. A lot. It made literature come alive to me in a way that nothing I had ever read in an English class had done for me before.
After that, I couldn’t get enough Steinbeck. I went back to Of Mice and Men, and literally kicked myself for not realizing what an amazing book it was the first time around. I remember reading Cannery Row and falling in a kind of love with Doc. I remember re-reading it, and realizing that I felt so strongly about that character because he was just like my dad. (And, even better, I share the same name as the main character of the novel, Mack, who has a bit of a father-son relationship with Doc.)
That one class turned Steinbeck from my most reviled author into my favorite author, a position for which he has been often challenged but never defeated. More than that, though, East of Eden made me realize what I wanted to study in college. I wanted to be an English major. I worked my ass off in that class, and did so well that I got into the AP program my senior year, which shocked my parents so much it damn near killed them.
Practically all of them. The Great Santini, Cannery Row, Sweet Tuesday (Or Thursday, I can’t remember which), Othello, etc. etc.
The Scarlet letter. Not only am I the only person I know who liked that book when they read it in high school, it actually turned me into a big fan of Hawthorne’s works.
“Their Eyes Were Watching God,” by Zora Neale Hurston. A story of incompatible lovers, insanity and loss, written by a middle-aged black woman in 1930s Harlem. Heady stuff to a 17-year-old white kid in 1990s rural Ohio.
I also thought Martin Luther King, Jr.'s “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” was one of the most inspirational things I would ever read. If “genius” is defined as having a vision coupled to the drive to make it happen, then King really was a genius.
I was forced to read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in 9th grade, which is a story about a young girl growing up in the early 1900s. I certainly would never have picked it up on my own, but it is one of the best books I’ve ever read.
In seventh grade, we had to pick a book to read off of a supplied list, which would then be ordered for us. I picked Watership Down, which I just knew had to be something nautical. It wasn’t, but I loved it anyway.
My fifth grade teacher read Where the Red Fern Grows to us over a period of several weeks. Again, not a book I would have picked on my own, being more into science and science fiction at that age. When the teacher finished the book, I asked to borrow it over the weekend. I read the whole book in one sitting Friday night, finishing it by flashlight under the bedcovers. (I also remember returning the book that Monday, and being met with disbelief that I could have finished it over the weekend. 
)
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
The Awakening by Kate Chopin. We read it in a literature class in 11th grade and I just hated it. I hated the plot, the protagonist, the style, everything. And then, my sophomore year in college I was in a literature class where we read it, and reading it that second time, my eyes opened.
I’ve read it several times since then, and it’s one of my favorite books.
Here’s the only other person on earth who loved, loved, loved The Scarlet Letter. I even loved the style. Also, while writing a paper on it I suddenly realized I wanted to study English, but that’s another story.
Anyway. Roger Chillingworth owns you.
Grendel by John Gardner–in that book Beowulf’s monster was threatening to burn the Queen’s physical jewels!!! Oh man!! Now that’s EVIL!!
My English teachers had these sick senses of humor.
The best book I read in high school was Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies. I haven’t met many other people who have even read it. It’s definitely worth a read.
I can’t really say they ever forced me to read anything. I went willingly and eagerly to everything.
Although I was most surprised to really enjoy North and South by Elizabrth Gaskell and The Histories by Herodotus.
The Fountainhead by Rand
The Count of Montecristo by Dumas