# What non-canon novels were you assigned to read in High School English? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [September 4, 2025, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762 "2025-09-04T21:49:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/21 "2025-09-05T18:22:38Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > but we read _Crime and Punishment_, which I actually liked even though it was very long. I find it riveting…up until I have to quit reading it because I’m too depressed to go on. I think I’ve made three attempts so far. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/22 "2025-09-05T18:59:43Z")
My 11th grade English teacher was super-woke. We read _Beloved, Invisible Man (Ellison, not Wells),_ and _Native Son,_ and had _Cat’s Cradle_ as an option (although she personally hated Vonnegut, she acknowledged how he spoke to so many high schoolers). This was in addition to _Scarlet Letter_, _Huck Finn_, and other canon novels. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/23 "2025-09-05T21:33:24Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > The one which springs to mine is _[The Chocolate War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chocolate_War)_, a young-adult novel (which was still a relatively new publication when we read it) about a Catholic all-boys high school, and the student body’s tormenting of a non-conforming classmate. I suspect that part of the reason we were assigned it was because we, too, were a Catholic all-boys high school, with an unfortunate history of bullying and hazing. I wasn’t going to post in this thread, since I didn’t go to US High School and don’t know what’s canon, but we read that book in English lessons at my mixed sex, non-religious comprehensive school in the UK. So I guess it did become canon in some way. I had totally forgotten about it. We also read another American book in an earlier school year; I remember there was a character called Ponyboy and they lived in some inner city ghetto: according to Google, it was _The Outsiders_. When we started reading it, the teacher gave us a vocabulary list, which would probably be amusing to Americans, because it included both ordinary US English terms like ‘sidewalk’ and also the slang used by poor characters in the book. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/24 "2025-09-05T22:17:13Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > The one which springs to mine is _[The Chocolate War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chocolate_War)_, a young-adult novel (which was still a relatively new publication when we read it) about a Catholic all-boys high school, and the student body’s tormenting of a non-conforming classmate. For a minute there I thought you were talking about [The Confusions of Young Torless.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confusions_of_Young_T%25C3%25B6rless#%253A%257E%253Atext%253DThree_students_of_an_Austrian%252Cto_stand_up_for_himself.?wprov=sfla1)I thought that’s…a lot for a teenager. Can’t get the link right. > **[The Confusions of Young Törless](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confusions_of_Young_T%C3%B6rless#%3A~%3Atext%3DThree_students_of_an_Austrian%2Cto_stand_up_for_himself.?wprov=sfla1)** > > The Confusions of Young Törless (German: Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß), or Young Törless, is the literary debut of the Austrian philosophical novelist and essayist Robert Musil, first published in 1906. Musil's novel is ostensibly a Bildungsroman, a story of a young disoriented man searching for morals in society and their meaning for him. > The expressionistic novel, based on Musil's personal experiences at a boarding school in Mährisch Weißkirchen, today Hranice (in Austria-Hungary, now ... ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/25 "2025-09-05T22:30:29Z")
Many of today’s 15 year olds have probably watched or read worse, but no, it doesn’t sound at all suitable for school. All I remember of _The Chocolate War_ is that the main character had to unscrew all the furniture in a classroom, so it would remain standing but collapse when anyone tried to sit on it or use it. That did sound like a pretty awesome prank. Oh, and the antagonist who was head of the weird secret student society thing that put him up to it was cheating when he had to draw a black or white ball each time, ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/26 "2025-09-05T22:35:11Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > All I remember of _The Chocolate War_ is that the main character had to unscrew all the furniture in a classroom, so it would remain standing but collapse when anyone tried to sit on it or use it. That did sound like a pretty awesome prank. 45 years later, that scene is about the only enduring memory I have from reading that book. I remember my classmates and I discussing the feasibility of pulling that prank off, ourselves. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/27 "2025-09-05T22:47:30Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > Theodore Dreiser’s _An American Tragedy_ We read that. I hated it. I might feel differently now, but I’ve never been a big fan of American literature. We also read _Billy Budd_, I presume because _Moby Dick_ was too long to get through. Most of our books were canon. ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2025, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/28 "2025-09-05T23:14:33Z")
