Poll: What books were you required to read during High-school?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Hmm…high school reading:

To Kill a Mockingbird
Romeo and Juliet
Animal Farm
The Odyssey
Lord of the Flies
Oedipus Rex
Julius Caesar
Les Miserables
Invisible Man
Black Boy
Of Mice and Men
Short story ; “THe Most Dangerous Game”
Slaughter-house Five
THe Crucible
THe Scarlet Letter
Cat’s Cradle
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Gatsby
Catcher in the Rye
1984
Hamlet
Jane Eyre
Beowulf

And a myriad of short stories and poetry (Langston Hughes grins happily) I never really felt I read a whole lot in HS but apparently glances at list I did. Granted I read much more in college, being a lit major will do that for you! hee hee

42

A whole lot of the same things y’all mention, but notably (and I see one person mentioned its English title) Albert Camus’ L’Etranger, in french, in 11th grade, again in 12th grade and, finally, once again in college. Perhaps I’m a half-assed existentialist?

At least when I speak french?

43

Some of the books people have mentioned I read for school in seventh and eigth grade(Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Lord of the Flies, and Animal Farm). Actually I read Johny Tremaine in fourth grade. It was sitting on the bookshelf in our classroom, and I had nothing else to do so… But here’s what I did read during high school:
I’m sure this is incomplete, and I’m probably including stuff I read on my own but here goes:
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
Hamlet
The Tempest
the Merchant of Venice
maybe Julius Casear can’t remember
the Aeneid(in English and parts in Latin)
The Odyssey
The Illiad
Great Expectations
Most of Moby Dick
Scarlet Letter
Death of a Salesman (I think)
The Crucible
Beowulf
Wuthering Heights
A Tale of Two Cities (Summer Reading)
Frankenstein (Summer Reading)
The Metamorphosis by Kafka
Metamorphoses by Ovid (English and most of it in Latin)
Crime and Punishment
Brothers Karmazov
I may have read Pride and Prejudice for school, I definitely have read it.
-Lil

44

Man, you guys are lucky. You get to read *Catcher in the Rye{/i]. I had to find that one on my own. Seeing as though I’m only through my spohomore year, I’ll post to present.

Freshman:
To Kill a Mockingbird (I love that story)
Hound of the Baskervilles
Red Sky at Morning
Romeo and Juliet
Animal Farm (abridged)

Sophomore:
Antigone
Julius Caesar
Pastwatch
A Tale of Two Cities (No one in the class read it. No one. I hate Dickens.)
Lord of the Flies
Things Fall Apart

45

I’m surprised I left this off my list, because I really liked it.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

46

This was 35 years ago, so I don’t remember everything, but:

10th grade: Antigone, the Stranger, The Ring of the Niebelungen (Stewart Robb translation of all four operas,) Coriolanus, a book on Freudian psychology, (and the Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Freud for a report) and some short stories. My 10th grade English teacher was strange but cool - our first poem was The Dirty Word by Karl Shapiro. He also introduced us to Flanders and Swann.

Others: Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe
The Brothers Karamazov

I had Creative Writing in 11th grade, so that eliminated some of the books.

47

This is most certainly incomplete and in no order whatsoever, but what the hey.

Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
Othello
Death in Venice
The Crying of Lot 49
Another Country
Winesburg, Ohio
Animal Farm
Cathcer in the Rye
The Odyssey
To Kill a Mockingbird
Dracula
Tender is the Night
The Great Gatsby
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Of Mice and Men
A Separate Peace
Oedipus Rex
Oedipus at Colonus
Antigone
Cantebury Tales
Emma
Red Badge of Courage
All Quiet on the Western Front

and more that I cannot remember…

48

Okay so I forgot some…
1984
Brave New World
Red Badge of Courage
All Quiet on the Western Front(for History)
Cantebury Tales Plus memorize the first 18 lines in middle English . I can still do the first few lines too. God that was useless.
Othello
Heart of Darkness
Return of the Native

49

The only ones I can remember from senior high school:

A Clockwork Orange
In Cold Blood
Crime and Punishment
The Diary of Anais Nin

And these from junior high school:

The Light in the Forest
The Old Man and the Sea
Great Expectations
Tom Sawyer

50

Ninth grade: Romeo & Juliet (the only one I can remember)
Tenth: The Odyssey, A Tale of Two Cities, Julius Caesar, Silas Marner
Eleventh: Huh. Maybe the Odyssey was eleventh grade instead? The Tempest, too.
Twelfth (AP): Beloved (Toni Morrison), So Long A Letter (Buchi Emecheta) and another one by an African woman, lots of poetry & short stories (Katherine Anne Porter), a Kabuki play, and Hamlet.

I think we also read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe as well. Junior high included The Wizard of Earthsea, A Light in the Forest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, some Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut.

