# Books you had read in high school that you absolutely loved **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [September 5, 2025, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772 "2025-09-05T13:04:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/21 "2025-09-05T19:36:14Z")
I recall enjoying Moby Dick, Heart of Darkness, and Red Badge of Courage. What worked for me was basically visualizing the book as a movie as I read along. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/22 "2025-09-05T19:38:36Z")
The most fun book I can remember reading in high school was _The Kon-Tiki Expedition_ by Thor Heyerdahl. I don’t think the scholarship holds up nowadays (or even then), but it was a ripping adventure yarn. I also remember thinking _The Admirable Crichton_ was funny. Other books that were better than average were _Of Mice and Men_ and _The Chosen_. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/23 "2025-09-05T19:40:05Z")
I read _The Hobbit_ and _The Lord of the Rings_ during my high school years. I also read the two Alice books by Lewis Carroll at that time. These are still my choices for the best fantasy books ever written. I read my most personally important nonfiction books before I even entered high school. They are _Music of the Spheres_ by Guy Murchie and _One, Two, Three . . . Infinity_ by George Gamow. The first was what made me decide to be a scientist. The second was what made me decide to more specifically be a mathematician when I read about Cantor’s proof of the uncountability of the real numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/24 "2025-09-05T19:42:38Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > Sydney Carton was my first literary crush. Ooh. I just realized that he was NOT – it was Simon in _Lord of the Flies_, which I read in eighth grade. (I did like the doomed ones. Naturally, I also loved _Hamlet_.) I am not sure I would say that I _loved_ LotF, but it did validate what I had already learned from experience, at a time when none of the adults in my life were validating it. (Namely: that some of my peers were absolutely vicious brutes, that when they got together they fed off of and amplified each others’ viciousness, and that being a target didn’t mean you’d done anything _wrong._) So thanks, William Golding, for that. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/25 "2025-09-05T19:59:24Z")
> [@themapleleaf](#): > > I also liked _Brave New World_ very much, which my teacher linked thematically to Shakespeare’s _The Tempest_. > [@Jophiel](#): > > _1984_ 1984 was another novel I was assigned in high school and enjoyed very much. It led me to _Brave New World_ and other dystopian future novels. Interesting, @themapleleaf, that your teacher compared it thematically to _The Tempest_. I’ll have to reread _BN_W again-- I do a 1984 reread every 10 years or so but I think I only read _BNW_ once, over 40 years ago. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > My best friend in 10th grade was in a different English class, where the teacher decided to do a unit on existentialism. They read Sartre, Camus, and Kafka, and my friend passed the books and stories along to me. Goddamn did existentialism hit just right for my depressed teenaged self. Yep, I went through an existentialist phase. But like @Spice_Weasel, later on in college for me. A friend of mine lent me a book called _The Christian Existentialists_ (which I think I still have somewhere-- but I lent him books he kept as well). It included passages from famous works of fiction that depicted examples of such. It was very interesting, as one might think that Christianity and existentialism is mutually exclusive. One example was _The Grand Inquisitor_ passage from Dostoevsky’s _The Brothers Karamazov_, which led me to reading the whole novel. > [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > I fell in love with Vonnegut’s writing and devoured the rest of his books during the summer before 10th grade. I went through a Vonnegut phase in high school too, though again I’m not sure if I was introduced by an assignment to read a Vonnegut novel or picked one up on my own. > [@Dorjan](#): > > Heart of Darkness > … > > What worked for me was basically visualizing the book as a movie as I read along. Another one I loved that I read early on, before the movie _Apocalypse Now_ existed. It was fun to realize, once I did see the movie, that it was based on Conrad’s novel. Visualizing the book as I read it is something I do as well-- so vividly sometimes that years later in the case of a novel that a movie was made from, I’m not always sure if I actually saw the movie or am just remembering my visualization of the book. ---
**Author:** ![themapleleaf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/themapleleaf/32/14349_2.png) [@themapleleaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/themapleleaf)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/26 "2025-09-05T20:37:46Z")
> [@solost](#): > > 1984 was another novel I was assigned in high school and enjoyed very much. It led me to _Brave New World_ and other dystopian future novels. Interesting, @themapleleaf, that your teacher compared it thematically to _The Tempest_. I’ll have to reread _BN_W again-- I do a 1984 reread every 10 years or so but I think I only read _BNW_ once, over 40 years ago. The title of the Aldous Huxley novel is taken from a line in Shakespeare’s play. Prospero’s daughter Miranda, who has grown up on an exotic island where she and her father were exiled by Prospero’s brother, who wanted to usurp from him the dukedom of Milan, only knows the company of Ariel, an air spirit or fairy, and Caliban, an ugly creature who is the product of a liaison between a witch and the devil. Then near the end of the play, having fallen in love with the shipwrecked son of the King of Naples and having finally met his father, her uncle, and their retinue, who have all survived the shipwreck, she is impressed at looking at actual humans, and comments: O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in 't. The catch being that she doesn’t realize that her uncle and the King are responsible for her exile - she doesn’t realize that humans can be corrupt. Both _The Tempest_ and _Brave New World_ are about a clash between societies, neither of which is ultimately perfect or completely free. