Herro!! I thought I'd interrupt myself from reading for a moment. I'm currently reading a book called Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison that I have to read for AP Literature & Composition, and since I procrastinated, I have a little less than five-hundred pages to go before school starts on Thursday (right now, for me it's 2:32 am Wednesday...). Thankfully, it's a page-turner!!!

Well, I was wondering, what were some books you were required to read for school? You can name summer reading books or ones that you read during school, doesn't matter... Just any school-required books. Any you loved or absolutely hated?

My all-time favorite required reading for school was when I was in ninth grade, and we read The Count of Monte Cristo. It's an absolutely brilliant book. I also bought Dumas' The Three Musketeers and plan to read it on my own cuz I looove his writing style! :]
Last year, I had to read 1984 and Brave New World, and oh my gosh... I hated those books. I mean, I understand how brilliant their stories are, but man, I prefer books that aren't about utopias/dystopias (but I DO love Orwell's Animal Farm!). OH, and this past year... I had to read Fast Food Nation... There's definitely a LOT of horrific facts in the book... including a lot of gross and disgusting things... but it didn't deter me from my love of McDonald's chicken Mcnuggets and French fries! ...Which could possibly be a bad thing.

Last edited by PeachMangoTea at 1:02 am, Aug 11 2010

________________

Absolutely HATED Intruder in the Dust; first book in my life that I didn't finish reading.

I've had to read a lot of things for school that I liked & a lot that I didn't like so much, but that's the only one that really stands out in my memory. I read Animal Farm on my own at around age 10 & totally didn't get it. Haven't read any of the others you mentioned.

________________
"[English] not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
-James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992

gah this year i have to read frankenstein, Doctor Faustus and The Bloody chamber, over and over again as the exams a closed book exam.
Last year i had to read Digging to America, The Kite Runner, Othello and Death of a Salesman. Absolutely hated Digging to America, was so boring and dragged on forever, and also Othello, i couldnt be arsed to understand it for the most part. On the other hand though, The Kite Runner and Death of a Salesman were brilliant.

The Red Badge of Courage was my summer reading for AP lit. Other books during the year were choices from a list the teacher gave us, I read A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway, great book imo. The other books i read i dont remember which ones they were, Seabiscuit maybe. Hardly did much in class really got off topic a lot, teacher usually talked about her personal life and gossip lol. Really did not learn much in the class.

I loved One Hundred Years of Solitude. Which therefore didn't get any notice in the class.

I can remember having to read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in year 11.
I'd read it a couple of years before that and I loved it, but after having to learn the whole freaking book for an exam I loathed it. My English teacher had some sort of grudge against me so lessons were shit and we totally tore apart the book, analysing the most stupidest things. It really ruins the story, analysing everything. I think that's why I hate poems so much as well. All the poems we had to learn and analyse for English Lit took its toll on me.

Reading and analysing books for school is not good. I also remember reading Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time in year 9 I think. I had read it before - loved it. Read it and analysed it for school - ended up hating it.

I don't do English anymore, never took it as an A-Level (I was going to, thank god I didn't), so I haven't had to analyse a book for 2 years, and I can now enjoy reading a book like you're supposed to without lots of pencil scribbles and underlining on each page.

Last edited by tactics at 2:39 am, Aug 11 2010

Eww, tried reading that in spanish, pain in the ass as it is written in older forms of spanish. English version was better to read.

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read." —Mark Twain

that's about everything you have to know about my contact with literature back in school

I had to read Lord of the Flies for an in-class novel study. I didn't care for it much, especially the first few chapters.

A good thing about my English class though is that we could choose our independent novels as long as they fit into one of these categories:
>Based on a book (which means book made into movie)
>Banned book (book that has been banned somewhere in the world)
>Biography/ Autobiography
>Graphic Novel (I'm serious, my teacher loves super hero comics)
>Wild Card

Thankfully we didn't have enough time to go through all five categories though, so I only had to read 3 and I chose The Picture of Dorian Grey for my "banned book" which I really enjoyed, Howl's Moving Catle for my "based on a book", and Death Note: Another Note (Los Angeles BB Murder Case) for my wild card. So I was very happy that we were allowed to choose
Howl's Moving Castle is also quite different from the movie so if you enjoyed the animation I totally recommend reading the novel because it is simply amazing and you'll see just how much they left out in the movie.

Have to read "The Great Four" (To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, The Catcher in the Rye) for SAT essays.
Recommended to read other books by Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway, too.


Totally agree.


Last edited by MewMan at 2:56 am, Aug 11 2010

________________
its cold down here fam ~

hey, which country you come from...?'cuz i'd like to know where you have to read those books...

for example in Latvia(where i live) we haven't read any of those...well maybe we'll have to but i really doubt that...

this fall i'm gonna be in 11th grade and i have to read: Shakespeare - Hamlet, Henrik Ibsen - Peer Gynt and then lots of latvian author's jobs who are, well, in the same category as those two like: Brāļi Kaudzītes - Mērnieku Laiki, Blaumanis - Raudupiete, Rainis - Jāzeps un viņa brāļi and so on...T_T (i wonder if you can read/spell those latvian ones, hmmm i wonder how it sounds in English 'cuz hey, i read them automatically in latvian^^ )

we've got a whole bunch to read and last year we read bunch of Greek and Roman poets and stuff, like Homer, Socrates etc...

________________
~Nothing is Eternal but Eternity~
Enjoy life as much as you can and do whatever you want, because it may be only one.

Pride and prejudice - by Jane Austen, although we only had to read 6 chapters
And we had to read a book called 'Face' by Benjamin Zephaniah, as well as 'Holes' (you know the film based on the same book).
I thought they were pretty good but I'd have preferred something more historic and foreign.

I'm Vietnamese.
At school we have to deal with stuff from our "comrades in war", which mean Russia (Leo Tolstoy,etc) and China(Li Bai, Du Fu, etc). Also, we study a bit about American and French literature.
Oh, and of course, there's our literature too.

________________
its cold down here fam ~

Here we had to read famous French author like

Guy de Maupassant
Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal)
Voltaire (Candide)
Jean-Paul Sartre (Huis Clos)
Albert Camus (L'étranger)

It was ridiculously difficult so I stopped after the second page of Huis Clos, and I didn't pass my bac (the final exam for french highschooler) for the french.

________________

@PeachMangoTea
Dumas is always brilliant.
I read The Three Musketeers in grade school. I was hooked ever since. :3
Be sure to read the sequels, too.

As for my school required reading...
They were never strict on the titles up until HS (where there's program for the tests
and stuff), so I just submitted my papers on stuff I liked.
They did give us lists, but those were ridiculous.

HS ones were boring.
Very boring.
The teacher basically went for the common option and made us read some crappy
novels by them Jewish writers they love so much.
There were some nice poems, I guess. But nothing more...

________________
Hrodulf and Bjornolfr, you will not be forgotten.

And if the world were black and white,
you would be my rainbow in shades of grey.

Click 'n Play!

If I had a fantasy self, it'd be a tentacle monster.