The White Mountains and The City of Gold and Lead by John Christopher.
Lord of the Flies
I liked most of Shakespeare, as well.
*1984
The Great Gatsby
The Stranger
Macbeth
Moby Dick
*
There were a ton of books that I was assigned in high school that I didn’t touch because I was a dangerous and rebellious youth bent on living fast and hard. I probably missed out on a lot.
I just finished McTeague. I’m not surprised they didn’t like it, but I found it interesting and haven’t stopped thinking about it since I got done.
The only book I can recall that we were ever asked to read was The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. It didn’t suck, but I finished it in about a day and then we had to beat it to death every day in class for about a month.
I’m with Baker on this one. I loved To Kill a Mockingbird and still re-read it every couple years just for fun.
I also really liked The Red and the Black, but that was in a college course so that might be stretching the definition of “made you read” a little thin.
I am suprised to see A Seperate Peace nominated so much. It is one of my answers as well but I have heard lots of people say that they hate it. My other would be Huckleberry Finn.
Great Expectations, although I didn’t learn to like it until about five years after it was required reading.
There were plenty of ones I liked at the time, including Gatsby, A Tale of Two Cities, and To Kill A Mockingbird, but they don’t quite make my list of Top Ten Favorite Books Ever, which Great Expectations easily does.
In elementary school I had to read The Black Cauldron. Enjoyed it even though I only remember the barest outline now.
In 7-8 grade I had to read The Lord of the Rings. I liked it but I can only imagine how awful JRRT would be to a pre-teen who’s not into that style of writing.
I think Moby Dick and East of Eden (both from the same class–Melville and Steinbeck) are the only ones that I’ve re-read on a regular basis. There are a lot of other books that could have been assigned reading that I’ve read several times, but they never were.
I just remembered another one. In college, I was assigned The Music of Chance by Paul Auster, in a contemporary lit class. Loved it.
I also didn’t think I’d like Frankenstein nearly as much as I did. And Hamlet. Even though I was an English major, I was not a fan of Shakespeare until the right professor taught it to me.
To Kill a Mockingbird ended up one of my favorite books.
The winner though still has to be Catch-22.
The Painted Bird. A picture postcard of quaint but good-hearted small town life during difficult times.
Great Expectorations as we called it, was one of my favorites.
The appeal of Catcher in the Rye continues to mystify me.
1984
Brave New World
Of Mice and Men
The Great Gatsby
Only Mostly Dead, you just reminded me of one of my all-time-favorites with The Once and d Future King. Now I must go and find my copy (which was indeed required reading in my 10th grade lit class).
Also, this thread is reaffirming my belief that I am, in fact, the only person on the planet who didn’t like Brave New World one little bit.
Farenheit 451.
You know, I don’t remember too many details about it, but right after high school I remember saying many times that the best book we were required to read was Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. I meant to seek out the books that followed The Manticore and Worlds of Wonder, but I never did.
Apparently my schools assigned mostly crap. Macbeth is the only book that comes to mind.
I saw many books in this thread that I love, but were never assigned to us or in the case of the Hobbit, I had already read 3 years earlier.
I might be in the minority, but I very much disliked “Catcher in the Rye” and Dickens. These were assigned to us.
Maybe my school was a little unusual, because my three standouts haven’t been listed yet:
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The Chrysalids, John Wyndham
The Reivers, William Faulkner
For the most part, I also enjoyed the Shakespeare that we were assigned. I could have done with less Julius Caesar, for example, but I quite liked Macbeth and King Lear.
I didn’t like any of them. They made us read “Hamlet,” “Julius Caesar,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Silas Marner,” and “Great Expectations.” I learned that (a) I don’t like being forced to read anything, and (b) analyzing literature to death does not enhance my reading enjoyment.
“Wuthering Heights”–I’m not sure if this counts, exactly. We had to read it for class, and I bought all my books dutifully. Then I got sort of bored and ended up reading it about a month before we were assigned it, and loved it. It got a little less fun when I had to over analyze it and write papers on it.
Also liked “Brave New World.” Although I think I might have read that shortly before we read it in school as well.