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/27 "2025-09-05T20:40:06Z")
I know I must have read several books as part of my high school coursework, but mostly I’ve forgotten them. The ones that stand out… _The Great Gatsby_, Bernard Malamud’s _The Natural_, _Native Son_ by Richard Wright. I don’t count book report reading where I got to choose the book, with one exception. As a freshman, I was given a list of _important books_ that I could choose from for a book report. I chose _Kon Tiki,_ the Thor Heyerdahl account of his crossing of the eastern Pacific on a raft. And while I chose it, when I got to the library with only a couple of days to go before the due date of my report, they didn’t have it. So I grabbed his earlier book, _Fatu Hiva_ about his time on the Marquesas island of the same name. I was just obsessed with that book. To the point that even now, 40 plus years later, I still want to sail there and set up camp near the central highlands and live close to the land. I’m holding a Powerball ticket for this next drawing. Maybe I can make this happen. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/28 "2025-09-05T20:45:28Z")
If not the Marquesas, you can fly from Santiago, Chile to Rapa Nui pretty easily. Tours with hotel plus a guide are quite good, and the giant heads, birdman carvings, and the calderas are great. You can see the moai Thor and his companions erected as described in _Aku-Aku,_ and many others are now standing again. I wanted to go there for over 50 years, and while COVID killed our first set of reservations, we made it there last year. Delightful! ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/29 "2025-09-05T20:49:34Z")
Love that! For me, part of what captured my imagination was the long sea voyage just to get there, so that’s integral to this fantasy. The part that I’m conveniently forgetting from their time living in the island jungle is their constant battle with parasites and giant, disgusting insects. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/30 "2025-09-05T21:41:15Z")
Three come to mind immediately: **Brave New World** : My introduction to a dystopian future world. It got me interested in such things, and I would go on to enjoy Orwell’s _1984_ on my own, which set me up well to study Evgeny Zamyatin’s _We_ when I got to university. And that one is even bleaker than _1984_. **Animal Farm** : I knew enough history to see it as an allegory, and I really enjoyed how Orwell developed the various personalities of the animals. It piqued my interest to the point where I would later, at university, take a course on the history and politics of the USSR. **Lost Horizon** : I knew the basic story from the 1973 movie (as bad as it was, it at least told the basic story), so I was looking forward to reading it when it was assigned. I was not disappointed; the book was much better than that movie. Years later, I would catch the 1937 film version, and it was just as good as the book in every way. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/31 "2025-09-05T21:48:54Z")
> [@themapleleaf](#): > > The title of the Aldous Huxley novel is taken from a line in Shakespeare’s play. > … > > Both _The Tempest_ and _Brave New World_ are about a clash between societies, neither of which is ultimately perfect or completely free. Ah, so the title is a callout to another literary work, like, say, Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ is a callout to ol’ Robbie Burns. I didn’t know that. I’m definitely going to do a reread of _Brave New World_ soon, and maybe _The Tempest_, too. And maybe Robbie Burn’s work, as well! My Scottish grandma loved Burns. The ‘We hae meat’ quote / poem served as saying grace at holiday meals. Thanks for lessening my ignorance! ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/32 "2025-09-06T02:06:03Z")
I’m glad to have seen this thread because I was about to have started it myself. My sixth grade teacher introduced us to the Hobbit. I was sure I wouldn’t like it but devoured it after starting and of course went on the The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Then there was To Kill a Mockingbird. I once did a thing where I tried to make a list of ten books I could not be without. And TKAM was on it. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/33 "2025-09-06T03:09:23Z")
