# Overachieving book readings **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 18, 2007, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472 "2007-03-18T18:48:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/1 "2007-03-18T18:48:23Z")
After reading [this post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8368694&postcount=83) where **lawoot** admits to reading _Atlas Shrugged_ as recreational reading in high school, I got to thinking about the idea of books that you read that might have been a bigger bite than required. When I was a freshman in high school, I read a book for a book report. Most of the kids in my class read things like “Of Mice and Men” or similarly short novels. I read a book which I believe was titled _Adolf_, which was a 1200+ page biography of Hitler (incidentally, anyone know what book this is? It isn’t immediately obvious on Amazon). So what books did you read which were ambitious for the situation? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/2 "2007-03-18T18:52:22Z")
I did a project on Plato’s _Republic_ in eighth grade. Didn’t read much of it, but I think I got a decent grade. ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/3 "2007-03-18T19:05:02Z")
When I was in fourth grade, I saw the movie version of _War and Peace_ with Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Mel Ferrer. I just loved it. So I decided to read the book. Oof. Too many words. ---
**Author:** ![Orual](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/779978/32.png) [@Orual](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orual)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/4 "2007-03-18T19:17:40Z")
I read _Gulliver’s Travels_ when I was 12, for some unholy reason. I couldn’t be bothered with Swift again until I was forced to read _A Modest Proposal_ for class in high school. Still think the guy should’ve stuck to essays. I read _Les Miserables_ when I was 14. An unabridged version, including all the communist rants and random histories of random sects of nuns and the Paris sewers. It’s still one of my favorites. I actually dug into some Ayn Rand in high school too, though in my case it was _The Fountainhead_. I liked it alright at the time, though I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t now. I read and re-read both _The Wizard of Oz_ and _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ so many times when I was 7 that I effectively had both books memorized. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/5 "2007-03-18T19:28:37Z")
Over one weekend in college, I read 4 books for a Sci-Fi Lit class. 2 books a day for 2 days (one day was Frankenstein and Dracula). My butt ached. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/6 "2007-03-18T19:45:39Z")
[QUOTE=Orual] I actually dug into some Ayn Rand in high school too, though in my case it was _The Fountainhead_. I liked it alright at the time, though I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t now. [/QUOTE] Me too, all of Rand. I might like **We, the Living** now, but I’m not sure. I was curious about the beatnik culture when I was a teen. I used it for a party theme once – candles stuck in soda bottles, issues of The Village Voice, Kerouac paperbacks, everybody had to wear black and smoke unfiltered cigarettes. As a 14-year-old girl in rural Iowa, I had no clue. Still don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/7 "2007-03-18T19:48:02Z")
[QUOTE=OpalCat] I read a book which I believe was titled _Adolf_, which was a 1200+ page biography of Hitler (incidentally, anyone know what book this is? It isn’t immediately obvious on Amazon). [/QUOTE] [Rise and Fall of the Third Reich](http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich/dp/1567311636/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-2793086-6015002?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174247160&sr=1-1), by William L. Shirer, perhaps? It’s considered the gold standard of Hitler biographies, and it has over 1200 pages. ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/8 "2007-03-18T19:57:33Z")
We were assigned War and Peace in one of our classes. The teacher realized that we couldn’t do the entire book in the 2 weeks alloted for the “Russian Literature” part of the course, so she gave us the abridged version. Of course, I wouldn’t stand for reading the abridged version of anything, so I read the whole thing. However many pages we’d be assigned, it was 2-4x as many for me. Craziness! Still, I came out of it loving Tolstoy, so I guess it wasn’t too bad. ---
**Author:** ![descamisado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@descamisado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/descamisado)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/9 "2007-03-18T21:36:58Z")
I read **Of Human Bondage** by Somerset Maugham when I was ten. In my early teens, I read the articles and interviews in Playboy. I swear. ---
