There’s already been a thread on books you had to read for highschool that you hated. Nice to have the positive version now.
For me, the best one I had to read was The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy. An excellent book for thoughtful teenagers to get their priorities in life sorted out. It really helped me.
Another vote for “Heart of Darkness”.
Also “Housekeeping” by Marilynne Robinson.
Also “the Communist Manifesto” by you know who.
Some that come to mind:
Waiting for Godot
Of Mice and Men
Beowulf
To Kill a Mockingbird
Like Osiris nobody forced me to read anything – it was hard to get me OUT of a book – but I had an outstanding English teacher who introduced me to authors and books I never would have considered on my own. The one book I was pretty sure I wouldn’t enjoy, and did, was Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth.
I think I mentioned this in another thread, but for me it’s Emma. It was on the summer reading list for senior AP English, and I hated the damn thing - I suspect because Emma was rather too close to me in age, and Jane’s observations were hitting rather too close to me, period.
A little distance is a wondrous thing. It’s unfortunate that so many English teachers think that books with young adult characters will better hold their students’ interests; but usually people least tolerate those whom they most resemble…
Farienheit451
Shakespeare. Great Gatsby.
Exactamundo!
I liked most of the books I read in high school, but the one that I was really surprised to like was The Grapes of Wrath.
Moby Dick
Like so many others, To Kill a Mockingbird. Although that actually might have been junior high; I don’t recall.
We were only required to read a short passage from The Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius, in school, but after reading that I had to pick up the whole thing from the library. In the same class, we had to read Beowulf, and I was struck by how similar the style is to Tolkien’s. I suppose I oughtn’t to have been surprised.
And not high school, but my freshman year of college I had to read Beloved, which turned out to be quite good.
Yet another vote for “To Kill a Mockingbird”. I do also remember an English class quarter where we read “A Separate Peace”, “Alas Babylon”, and “On the Beach” (okay, this was 1967! :). But besides “Mockingbird” the piece that stands out is Arthur Miller’s play “All My Sons”. Otherwise I don’t really remember reading a lot of the “classic” stories. Don’t recall, either, if “Stranger in a Strange Land” was mandatory or not, but that is about the time I first read it.
ooh forgot one, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I too had fabulous english teachers that made me understand the books I was assigned on a deep and thrilling level.
Thank god for education of any kind.
One for me that hasn’t been mentioned was Crime and Punishment. I was impressed enough to go ahead and read The Brothers Karmazov on my own time.
The Great Gatsby did it for me.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, although I’d already read it.
Another vote for To Kill a Mockingbird.
Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird.
I chose Alice in Wonderland for my 10th grade English term paper, I read * Annotated Alice* and it became my favorite book of all time. Still is.
I’d have to say Slaughterhouse Five. Really glad they turned me on to Vonnegut.
To Kill a Mockingbird was junior high for me, and I recall loving it from the first time I read it. But Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are another story. I hated, hated, hated those damned Brontes and I wanted them to die. They were already dead, but I wanted them to die again anyway. Loathed the books, loathed discussing the symbolism and the foreshadowing and the blahdyblahdyblah that you get when you’re forced to analyze a story instead of being allowed to read it for the sheer thrill of being taken into it.
When I re-read the books as an adult (after seeing the movies, I admit) I fell in love with them. I’ve contemplated revisiting The Scarlet Letter to see if I could be similarly moved now, but even I have limits.
A Tale of Two Cities
My 9-th grade English teacher said, “You’re going to hate this book. I hate this book. But I have to teach it and you have to read it so deal with it.” I went home and devoured it that night.
I also discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald when I was in 11th grade, and he was my favorite writer for years. But I’m also one of those who never had to be forced to read a book!
Another vote (isn’t this about 100 now?) for To Kill a Mockingbird. Also the play Inherit the Wind. It was a pretty gutsy pick by the teacher as I went to a small rural high school in a pretty conservative and religious town. It spurred some fairly animated discussions in class which I suppose was the aim.
I haven’t gone back and reread either of the books that I didn’t enjoy (Bleak House and Last of the Mohicans)but this thread has inspired me to do so. I’m going to start tonight.