books you were glad to get in school or would have liked to get

Cafe Society
1

I thought of this because of a thread in MPSIMS about what was the worst book you had to read for school. I am sure it has been done before, but what were the best books you got in school. Not the ones you were supposed to like, but the ones you were glad to get, or which ones have you read that you wish you were introduced to in school. Here some I like with possible grades next to them.
Maya Angelu I know Why the Caged Bird Sings(11th grade)

  • The Diary of Anne Frank* (9th grade)
  • The Autobiography of Malcom X* (12th grade)
  • Holes* Louis Sachar (6th grade)
2

I wish I’d been allowed to read any literature in school.

I went to a Christian school, where “secular” books were forbidden. I was forced to read horrible religious dreck and write reports on it.

3

Books I was glad to get:

To Kill a Mockingbird-even though I had read it before.

Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

Macbeth

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

What would I liked to have read? Hmmm, I wish we could have read more about the Arthurian legends. My all time favorite poem, Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot was in our lit textbooks in 12th grade, but we didn’t get to it.

4

Catch-22 - I’m not sure I would have read it, had it not been for class. I’d heard of it - but it hadn’t been on any “must read” lists (it ought to be). So I probably would have overlooked it. One of my favorite books.

Till we have faces
Again, probably wouldn’t have read it had it not been for class. Great book.

5

“A Confederacy of Dunces”.

6

Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird, mentioned by Guin.

Also:
Fahrenheit 451
Childhood’s End
Nicholas Nickelby
Hamlet

But I am such a book nerd that I liked most of the books we read in school.

7

I was glad to read The Giver in seventh grade. Had I not read it before then, I would have hated it, because I had The World’s Worst English Teacher[sup]TM[/sup]. I’m also glad we read 1984 in tenth grade.

8

Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, Tom Stoppard’s brilliant play. I must have read that 20 times at school, and it gave me a life-long love of his plays and theatre in general.

The Day of the Triffids, ditto for science fiction.

9

Another vote for To Kill a Mockingbird and 1984. I’m wondering what books my son will be given to read - he’ll have plenty of good ones at home in case his school doesn’t assign them.

A younger friend at work was assigned The Hobbit. I would have LOVED to have been able to take tests and hold class discussons on that book.

10

Cien años de soledad, La casa de los espíritus, Antígona Pérez, La cada de Bernarda Alba, Crónica de una muerte anunciada… I could go on… my Spanish classes assigned a lot more books, and I really enjoyed about half of them.

In English… well, I liked Of Mice and Men (compared to the other stuff assigned, at least), and Animal Farm.

I wish we could have read The Giver, Huckleberry Finn and The Hobbit in class, that would have been great! In Spanish, I wish we could have read Póstumo envirginiado (nineteenth century play about a dead man who reincarnates in the body of a woman and notes all the shitty things women have to go through in society) instead of some other drama.

11

I had to suffer “Romeo and Juliet”, but the following year we got to the good stuff.

Lord of the Flies
Frankenstein
The Crucible
Macbeth

And I loved all of them.

12

Le Petit Prince - Antoine de St. Exupéry, grade 9 French (Mother Tongue). My absolute favourite book, I´ve read it about 3 times a year since then!

Watership Down, Richard Adams, grade 5. Due for a reread!

13

I was one of the few who loved it this much, but I was thrilled to have read “The Last of the Mohicans.” Okay, granted, it was an elective college literature course in which is was assigned–maybe that isn’t quite what this thread is about. However, I know I wouldn’t have read it otherwise, and I ended up really liking it.

14

The Catcher in the Rye.

I put off reading this book until the day before it was due. Once I started, I couldn’t put it down.

15

My boss at work asked us to read Watership Down. She said it offered good thoughts on leadership, and I agreed with her and was glad to read the book.

At school:

1984

Most of the others have already been mentioned.

I have a son who is in 9th grade, and I was gratified to see that they are reading both Maus as well as The Color of Water in English class.

16

I always wished some teacher had assigned Catcher in the Rye so they could tell me what the heck I was supposed to get out of it!

17

Catcher in the Rye, Macbeth, Lord of the Flies, To Kill A Mockingbird, 1984, The Hobbit, Catch-22, Hamlet, Hucleberry Finn, Brave New World, The Once and Future King

I was very lucky in high school to have teachers that wanted to “feed the hungry mind”, a lot of these books were not allowed in my school district-they were loaned or given as a gift.

18

I remember reading a bunch of Vonnegut in high school, though I don’t think it was for a class:

Slaughterhouse Five–bizarre and unfathomable, until I read:

Cat’s Cradle–Ice Nine was stuck in my mind, so I read:

The Sirens of Titan–which sent me on a blind alley search for:

2BR02B–Kilgore Trout’s lost masterpiece, but there was some book, the title of which now escapes me that was purported to be by Vonnegut pretending to be Phillip Jose Farmer pretending to be Kilgore Trout…so then I read

Welcome to the Monkey House, Player Piano, and Mother Night

In class we were reading Alvin Tofler’s Future Shock, which was a snooze. Whatever happened to him anyway–here we are in the future…

19

I was glad to read “Cider with Rosie” at school, since no way would I expect that book to be of any interest to me, but it was!

I was very lucky to read “War fo The Worlds” at school, made for some of the best English classes I can remember.

20

The Godfather was published while I was in eigthth grade. It was one of the first mass-market books to include explicit sexual descriptions… it was passed around from student to student: “Check out page 26!”

I had not heard of this book, so I wasn’t prepared when a friend handed it to me, already open to the infamous page 26. The “friend” then stood there, loudly commenting on the degree of my blushing…