Good Lord, Fairy Dust, where did you go to school? Those are quite some titles for high school!

51

The ones I remember:

Of Mice & Men
Huckleberry Finn
MacBeth
Canterbury Tales
Lord of the Flies
The Glass Menagerie
Catcher in the Rye
The three Musketeers

Probably more but those are the ones I remember…

52

Shoulda read the other posts to jog my memory first: I also had to read 1984, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Jungle (those 2 for history class), Beowulf, parts of the Canterbury Tales, the Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and for French class, The Little Prince and The Count of Monte Cristo.
Eeww, Johnny Tremaine. I hated that book, and am interested to see it popping up on high school reading lists—we read it in 4th grade.

53

Let me see now…

[ul]
[li]Freshman English: To Kill a Mockingbird and * Lord of the Flies* (The other advanced class read Romeo and Juliet as well, but our teacher sucked. Also read Animal Farm, but we got to choose between several books for that assignment)[/li]
[li]Sophomore English: The Scarlet Letter, The Old Man and the Sea, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Great Gatsby. [/ul] [/li]
I think that’s all of them…The rest of the stuff was short stories and poems.

Going into Junior year next year, which I hear is a lot of Shakespeare and such with a few novels like Les Mis thrown in.

54

When I graduated from 8th grade and was accepted into a private Catholic high school summer book reports were due the first day of class. Homework over summer vacation!! Five books on a reading list had to be completed, with tests on the material. The five were:

The Red Badge of Courage
Lilies of the Field
Shane
True Grit
The Old Man & the Sea

55

Seventh Level.
Thats the only one I remember.
Shows how much I was paying attention back then.
I read Much More now.

56

A Tale Of Two Cities
Animal Farm
Of Mice And Men
Moby Dick
Julius Caesar
Romeo and Juliet

I later learned that Charles Dickens tended to be wordy because he was paid by the word.

Wonder what Melville’s excuse was…

57

Hmmmm…let’s see if I can reach into my brain for some of this stuff…

Freshman year: [The Chocolate War, Morgan’s Passing, Our Town, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, Let The Circle Be Unbroken, Object Lessons, The House on Mango Street, and a lot of short stories. I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting stuff.
Sophomore year: Beowulf, excerpts from The Canterbury Tales (something of a life-altering experience!), Romeo and Juliet (my first Shakespeare – this was another!), Much Ado About Nothing, A Christmas Carol, Wuthering Heights (bleargh), Jane Eyre, Dubliners (some of it), The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The first semester was far more fun than the second.

At my high school upperclassmen could pick their English classes, so here’s what I did…

Junior year:
Myth, Tale, and Legend: Watership Down, Frankenstein, and a whole lot of folk tales and fairy tales. Obviously. :wink:
Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1 Henry IV (another of my formative Shakespeare moments), King Lear, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing
Senior year:
Major American Authors: The Scarlet Letter, Ethan Frome (spew!), Daisy Miller, The Great Gatsby, numerous short works and poems
Writing About Literature: Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, Master Harold…and the boys, various poems, various short stories (mostly by Flannery O’Connor), The Wedding

This is probably incomplete – high school was a while back – but close enough. The best class was the Shakespeare one, by far. :wink:

58

Shakespeare included:

  • Romeo & Juliet
  • Othello
  • Hamlet
  • Macbeth
  • some other one

Others:

  • Duddy Kravitz
  • Lord of the Flies
  • To Kill a Mockingbird
  • A Separate Peace
  • Death of a Salesman
  • The Pearl

Those are all I can remember right now.

59

Oh wait, in french we read “Le Petit Prince” too. “The Little Prince”, haha oh god that was a ridiculous read.

60

Let me think…

Freshman year

Romeo and Juliet (Had already read it in 8th grade, hated having to do it again. Especially hated watching the new movie.)
Of Mice and Men (This was cool, though)
Farenheit 451
The House on Mango Street (Actually, didn’t read this, the teacher read it out loud to us. Bah.)

Sophmore year

Prometheus Bound
Antigone
Hippolotus
Medea
Amphitrio
Everyman
The Second Shepard’s play
Noah’s Ark
Excerpts from Malory
Exceprts from Sword in the Stone
Exceprt from Idylls of the King
Beaumains
Four Arthurian Romances by Creatin de Trois (Technically not required, we just had to pick an Arthurian book)
Othello (I think my teacher was TRYING to get us to hate Shakespeare with how she did this one.)
Northanger Abby
Sense and Sensiblity (Only watched it, but it did show up on the final, so…)
Hedda Gabbler
Ghosts
Romance Under the Elms
I think some other stuff, but I purged a lot of it from my memory.
Wow, I sure read a lot of plays in sophmore English. I think next year we have more Jane Austin, and I know we do King Lear Senior year, but that’s all I know of that.