# What books you were "forced" to read for school did you actually enjoy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 29, 2019, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701 "2019-03-29T01:51:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/61 "2019-03-31T20:11:03Z")
> [@Gerald\_II](#): > > **Brave New World** > Kind of racy at the time for a middle school book. But I loved it. Oooh, good one. And yeah, having read it in my teens (though not by assignment) I admit I didn’t fully grasp the pertinence of describing a woman as “pneumatic” until certain mechanical practicalities came to light, so to speak. Yes, yes, I did say “came”, Beavis. Settle down. ---
**Author:** ![LennieB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8dc957/32.png) [@LennieB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LennieB)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/62 "2019-03-31T20:19:06Z")
Once upon a career, of the works mentioned in this thread up to now, I taught “Beowulf,” “The Canterbury Tales” (“Prologue”; “Pardoner’s Tale”), “Macbeth,” “Julius Caesar,” “Of Mice and Men,” “Lord of the Flies” (a sophisticated novel often taught simply as an “adventure” story), “Brave New World,” “Harrison Bergeron,” “To Build a Fire,” “Leiningen Vs. the Ants,” and “Ethan Frome.” I loved most of these. For me, the one college novel I was “forced” to read (I did sign up voluntarily for the course, so…) that, having a great professor of Comparative Literature, I ended up admiring the heck out of, was “Madame Bovary.” For high school books, it was only when I taught it that I retroactively appreciated once being assigned “The Return of the Native.” ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/63 "2019-03-31T22:00:05Z")
Most works I was introduced to via school assignments were eye-opening or genre-opening in a way I was glad to have read, even if I didn’t particularly continue to read more of “that stuff” on my own. It’d be easier to say what I have been required to read as part of my education that in retrospect, I got nothing out of and could have cared less if I’d never read it. Thoreau’s “Walden” is the only assigned reading I never finished. It was just so dull, even though I’d been interested in reading it beforehand by reputation. I had liked reading _On Civil Disobedience_, after all, and now as an adult, I regularly contribute to the Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy types of causes. But when he got to the part about breaking down his itemized monthly expenses, I gave up. “The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter” or “The Bluest Eye”. Why did I read that, exactly? “The Catcher in the Rye”. I get that it is sort of the voice of a generation, but it sure wasn’t my generation. I found nothing identifiable or particularly likable about Holden Caulfield. In retrospect it was a lot like when I eventually watched the movie “The Graduate”; I had no sense of what I was supposed to be thinking was weird, normal, or right/wrong from the storyteller’s POV, while neither did what the protagonists say or do make any natural sense to me. And that’s about it, really. I enjoyed Dickens as a lens into Victorian England (which I already had from reading all the Sherlock Holmes material), same for Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca, etc., and of course Shakespeare is amazing… Too much to list. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/64 "2019-03-31T22:11:08Z")
Sorry, since the OP did ask for examples of required reading that I enjoyed, the standout ones would be: All the Shakespeare we read… (Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Othello) Flowers for Algernon The Lord of the Flies Animal Farm 1984 Brave New World All Quiet on the Western Front Fahrenheit 451 / The Martian Chronicles The Canterbury Tales Black Boy / The Invisible Man Pride and Prejudice Rebecca Inherit the Wind The Great Gatsby A Tale of Two Cities Great Expectations (I would later read “David Copperfield” on my own and write a paper on “Bleak House” as an elective) And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie) (I would go on to read at least a dozen more of her novels) ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/65 "2019-03-31T22:14:42Z")
> [@racepug](#): > > “Of Mice and Men” (to this day one of my all-time favorites) and “The Catcher in the Rye”. Hmm. Maybe I should re-read “Of Mice and Men”. I remember reading it and writing about it but it didn’t leave a huge impression on me, other than the sympathic and tragic images of Lenny. We didn’t read “The Grapes of Wrath” for whatever reason, I should probably pick that up eventually. As I mentioned earlier, “Catcher in the Rye” just left me thinking, “Why?” And not in a philosophical way. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/66 "2019-03-31T22:17:57Z")
Oh yes. “Huckleberry Finn” was unexpectedly deep for me, as I’d read “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” on my own as a boy (before 7th grade), and there are some Very Serious Themes in Huck Finn. (’ I’d already read quite a bit of Mark Twain on my own, Tom Sawyer and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” and other short stories like the one about the million pound note or “The Prince and the Pauper”, but somehow not Huck Finn. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/67 "2019-03-31T22:29:32Z")
Having nominated _Ivanhoe_ in the other thread, I have to admit I think I enjoyed most of everything else I was assigned in secondary school. Well, not _A Midsummer’s Night Dream_, but I’m grateful we went through _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_ and _Julius Caesar_. Just the other day someone mentioned the film of _Spring and Port Wine_. Hadn’t thought of it in decades, but we’d read the play at school, so it’s buried somewhere deep in there. But we were so omnivarious a reader we were reading whatever books were in the house. So the wee brother was assigned _The Old Man and the Sea_ for class and so that was the first time I read that. I’d got into Graham Greene via being assigned _The Power and the Glory_, but another brother then doing a dissertation on him then meant that virtually everything Greene had written passed through the house and I duly read them. Not school reading in my case, but still school reading of a sort. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/68 "2019-03-31T22:42:40Z")
In my early teens, I spent a summer term at a Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. I actually was taking a science course, but we were required to take an English course. I remember liking just about everything I read for that. I can only remember three titles: _The Last Gentleman_ by Walker Percy, _The Man Who Knew Kennedy_ by Vance Bourjaily, and _The Crying of Lot 49_ by Thomas Pynchon. Ralph Ellison’s _Invisible Man_ (or an excerpt from it) might have been in the mix. I’ll have to see if I still have the information on the course. BTW, the teacher, Paul Monette, later established himself as a poet and author, winning a National Book Award. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/69 "2019-03-31T22:52:31Z")
