Best book you were assigned to read in school?

[Zomby Woof]

I'd like a more positive discussion of literature.

I enjoyed these, many of which remain my favorites of all time:

"One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" (Senior year)
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Junior year)
"All The King's Men" (Sophomore year)
"1984" (Senior year)
"Fahrenheit 451" (Sophomore year)

And all of the Shakespeare assigned those 3 years, especially "Hamlet" and "Macbeth", which were read out loud in class, senior year.

There were times our junior year teacher allowed us to choose our own, with her approval. That's when I read John Updike for the first time, a fantastic writer ("Rabbit, Run").

My junior year teacher had me stand up on a table and deliver Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners In The Hands of an Angry God" to the class. The ORIGINAL fire & brimstone sermon, lol. My senior year teacher had me read Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" to the class. I don't think they knew what they were in for. :D

My sophomore teacher was voted the state's 'Teacher of the Year' award the year I took his class. :thumbsup: Still one of the most influential people I ever had the pleasure to know.

[begin_within]

1. "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" (the book ONLY. Never, ever the lame movie version)

[reyd reid reed]

2. My favorites from high school:

East of Eden
1984
Farenheit 451

Junior high:
Shakespeare...particularly the comedies.
Animal Farm

[querelle]

3. Tender Is The Night

F. Scott Fitzgerald. I read it in my senior year of high school and it still remains one of my all time favourite books.

Q

[idgiehkt]

18. that was really, really touching and sweet, wasn't it

It must have been about Zelda and her struggles.

[LeftyMom]

4. The Grapes of Wrath

I'd already read it when we got around to it in school, but I didn't mind the reread because it's such a well written and powerful book.

[jus_the_facts]

5. I liked Poe's work a lot...The Monkey's Paw....The Tale Tell Heart....

....started me on my quest for more tales of horror...H.P. Lovecraft...Richard Matheson...Stephen King and the like! :evilgrin:

[Left Is Write]

15. We read the Tell-Tale Heart in junior high -

maybe 8th or 9th grade - and it too started me on a path to enjoyment of horror stories. :)

[miss_american_pie]

6. Almost all of them

And I still can appreciate the value of the few I didn't care for.

[El Fuego]

7. "Catch-22" in college

One of my favorite books of all time.

Joseph Heller was asked in an interview why he hadn't since written anything as good as "Catch-22." He replied, "Well, no one else has either." And it's true!

[hfojvt]

22. I like "Picture This" better than "Catch 22"

when he died AP said that "Something Happened" was his 2nd best, and I thought that was just awful.

I cannot remember anything that I specifically had to read in school, except "Alas, Babylon" in 10th grade. I took a class called "reading improvement" but I think we got to pick our own books. I read 7 by H.G. Wells and several more. In English lit we did "Hamlet" and I read several others on my own - King Lear, Othello, but they were not required. We had a reading list for that class too, and I read "Devil's Cub" by Georgette Heyer.

Apparently my HS was very lame, literature-wise. In college I took one English class (can U tell? Just one) on Modern Literature - which required "The Sun Also Rises", "The Good Soldier", "As I lay dying" and "The Awakening".

[Sequoia]

8. I read "All The King's Men" out of school.

I have to say, it was such a great book. I saw it republished at B&N because of the movie and wished I hadn't so I could read it all over again. Haven't read "Cuckoo's Nest" though. Guess I will since all these other books I'm getting are boring me.

[Reverend_Smitty]

9. There were a few...

To Kill A Mockingbird...7th grade and then again my sophomore year
Great Gatsby...Junior year
Othello...Senior year of HS and again senior year of college
we also did a section on Romantic poetry my senior year of HS which I enjoyed greatly, especially Keats, which is funny because I love Romantic poetry but can't stand books from that era

[xultar]

10. The Iliad in 7th grade. I remember it cuz we just moved to Buffalo Grove IL.

I didn't have any friends and the book enchanged me.

[YankeyMCC]

11. I think I'll pick 1984 n/t

[MysticalChicken]

12. possibly...

Lord of the Flies, in either my junior or senior year of highschool. I could not wait to find out what happened and I skipped ahead when the teacher said "read pages X to Y" or "chapter Z". LOVE that book so much.

Also, in seventh grade we read The Miracle Worker (the play, by William Gibson) and I loved that as well. Sometimes the class would take turns reading for each character out loud, and I would always beg and plead to be let play Annie Sullivan because I loved her so much. (Anne Bancroft's portrayal of her in the 1962 movie version has been my most favorite acting performance ever, since I first saw that movie at the age of 12, and I would always try to emulate it. Was more than a little disappointed when I learned that the Irish accent was fake, though.)

I think I remember also loving The Outsiders in seventh grade as well.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. To Kill a Mockingbird

Macbeth and Hamlet

1984

Lord of the Flies

The Crucible--We read it aloud in class, and one of the guys kept mispronouncing the more interesting words, such as "hair lottery" for "harlotry" and "fork-nation" for "fornication."

[Left Is Write]

14. My favorite required reading was To Kill A Mockingbird.

My favorite play in my Shakespeare Tragedies class was Macbeth.

I also enjoyed 1984, Brave New World, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

I can also remember the books I didn't care for, and there were others that so failed to move me that I've forgotten what they were.

[Broken_Hero]

16. To Kill a Mockingbird

in the 7th grade...

Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell

Black Elk Speaks, translated by John C. Neidhardt..

The Prince by Machivelli....

quite a few actually...:)

[wryter2000]

17. Cry the Beloved Country nt/

n/t

[idgiehkt]

19. Definitely "Main Street" by Sinclair Lewis

I don't think I really knew that any writers were dealing with small-town hypocrisy until I read that. It made me feel sane...I was used to writers dealing with much larger themes. I think O'Conner and McCullers dealt with this some but they were so obscure (at least to me) it was hard to follow.

[blondeatlast]

20. "Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes" by Chris Crutcher. Hysterical and compelling

young adult read.

[photogirl12]

21. Definitely

1984, Farenhiet 451 and Brave New World

[merh]

23. Jonathan Livingston Seagull

:hi:

[Taverner]

24. Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut

Made a Vonnegut fan out of me right then and there.

[mokawanis]

25. The Old Man and the Sea

I forget how old I was, but I loved that book and started reading a lot of Hemingway. It was the kick-off that led me to A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tools, and many others.

[ncrainbowgrrl]

26. manchild in the promised land.

The Jungle- Upton Sinclair

[bigwillq]

27. To Kill a Mockingbird (nt)