Once we were in tenth grade we could get away with not reading a book in English class. For ninth grade we were at the junior high, although we were getting high school credits. We spent a lot of time on grammar, but also read Great Expectations and Romeo and Juliet. I didn’t mind either of them. There was another required semester of grammar in 10th grade, which was a repeat of the same stuff they’d been drilling into us since elementary school. After that we could take classes like speech, journalism, mass media, creative writing, American literature, and English literature. The literature classes were not required. There was also Fundamentals of Composition, which I didn’t take because the guidance counselor believed it would be a waste of my time. I took Advanced Composition, where the final 3 or 4 weeks was writing a paper on a novel. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/29 "2025-09-06T03:16:06Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > > [@suranyi](#): > > > > but we read _Crime and Punishment_, which I actually liked even though it was very long. > > I find it riveting…up until I have to quit reading it because I’m too depressed to go on. I think I’ve made three attempts so far. Speaking of depressing Russian novels, we had to read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s _Cancer Ward_. I made it through, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience. My 11th grade English teacher was an odd man, and that was the strangest of the books he assigned. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/30 "2025-09-06T13:51:55Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > We also read another American book in an earlier school year; I remember there was a character called Ponyboy and they lived in some inner city ghetto: according to Google, it was _The Outsiders_. When we started reading it, the teacher gave us a vocabulary list, which would probably be amusing to Americans, because it included both ordinary US English terms like ‘sidewalk’ and also the slang used by poor characters in the book. The Outsiders is a pretty standard assigned-reading book in American schools. And we got a vocabulary guide with it, too, though of course ours didn’t include “sidewalk”. From my own high school, the only non-“canon” novel I remember specifically is Alistair McLean’s thriller Where Eagles Dare, which was a summer reading book. I remember thinking even at the time that it was an unusual choice of book. It’s tough for me to filter through my memories, because I read so much that it’s hard for me to tell what was assigned and what I just read on my own. Now, I’m a high school teacher myself, and on the committee that picks the summer reading books. Most of our picks are too recent to be part of the canon yet, though I suspect some of them might end up becoming canon eventually. This year’s picks include The Hate U Give, The Kite Runner, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, and The Berry Pickers, among several others. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/31 "2025-09-06T14:12:10Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > we read the lesser-known _Billy Budd_ Had not thought about it in years, but we also read Billy Budd. I really enjoyed it. Even I could see the symbolism. It seemed to address the issues of the McCarthy era (1950), like no good deed goes unpunished and ambiguity, “Farewell Oh Rights of Man”. ---
**Author:** ![Die\_Capacitrix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/die_capacitrix/32/9_2.png) [@Die\_Capacitrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Die_Capacitrix)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/32 "2025-09-06T15:04:52Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > My high school teacher loved Theodore Dreiser’s _An American Tragedy_, and so we read it. I read Theodore Dreiser’s _Sister Carrie_ which was on the list of books we could read. I was the only one who had any interest in reading any of his books. We had a few books that everybody had the read, such as Grapes of Wrath, but we had to read three books per semester and write a report on each one. Wasn’t assigned to read, but one of my classmates in World Literature did a book report on _Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy._ This was in mid 1980s, so not so long after it was published. > [@suranyi](#): > > Another book we read that I haven’t seen mentioned was _Mrs. Dalloway_. For many years, my parents had a copy of the video of me doing my book report on _Mrs. Dalloway_. For some reason (related to the chimes), I decided to say, “Bong, bong, bong” between each section of my report. Glad the recording got lost. Still have the book - it’s sitting on the shelf with my Children’s Bible and books by Madeleine L’Engle. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2025, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762/33 "2025-09-09T15:28:59Z")
Rising seniors in my high school were allowed to pick most of their own summer reading, if they could get a teacher to sign off on the book and discuss it with you in September. I convinced an English teacher to let me read “A Clockwork Orange”. He liked it so much he added it to his British Literature class. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-non-canon-novels-were-you-assigned-to-read-in-high-school-english/1022762.md?page=1)