I checked out _Don Quixote_ from my high school library and then went to my next class, Spanish. My Spanish teacher saw the library book on my desk and asked me how far I was into it. When I told him I had just checked it out and hadn’t started it yet, he held onto it, went back to his desk, pulled out his copy of the book, which a Spanish edition, and said, “I’ll return the library book for you. Read this one instead.” I loved that book because I got to talk to him for the rest of the year about it, about the story and the language. My Spanish wasn’t good enough then (and certainly not now) to read it quickly on my own, but his love for it and for Spanish were two things that got me through it. To date, I have not ever read it in English. I’m kind of afraid to do so. What a great teacher! And, of course, a great book. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/34 "2025-09-06T03:13:25Z")
A deeply funny book, too. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/35 "2025-09-06T03:36:30Z")
I loved _The Great Gatsby_, it’s the first book I recall reading where my feelings about the characters changed across the course of the book, all the way to the ending. It was also the first book where I realized we had an unreliable narrator on hand. And a play, not a book: Tom Stoppard’s “Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” It wasn’t required reading, but Hamlet was, and I liked that so much that my English teacher recommended the Stoppard play to me. So clever! ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/36 "2025-09-06T03:40:17Z")
> [@raspberry\_hunter](#): > > I also liked _Beowulf_ I also liked _Beowulf_ and _The Great Gatsby_. In particular, the particular translation of _Beowulf_ that we read preserved the rhyme scheme of the Old English original. That made it a lot more interesting, plus we read it out loud in class, so you could hear it as it was originally told. Another one I loved was _The Once and Future King_ by T.H. White. _1984_ is one we read at some point; I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, but I’m glad I read it. Most of the books we read didn’t grab me much, and several actually sucked out loud. Others that fit into this category were _The Odyssey_, _The Canterbury Tales_, and _The Brothers Karamazov_. Some of the ones I read on my own that I did enjoy, or am glad I read are: _All Quiet on the Western Front_, "To Kill a Mockingbird\*, "Fahrenheit 451\*, _The Martian Chronicles_, _I, Robot_, _Animal Farm_, _Red Badge of Courage_, _The Hobbit_, _The Lord of the Rings_, and _The Time Machine_. Ones I was coerced into reading and absolutely loathed: _Catcher in the Rye_, _Great Expectations_, _The Sun Also Rises_ (poor Jake gets fucked, except by Brett), _ast of Eden_, and _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_. Most of the rest were unmemorable, and probably unpleasant. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/37 "2025-09-06T18:03:30Z")
> [@teelabrown](#): > > We were assigned _The Good Earth_, which I loved and still do. Yea, I liked that one, too. We had to read [On the Beach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel)) by Nevil Shute. Really enjoyed that one. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2025, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/38 "2025-09-07T03:18:41Z")
My brother, 6 years older than me, had already introduced me to SF when he was in high school. Books he brought home from college included a boatload of Vonnegut books (which I devoured), and, still one of my all-time favorites, _Catch-22_, which I read as a high-school freshman. The one book that I remember that was on the suggested reading list was _Lord of the Flies_, which I liked, until the ending. ---
**Author:** ![TheTyrant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thetyrant/32/19111_2.png) [@TheTyrant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheTyrant)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2025, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/39 "2025-09-07T21:32:12Z")
> [@robby](#): > > We were required to pick a book off a list to read (with no description whatsoever and only the author and title to go by) and I picked that one because I had recently seen _Gray Lady Down_ in the movie theater and thought the book would be about a ship or submarine. I Haha, you saw _Gray Lady Down_ and decided to become a submarine officer, robby? Pretty grim! (It was HFRO for me, both the book and the movie.) ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2025, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772/40 "2025-09-08T02:12:34Z")
> [@TheTyrant](#): > > > [@robby](#): > > > > We were required to pick a book off a list to read (with no description whatsoever and only the author and title to go by) and I picked that one because I had recently seen _Gray Lady Down_ in the movie theater and thought the book would be about a ship or submarine. > > Haha, you saw _Gray Lady Down_ and decided to become a submarine officer, robby? Pretty grim! > > (It was HFRO for me, both the book and the movie.) Actually, I became a submarine officer in _ **spite** _ of seeing _Gray Lady Down_ when I was ten years old. 😉 That movie gave me lasting nightmares, especially the scene where a guy helped close a heavy watertight door that he was on the wrong side of and subsequently drowned. 😬 What made me want to join the Navy was a combination of _Top Gun_ (the movie) and the _The Hunt for Red October_ (the book). I subsequently found out I needed eyeglasses during my entrance physical, so being a Navy pilot was out. But serving on subs seemed like a nice consolation prize. (By the time the HFRO movie came out, I had already signed up, had spent a summer as a midshipman on an SSBN, and was less than a year from graduating and getting my commission.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-loved/1022772.md?page=1)