Stig Of The Dump. The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner. Not much else, to be honest. It was a long boring stretch of “important” novels that had nothing in them to keep my attention. My English teacher seemed more interested in technique than content. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/70 "2019-03-31T23:49:48Z")
_Cannery Row_ is the one that comes immediately to mind. It’s still one of my favorites. Also, _The Glass Menagerie_ by Tennessee Williams. Stuff I read on my own while in school that has been mentioned here:\* 1984, Brave New World, Flowers for Algernon, The Invisible Man, The Martian Chronicles\*. Some of these were assigned reading after I’d already read them on my own. I was such a bookworm as a kid. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/71 "2019-04-01T01:37:17Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Hmm. The film was nothing like the book… :dubious: 😕 > > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1TlAd6M-xU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1TlAd6M-xU) Yeah, I vaguely remember the movie. If I’m remembering correctly, in the movie they had the girl he met and eventually married making the journey with him. There was a sequel to the book where they did some sailing together. It was so long ago though that details are fuzzy or nonexistent at this point. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/72 "2019-04-01T02:07:04Z")
> [@Santelia](#): > > To Kill a Mockingbird - Pleasantly surprised, was fully expecting to loathe this > Gulliver’s Travels I agree with both of these! TKAM because it was such a fine book. GT because it was so much more frank than the bowdlerized version I had seen in a movie. I mean, Gulliver put out the palace fire in Lilliput by peeing on it! And in Brobdignag(SP?) the lady giants thought he was so cute, so he got to sit naked astride one of their nipples. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/73 "2019-04-01T02:39:27Z")
> [@guestchaz](#): > > Yeah, I vaguely remember the movie. If I’m remembering correctly, in the movie they had the girl he met and eventually married making the journey with him. > > There was a sequel to the book where they did some sailing together. It was so long ago though that details are fuzzy or nonexistent at this point. Psssst! I was joking. Have you checked the link? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/74 "2019-04-01T08:11:29Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Psssst! I was joking. Have you checked the link? 😉 I did now:smack: ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/75 "2019-04-01T10:13:26Z")
You know, I’m trying to think, but aside from ‘Lord of the Flies’ and approximately half of ‘Julius Caesar’ (we were reading it out loud in class, then the teacher suddenly declared that this was as far as we were going, and collected in the books without allowing us to finish it :mad:), I don’t remember us actually having assigned reading. We looked at some poetry as well, but it was all very short. The GCSE exam, which ended the compulsory English course, and after which I dropped the subject, required the reading of one book off a list of about 5, with questions being given for each, and you just had answer the question set for your book. My school picked ‘Lord of the Flies’ for that, every year. There was also a section on poetry, for which the poems were supplied in advance in a set booklet, which we were allowed to take notes on and bring in to the exam. We did write reports on other books, but so far as I remember, they were all ‘pick a book from the library’, not assigned. I have a vague memory of reading out other stuff in class as well, passing the book around, but I found doing that so tedious that it washed over me Peanuts style. My school really focused on teaching for the exam, there was very little attempt to introduce us to things for their own sake. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/76 "2019-04-01T12:18:24Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > Oh yes. “Huckleberry Finn” was unexpectedly deep for me, as I’d read “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” on my own as a boy (before 7th grade), and there are some Very Serious Themes in Huck Finn. Resemblance here, to my own experience of these two (as I’ve mentioned in the “Worst classic” thread) – though I read them independently, not as a school requirement. Was surprised right down the line, by _Huckleberry Finn_ – by the Very Serious Themes, and also by my finding much of the book – in parallel with those – extremely funny. A lot funnier for me, than the much-vaunted _Tom Sawyer_ – which had mostly struck me as just feeble. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/77 "2019-04-01T12:25:08Z")
> [@guestchaz](#): > > In the 8th grade, we were given edited copies of ‘Flowers In The Attic’ for a class reading assignment. (I’m sure you can imagine my surprise a couple of years later when I read the full story) Holy crap! I can’t think of any redeeming social value in that book at all (though I read my copy to shreds). Even edited…you take out the incest and filicide, you got nothing left. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/78 "2019-04-01T13:43:55Z")
A few off the top of my head: Like other posted I read Brave New World and Harrison Bergeron in High School English. I also really enjoyed the story of Macbeth. ---
**Author:** ![Snake\_Plissken\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Snake\_Plissken\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snake_Plissken_1)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/79 "2019-04-01T18:39:52Z")
…how much I liked Faulkner’s ‘Light in August’ my senior year of high school. It made me pick up ‘The Sound and the Fury’ in college…which I immediately put back down. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701/80 "2019-04-01T19:14:08Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > Holy crap! I can’t think of any redeeming social value in that book at all (though I read my copy to shreds). Even edited…you take out the incest and filicide, you got nothing left. yeah, I wish I could remember more, but man that was a long time ago. I dunno, maybe I just remember it as a “book” but it was more of a collection of excerpts. I couldn’t even tell you now, what the point of reading it was. At least for the book “Dove”, the teacher picked it because it was new(er) than all those old, staid, unrelatable classics. He wanted something we could at least have a possiblity of connecting to somehow. (and for me it worked, heck I was fourteen reading about a sixteen year old sailing around the world. it still seems cool as hell to me even now) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-you-were-forced-to-read-for-school-did-you-actually-enjoy/831701.md?page=5)