My last year of high school: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring, *Alice in Wonderland *and The Day of the Triffids. Plus one SF or fantasy book of our choice (*Dune *for me).
That was a good year 
The books which had the biggest impact on me were probably To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and 1984, which absolutely gutted me. I remember reading the last line: “He loved Big Brother,” and just setting the book down on my bed and collapsing into a mess of tears. It was like being kicked in the stomach. My favorite book of my High School years was The Catcher in the Rye, but I didn’t read it for a class.
Oh, and Bridge to Terabithia! checks bookcase How do I not own that? I remember having that book assigned in the fifth grade, the whole class silently reading that chapter to themselves, and the only sounds in the room were muffled sobs.
I recently read Fahrenheit 451 on my own, and while I’m glad I didn’t read it in High School (we had to choose either that or 1984), I am so glad I decided to finally pick it up. It’s easily one of my favorite books now.
Put me in with the To Kill A Mockingbird crowd. Not that I’d read it again on my own, but it wasn’t a total chore to read like so many other forced books.
There was one, only one, enforced-reading book I just loved: Homer’s The Odyssey. I loved every page of it! The Cyclops, Circe, the Lotus Eaters, Penelope, going home in disguise to kick ass…also love mythology in general and movies of this type.
We also had to read Romeo and Juliet, which I rather enjoyed. They took us to see the movie version with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, which was a lovely experience and enhanced the book even amongst its haterz in class.
Wow, so many to choose from! Do Shakespeare or other plays count? If so, here’s a list:
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Macbeth - Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet - Shakespeare
Henry V - Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
Waiting for Godot - Beckett
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Grendel - Gardner
Dune - Herbert
The Power and the Glory - Greene
*The Return of the Native *- Hardy
From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe - Koyré
Sand County Almanac - Leopold
Of course I’ve always been a massive reader for pleasure, but that’s a short list of required reading up to my undergraduate degree that made a lasting impact on me.
Interesting in the sense that it was mind-bogglingly difficult to comprehend: Milkbottle H by Gil Orlovitz.
Interesting in the sense that it opened my mind to a different kind of writing that I really enjoyed: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
I disliked most stuff they forced us to read - it was more or less enforced by the State of NY, at the time they issued reading lists to schools and the teachers didn’t really have much choice.
On the other hand, in 9th grade we had an english teacher walk us through Much Ado About Nothing, not to read at home, but we read it out loud in class and discussed it - he explained all the bawdy jokes in it instead of glossing over the rather obscene and earthy humor that was Elizabethan England’s answer to Soap Opera.
High School: Crime and Punishment and Candide
College: Richard II
Day of the Jackal.
Watership Down - my favorite novel and one of the few I’ve read multiple times. I remember when it was first assigned I was dreading having to read a book about a bunch of bunnies. The animated movie is pretty good, too.
+1 This book really captured my interest–I thought it was fascinating. I picked up an old used hardcover edition of it the other day so I can revisit it. I believe there was a recent movie made in Norway that retells the story.
My apologies to the OP: I didn’t see this thread.
“To Kill A Mockingbird”
“Julius Caesar”
“Macbeth”
Contemporary English translations of “Troilus and Criseyde” and “The Miller’s Tale” by Chaucer
“The Visit” by Frederick Durrenmaat
I loved *The Odyssey *too. But what I loved even more was *The Diary of Anne Frank, *which was assigned to us in (Jewish) Sunday School. This was only about 15 years after the book took place. And I re-read it years later, before a trip to Amsterdam.
Die drei Kameraden, by Erich Maria Remarque, and Silas Marner, by George Eliot.
We read parts of DdK in my third year of German. Ended up getting the English version (The Three Comrades) from the library so I could read the whole thing.
Read a couple chapters of SM in 10th-grade English. Again, I ended up getting it from the library so I could read it all.
The Washing of the Spears, by Donald Morris. In high school, but I can’t remember what exactly the class was about. I definitely remember the book, though.
Later, in a class on Victorian literature, anything by Thomas Hardy. Sorry, Procrustus and Roderick Femm, I have never been able to enjoy Dickens. I read Great Expectations in high school (although I’m not sure if it was for a class – I might have read it on my own), and more in college, and never warmed up to him. Hardy, on the other hand, has been a life-long love.
Yes, yes, yes. There’s a reason this book has stuck around for nearly 3,000 years.
And I had to read it, or at least some of it, in the original Greek in high school. I still loved it.
Mutiny on the Bounty was one of my favorite assignments. It was really a sad ending.
Another great one was The Razor’s Edge by Maugham
As a 16 year old male, I dreaded the idea of having to read Wuthering Heights for English Lit.
I absolutely loved it.
I took an advanced lit class on Twain and rediscovered Adventures of Huckelberry Finn as the true masterpiece it is.
In a college class on Russian folklore and literature, we read The Master and Margarita. I would never, ever have picked this book up on my own, but it caused me to read a bunch of Bulgakov.
It started out as “1984,” but was later surpassed by “Fifth Business.”