The Hobbit, which is kind of cheating, since I’d read it twice before even being assigned it. Did a little fist pump when it was assigned to us.
Shakespeare, any and all. I became a lifelong fan after 9th grade Romeo and Juliet. Julius Caesar was 10th grade. in 11th, MacBeth, in 12th we did selected sonnets, I think.
I liked Silas Marner a lot more than expected, and a lot more than the rest of my class did. Though I couldn’t tell you much about it now.
Poe. “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado”… those stuck with me.
As a student I tried to make a point of never reading any required books but I slipped up on a couple of occasions. I loved Only Yesterday. It was a history of the 1920s. It really caught me up in that decade. It is an era that still fascinates me.
The other book that captured my attentions was The Long Death. It is a history of the treatment of the American Indian by the U.S. I heard later that the author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee had stolen a number of sections from this book and had to pay for that literary sin.
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe The Sun Also Rises, Hemmingway All the Kings Men, Robert Penn Warren Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
All of these stand out as books I wouldn’t have read on my own but were great reads and broadened my horizons in literature and philosophy.
Several Steinbeck novels mentioned, but I didn’t see anyone else say “The Grapes of Wrath”. Got assigned that one in a high school English class and thought it would be deadly boring, but I loved it. That’s when i first realized “classic novel” did not automatically mean “boring novel”.
Vipers Tangle by Mauriac. I was assigned this in college and it really opened by eyes to alternate ways of telling a story through non-traditional structure. The fact that the narrator was in the field of irony really opened my eyes to see possibilities of story structuring and meaning I had not before. It was also really entertaining.
Catcher in the Rye had a profound effect on me. At the time, I was 16 and also a student at the very school J D Salinger was writing about. So needless to say, a disaffected youth, attending a military school that he didn’t want to be at would obviously gravitate to that book.
Bolding mine. Oh, yeah - an all time favorite of mine. Reread it every few years. I found it on my roommate’s shelf after he was assigned it in college.
This is mine as well. Although I had actually already read it before then, as I’d found a copy at my grandpa’s house.
If that doesn’t count, then Flowers for Algernon.
These are rare for me, liking books with an unhappy endings. Though I do remember always believing that a new revolution was just about to start with Animal Farm. I’m still not sure I agree with the more pessimistic interpretation I was taught in class.
Definitely Heart of Darkness, but only the second time around. I’d finished it much earlier than anyone else, and my teacher suggested I’d get more out of the book by rereading it. I never did get around to thanking him for the advice.
I wasn’t really forced to read it- it was an option on a required list- but my very great sophomore year English teacher, Mrs. Eleanor Phoenix (I think her name would be a great band name btw) pointed out Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier as something she thought I’d like. She was right, loved it.
I miss that teacher - I felt royally screwed my junior year when she was retiring and although I chose her class, I got a horrible 1st year teacher with Mrs. Phoenix observing her teaching instead.
The Picture of Dorian Gray. I put off reading it until the day before we had to have it read. Started it as soon as I got home from school, and finished around 2 AM. I thought it was going to be a chore, and simply found I couldn’t put it down. Awesome book.
That stuck out immediately to me, though I also quite enjoyed Catcher in the Rye, Night by Elie Wiesel, The Great Gatsby and many other assigned books.
Ditto, except I read it for a history class on the role of the city in history. The professor admitted later that it had nothing to do with actual urban history, he just wanted to share it, and because of the name of the class it worked; I liked the book but was still a bit pissed at paying around $8 for it when I was broke and it was unnecessary for the actual class.
I had to read Moby Dick for an American Lit class and actually liked it for a while, but the professor took care of that. (I think it was the only book he ever read, and so he talked about it at every lecture analyzing freaking everything about it- it might as well have been a seminar class on Moby Dick alone.)
A lot of people put it on their most-hated list, but The Scarlet Letter had a huge impact on me. I absolutely loved it, and it played a role in my decision to major in history in college.
I also loved Shakespeare. **Richard III **was a favorite.