I’m talking about the ones that would have to be read nationally. Some such as Of Mice and Men, The Chocolate War, ect.
Lord Jim, Johnny Tremaine, that one I can’t remember anything about except the guy picking his nose with his thumb, Brave New World, 1984, The Making of a President, Treasure Island, Earth Abides… I did so much reading on my own in high school that the stuff I was required to read didn’t make much of an impact on me. I know they required a lot more than that, but this is all I can come up with.
Salammbo, Les Fleurs du Mal, Le Pere Goriot, Emil und die Detektiven, The Ancient Mariner, the standard gamut of Shakespeare plays, all sorts of stuff, but one really sticks in my mind because of the associated horror:
F***ing Emma by Jane Austen. My God, that was psychological torture. It’s the only book I’ve ever wilfully destroyed. With firearms.
Johnny Tremaine, A Raisin in the Sun, Native Sun, Canterbury Tales, To Kill a Mockingbird, and tons of Shakespeare. Well, if you took honors classes you had to read all the Shakespeare. Every other set of classes read the others posted above.
Ethan Frome
Fahrenheit 451 (or was that in the 8th grade?)
Rebecca
Far from the Madding Crowd
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The Color Purple
Catcher in the Rye
The Diary of Anne Frank (8th grade?)
Clan of the Cave Bear
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Great Expectations
Romeo and Juliet
Catcher in the Rye
The Handmaid’s Tale
Grendel
Canterbury Tales
Beowulf
On the Road
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
1984
Brave New World
The Confessions of St. Augustine
Heart of Darkness
All Quiet on the Western Front
Les Miserables
These are the ones that I remember having to read during HS. Some I liked, some I didn’t - and I know there are more that we read, but I don’t remember them.
If you mean novels, as opposed to textbooks and anthologies and the like, here are the ones I remember:
Freshman English: Ivanhoe, Oliver Twist, Alice in Wonderland
Sophomore English: The Catcher In the Rye, The Great Gatsby, Babbitt, Huckleberry Finn
Junior English: *Beowulf, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jane Eyre, Brave New World, *the first book of The Forsyte Saga, The Once and Future King
Senior English: The Scarlet Letter, East of Eden, Wuthering Heights, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Barchester Towers, Our Mutual Friend
If you want to include plays, I can throw in Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Macbeth, Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Our Town, The Glass Menagerie, Of Mice and Men, and several others I’m forgetting.
In U. S. History we had to read The Jungle. And I don’t remember the names of any of the books we had to read in German, except that one was by Durrenmatt.
Yes, I’m sorry everyone, I did mean novels. As well as plays and literature such as the ones you described.
All I can remember are from AP English in 12th grade:
Scarlet Letter, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, As I Lay Dying (we called it “As I Lay Breeding”), Streetcar Named Desire, Twelfth Night. I can’t recall the rest.
I can’t remember all of them, but I do remember:
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (I never finished it)
The Stranger (that I enjoyed)
Catcher in the Rye (read out loud in class, odd choice)
Macbeth
Frankenstein
The Scarlet Letter
Beowulf
Heart of Darkness
Hamlet
Macbeth
Othello
King Lear
Lord of the Flies
The Grapes of Wrath
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Rime of the Ancient Mariner–Not really a book, but hey.
Antigone
Oedipus Rex
Crime and Punishment
There were a lot of books I couldn’t count because we were given a choice between several options. For instance, I read 1984, Brave New World, Silas Marner(sp?), Metamorphosis, and All Quiet on the Western Front for class, but I could have read other books instead of those.
Just for the record, I’ve never even heard of The Chocolate War.
Also, no one’s mentioned Tale of Two Cities yet.
We read1984, Brave New World, The Scarlet Letter, The Pearl, Cannery Row and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. My theory has always been that no book will be assigned to be read in high school (in America) unless it’s depressing.
Great Expectations-Ugh
To Kill a Mockingbird-Yeah!
The Pearl-Ugh
Macbeth/Julius Caeser/Romeo and Juliet-Ugh* But I love Shakespeare now, it was just taught in such a damned woooden fashion*
Jane Eyre-Yeah!
