A True Kaniggit Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 The "Crap you read in high school" thread made me want to start this. What novels were you forced to read in high school did you actually end up enjoying, but everyone else in your class hated or just plain refused to read? The main one for me was Pride and Prejudice. Out of the 25 people in my 12th grade class only me and 2 others actually read the novel. We just told the rest of the class the main points of each chapter so they wouldn't fail. Other novels I enjoyed but the rest of my classmates hated were Anthem and Lord of the Flies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Lyman Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 The "Crap you read in high school" thread made me want to start this. What novels were you forced to read in high school did you actually end up enjoying, but everyone else in your class hated or just plain refused to read? The main one for me was Pride and Prejudice. Out of the 25 people in my 12th grade class only me and 2 others actually read the novel. We just told the rest of the class the main points of each chapter so they wouldn't fail. Other novels I enjoyed but the rest of my classmates hated were Anthem and Lord of the Flies. I got a good portion of the way through Pride and Prejudice but I don't think it held my interest so I never finished it. Same with To Kill a Mockingbird. I do remember in eigth grade we recieved The Giver and I had already finished it before the next school day started. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scortius the charioteer Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez Demian by Hesse The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck The Long Ships (Red Orm) - Bengtsson (I had a cool English teacher in 9th grade) This is seriously one of the best books I've ever read, I've read it probably 10 times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UtherSnow Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Our tutor always claimed 'and now we come to a meaty bit'. That would never come. Oh, and we got that same catchphrase with other subjects too where he was also the tutor. He was straight out of 'Tom Browne's Schooldays', complete with cape and mortar. 31 pupils were in Form 3b, and all of us got caned (classic '6 of the best') during one very memorable 'uprising'. A few of us 'substituted' this book for another..... We wanted battles and stuff, like we'd heard about in History. 'Once more into the breech......'How can you really be 'revolutionary'? Let's stage a production of..... And that tutor thought we never listened to anything he taught! My role? Oberon!Inside, I must be a 'secret' viper - maybe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A True Kaniggit Posted February 10, 2015 Author Share Posted February 10, 2015 I did have to read To Kill a Mockingbird, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Grapes of Wrath in high school. Finished them all and they were OK, but I didn't enjoy them enough to go back and read them a second time. Didn't have to read The Giver, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Demian, or The Long Red Ships in school. Two more I remember having to read that I enjoyed but no one else did were The Bean Trees and Cold Sassy Tree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rondo has three heads Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Great Gatsby is my favorite book. Also, The Giver, Lord of the Flies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Jake Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 1984, The Hobbit, A Time to Kill Probably more I'm forgetting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aestas Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Hamlet became one of my absolute favorites. I liked some of what we read that year - the Great Gatsby, Their Eyes Were Watching God (which a lot of my classmates hated). The Things They Carried was also good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 You all got to read good shit. I've blocked most of the shit I had to read out, but pretty much none of the stuff listed here was on it. T Hose damn kids in the "advanced" English class got to read all the good stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedEyedGhost Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Watership Down, Night (that might have been college), Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, The Canterbury Tales, Billy Budd (just kidding, fuck that shit), The Crucible. Before high school - To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Reckoner Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Beloved, Their Eyes Were Watching God, As I Lay Dying, texts and journals in organic chemistry, virology, immunology and biochemistry whose titles escape me at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 I hate Huck Finn. Only thing I remember liking in school was Macbeth. And you all were in way more advanced English classes than me. Jerks. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teng Ai Hui Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Like DR said, you all attended much better high schools than the one I was forced to go to in my podunk hometown. Anyway, my 8th grade U.S. history teacher had us read Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag, about a Norwegian family settling in the Dakota territory, and I haven't stopped reading since. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Moby Dick was alright. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyanna Stark Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 The Sorrows of Young Werther. An utter piece of crap, but I feel my life is enriched by having read this.Candide and Gulliver's travels I loved. I read a lot of classics on my own so not sure if my teacher made me or not. The only thing I remember regretting was picking up Anna Karenina. UUUUGGGHHHHH. I had such high hopes cos everyone rated is as one of the best novels ever, and wow was it a piece of poo. It wasn't even sad, moving or exciting and even failed to make me properly irritated (unlike my love/hate for Young Werther and Wuthering Heights). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 I guess I hated hardly any assigned book because I had been a voracious reader anyway (but usually I had not read them before, privately as a teenager I preferred Agatha Christie). Werther was interesting enough for me, I think I was positively surprised because I had expected it to be even more soppy, but of course it is not easy to appreciate in the late 20th or early 21st century. It also drags at some places. When we did this in 11th grade we also read "Die neuen Leiden des jungen W." (the new sorrows...) by East German author Plenzdorf. This takes place in early 70ties Eastern Germany and for me (in late 80s Western Germany) it felt about as distant as Goethe from the 1770s. It was pretentious both in its claim to speak for rebellious youth as well as in its trying too hard as an adaption of Goethe's classic. I was not terribly fond of either but clearly preferred the Goethe. Another one I didn't much care for was "A village Romeo and Juliet" (Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe) by swiss author Gottfried Keller. Neither was I too fond of Mann's "Tonio Kröger" but around the time I think I read privately some other shorter Mann and maybe Buddenbrooks which I vastly preferred to Kröger. But Mann is so famous and some stuff also fairly popular that I probably would not have needed the pointers from school. But I liked many other books from German class, some of which I probably or certainly would not have read on my own, e.g. Hoffmann's mystery novella about Madame de Scuderi and a mysterious jewellery thief or several of Kleist's breathless and violent novellas. My main foreign language at school was Latin so we didn't do advanced stuff like Shakespeare in English. We started with simplified (reduced vocab etc.) versions of "The third man" and "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (both easy to like for 15 year olds) later I remember that we read (without simplifications) "Animal Farm", "1984", "Catcher in the Rye" (not my favorite, 1950s teenage angst didn't really feel close to my world), "Of mice and men" and probably a few shorter stories I forgot. I do not remember any play but I may have forgotten, it's 25 years ago... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Ent Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 The Sorrows of Young Werther is of course the best book ever written, and I am happy that my high school education gave me a chance to read it. I’m also happy I was introduced to great works like Macbeth and Faust. English and German class were great that way. Danish class was mostly crap, I’m afraid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 The Sorrows of Young Werther is of course the best book ever written, and I am happy that my high school education gave me a chance to read it. Did you ever re-read "Werther" since then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyanna Stark Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 The Sorrows of Young Werther is of course the best book ever written, and I am happy that my high school education gave me a chance to read it. :rofl: Forest troll or troll forest? :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Howdyphillip Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Although there are dozens and dozens of books I read in school, the first that I remember as assigned reading was Where the Red Fern Grows. I read this in elementary school, and it was the first time I realized that I could be profoundly moved by a story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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