**Author:** ![hawksgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ed655f/32.png) [@hawksgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawksgirl)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/10 "2007-03-18T21:41:26Z")
I read _War and Peace_ (unabridged) in high school as well. Someone in my English class thought I was showing off and decided that he would read it too. He gave up about a week later. More recently I read the unabridged version of _Don Quixote_. That one took a while, and is thus far the only book too big to fit nicely into my jacket pocket. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2007, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/11 "2007-03-18T23:02:24Z")
For a 4th grade book report, I read _The Once and Future King_. That was probably a bit more than was necessary, and more than I could handle at the time. In high school, just out of curiosity, I started reading Marx. But while most people are content with reading the _Manifesto_, I went all out and read _Das Kapital_. That was quite a slog, but I was too stubborn to put it down. Read the whole damn thing, and now I keep the book around just because of the effort I put into completing it. ---
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/12 "2007-03-19T00:20:26Z")
When I was eight - in third grade - I read Robin Cook’s _[Mutation](http://www.amazon.com/Mutation-Robin-Cook/dp/2266071319/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-0700676-1042247?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174263185&sr=8-1)_, for some read-and-get-pizza-hut-coupons activity in school. To this day it’s the only novel I think I’ve ever read and actually _retained_ anything. (The teacher didn’t believe me, for what it’s worth, but I received credit for it.) When I was eleven my older brother bet me I couldn’t read _The Lord of the Rings_ over a weekend. Alas, I got part of the way through _Return of the King_. Such a damned loser. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Rieux](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/13 "2007-03-19T00:40:40Z")
John Toland’s _Adolf Hitler_? On an impulse, I read \*The Grapes of Wrath \* in six hours. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/14 "2007-03-19T01:14:47Z")
Timely, our bookclub just started a series “books we read too young” The first one is “Catcher in the Rye” which someone read in seventh grade or something. My own take on that one is that seventh grade is too young and that a bunch of women around 40 will find themselves too old. My worse one is Anna Karenina in ninth grade - you know, there is so much more depth to that novel when you are an adult. Took me years to discover that, while I got the plot, and may have even picked up some of the subtext, I didn’t get the novel at that age. I tried Tess around that age as well. I read Atlas Shrugged in High School. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/15 "2007-03-19T01:18:06Z")
Yes, Dr. Rieux, I think that is it! This cover looks familiar: [Amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/Adolf-Hitler-John-Toland/dp/0345258991/ref=ed_oe_p/002-3006149-2124861) ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/16 "2007-03-19T01:36:23Z")
[QUOTE=Dangerosa] Timely, our bookclub just started a series “books we read too young” The first one is “Catcher in the Rye” which someone read in seventh grade or something. My own take on that one is that seventh grade is too young and that a bunch of women around 40 will find themselves too old. [/QUOTE] Yeah, I read that when I was twenty, and just thought that Holden was an obnoxious whiny git that needed to be slapped a few times. However, I probably would have identified with him if I was just a few years younger… say, around sixteen or so. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/17 "2007-03-19T01:41:00Z")
I can’t think of any off the top of my head, except that when I was 8, I spent the whole summer trying to read Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood stories. I don’t think I understood much of it at all, but I finished it! I would have been much better off with Roger Lancelyn Green’s version… ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/18 "2007-03-19T01:44:18Z")
I read _Nineteen Eighty-Four_, _Brave New World_, and _The Female Eunuch_ in grade seven and eight, because someone put them on our reading shelf. In retrospect it was probably a bad thing. _1984_ scared me witless, and the other ones were puzzling. I read _Les Mis_ in grade nine. Unabridged. Also too much, but I felt damn smug. ---
**Author:** ![DataZak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ea666f/32.png) [@DataZak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataZak)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/19 "2007-03-19T02:40:25Z")
I read William Shirer’s excellent door stopper of a book, _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_ when I was 14 just for the fun of it. ---
**Author:** ![2pelo\_honey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/ecb155/32.png) [@2pelo\_honey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2pelo_honey)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472/20 "2007-03-19T03:22:13Z")
4th grade - Arthur Hailey’s “Airport” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overachieving-book-readings/396472.md?page=2)