The Glass Menagerie-Ugh
Johnny Tremaine-Yeah!
BTW: What is atticus? I know this is waaaaay off the subject but I’m still curious, don’t tell me yet, because I plan on reading many of the books mentioned already this summer that way I’m prematurely read. So sort of explain it to me.
I think all of the books that I was required to read have been mentioned. I had a lot more fun with the recommended reading lists that I was given in 10th and 12th grades, essentially very long lists of books that we could choose from. From those, I read:
Rhinocerous by Ionsco
The Metomorphosis by Kafka
The Once and Future King by TH White
Animal Farm by Orwell
1984 by Orwell
Death of a Salesman by… gagh! drawing a blank.
Some of the most awful and dull stuff I’ve ever read came out of high school, though. Tess of the D’Urbvervilles was dull for me, as was The Sun Also Rises (though that turned out to be useful for the English AP exam that year). Didn’t help that I had a 12th grade teacher who could suck the joy out of even a Shakesphere play.
When I went to college, I had such a bad taste in my mouth about English lit that I sought out other areas, taking classes in ancient Greek and early American lit. Much more interesting…
eep. i read so many of the “classics” on my own during school years, it’s hard to remember which ones were ‘required’. (yes, i was a bookworm. yes, i was a loner with a very small number of friends. yes, luckily, said friends also appreciated reading.)
The Telltale Heart
Murders of the Rue Morgue
The Purloined Letter
Cimarron
Animal Farm
Macbeth
The Mayor of Casterbridge (funnily enough, i’d just finished reading it on my own, so i didn’t have to buy a copy for class)
*King Lear
Bless the Beasts and Children
Brave New World
Alice In Wonderland * (and maybe Through the Looking Glass too, but that might have been just me again)
The Pushcart War
we also did English/lit classes based on movies, like “Dr. Strangelove” and “Failsafe” (take a guess what that course was analyzing).
Hmm. Let’s see… this is probably not complete, but it’s pretty decent.[ul]
[li]Freshman year: Romeo and Juliet, Great Expectations, Antigone, Julius Caesar. I think we read A Tale of Two Cities over the summer. (I definitely read it at some point, anyway.)[/li][li]Sophomore year: Long list here. Night, The Chosen, All My Sons, The Appretice [I doubt anyone else read the last two; I think they’re both by Bernard Malamud. Our teacher that year wanted to make it into a Jewish Literature course.] The Glass Menagerie, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Raisin in the Sun, The Pearl.[/li][li]Junior Year: Ethan Frome, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Washington Square Park, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, The Crucible, Death of a Salesman (it’s by Arthur Miller).[/li][li]Senior Year: Hamlet, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The Once and Future King.[/li][/ul]
I remember reading some of the other books listed here, like The Chocolate War and Animal Farm, in eighth grade.
My friends and I said the very same thing.
Ah, okay, and we read some short stories freshman year… I do remember The Tell-Tale Heart, and I guess there were others.
Freshman year all I can remember are The Odyssey, To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar, but I know we did more than that.
Sophomore year I didn’t take a traditional English class. I had one semester of debate, and one of composition and research.
Junior year Ethan Frome, The Scarlett Letter (and some Hawthorne short stories), The Narrative of the Life of Frederic Douglass, Walden, The Assistant, Cosmos, Civilisation, Heart of Darkness, an Emerson collection, MacBeth
Senior year 1984, Brave New World, Frankenstein, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Jane Eyre, Native Son, Song of Solomon, Inferno, several stories by Kate Chopin, including The Awakening and Desiree’s Baby, selections from Canterbury Tales, Hamlet
Except for sophomore year, all had the usual textbook, short story, and anthology readings. My junior and senior years I had books I was supposed to purchase and read over the summer and I had to hand in a “journal” detailing my thoughts. The summer books junior year were Walden, the Emerson, and the Douglass. Senior year they were 1984, Frankenstein, Song of Solomon, and Native Son.