High school:
Lord of the Flies was pretty good
Really enjoyed Of Mice and Men. I may have even cried a bit at the end
College
Took intro to Russian Literature and really liked Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina. I think I read the last half of AK in one sitting. It helped that the prof (Irwin Weil) was very good.
A bit worrisome because the only book I can remember being assigned to read in school was Catcher in the Rye. I know there were others but I really can’t recall any other ones besides that. My daughters asked me awhile back about To Kill a Mockingbird but I know for sure we were never assigned it which was pretty surprising to them. I’m usually pretty good at remembering stuff like this but it has been awhile. Early sign of memory loss?
Of Mice and Men is the one book in high school that I was assigned and enjoyed reading and I’m not sure why it’s that one. I read a lot in high school and I should have enjoyed other assignments more but I just couldn’t. I’m not even a particularly big fan of Steinbeck but I really do like this one and have read it 4 or 5 times since school. It probably helps that I read Lenny’s lines like the Warner Brothers cartoon character.
I hated the latter and found the former to be somewhat drawn out. The film version with Innokenty Smoktunovsky as Porfiry Petrovich was much better.
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. Made me a lifelong Vonnegut fan.
Also Milkbottle H by Gil Orlovitz. As the reviews state, he “out-Joyces Joyce”.
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. I wrote a report on it attempting to use Chaucer’s verse structure and I found out ten years later my English teacher still had it in his desk.
“I Am The Cheese” and “The Chocolate War” are also up there.
High school
Heart of Darkness
College
Richard II
Troilus and Cressida
Tristram Shandy
Huckleberry Finn*
*N.b., I had never read this book until my senior year of college, and the only reason I read it then was because I was about to teach it as a student teacher. I hadn’t finished reading it when we started discussing it in class, and I only stayed about a day ahead of the class as we progressed.
In my Junior year of high school we read William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, which got a few mentions over on the “worst book” thread.
But I quite enjoyed it. Part of the reason was the unconventional way the story is told; each chapter is in the first-person of a different character, and it’s written in present tense. And part of it was that I had both a good teacher and a good group of students in the class. We did a lot of group discussions, diving deep on the characters and themes. That book is actually a good memory from my high school days.
The Day of the Jackal was a fun read, even though I generally don’t like spy/thriller novels.
I was surprised to find myself enjoying The Mayor of Casterbridge. It turned out to have way more twists and turns than I thought an old book would have.
I place “The Day of the Jackal” in my Top 3 movies, but assigning the novel to students? Sure, suspense, but so?
Certain genres are simply for escapist entertainment!
I find it hard to believe it was turned down by at least one publisher on the grounds “We already know that he fails.”
The whole point of the book was to describe in detail *how *he planned and prepared for the hit.
A Tale of Two Cities and especially, Captains Courageous.
Alas, Babylon for me. I was immediately engaged.
If we can include plays, **Death of a Salesman **and Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
mmm
I - most of my class, too - really liked ‘Julius Caesar’ (Shakespeare), ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, ‘Lord of the Flies’ - the usual suspects. (I did a LOT more reading on my own time.) . We had a textbook with selected chapters from books, many of which piqued my interest, and I sought the full books out on my own. ‘Starman’s Son’ by Andre Norton, science fiction/fantasy -loved it! (A few of us girls in middle school-freshman year were obsessed with sci-fi, wrote our own short stories - if only we had had access to what there is today!) . My cousin was a troublemaker and hated ‘The Odyssey’ - which I LOVED. They let him read something else, but why would anyone hate ‘The Odyssey’ - which had the Cyclops, Circe, and the homecoming-in-disguise.
The Good Earth. It’s been so long that I can’t even remember what my reasons were, but I ended up absolutely falling in love with that book.
I most enjoyed Macbeth in high school, and I think that was likely true for most of the class. The teacher really emphasised that Shakespeare is supposed to be performed, so it wasn’t just dry reading. She had different recordings of performances on vinyl, had the class act out various bits etc. At the end of the module she showed us Roman Polanski’s version - that was a bit of an eye-opener for us 14-year-olds, heh.
Antigone by Sophocles
Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen.
Books I remember enjoying from school:
The Tell-Tale Heart (short story, but led me to all kinds of great Edgar Allen Poe)
Lord of the Flies
To Kill A Mockingbird
Diary of Anne Frank
Huckleberry Finn
Animal Farm
MacBeth
BeoWulf
Canterbury Tales
The Odyssey
The Stranger
The Glass Menagerie
Jude the Obscure
Catcher in the Rye was assigned in 9th grade, I think. It was the first book I remember actually enjoying. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I credit it with “sparking” my lifetime love of reading for recreation. Before that, it was always against my will. Thanks, J.D. Salinger!
I’ve been interested to see a couple of mentions of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. Have never read it, nor anything else by this author – literally the only thing that I know re TGE (I think) is that it’s about China.
I recall seeing somewhere in the past few years – possibly on the Dope – an opinion stated by someone: to the effect that they were rather amazed that some two-thirds of a century ago, several authors whom they named – including Pearl S. Buck – were held in high regard; with at least the implication that these authors were of extremely low quality, and had subsequently and deservedly been consigned to the dustbin of history. One certainly doesn’t hear a lot about Ms. Buck nowadays. Possibly the opinion-giver above, considered his selection of stuff which was worthy only of contempt, to be hopelessly “square”; and reckoned admirable, only material which was hipster-smart and/or complicated and abstruse.
At all events, am thinking of giving The Good Earth a try.
Two plays that absolutely knocked me out:
The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams)
All my Sons (Arthur Miller)