Books you liked that you were forced to read in school

[PyroclasticFlow]

Cannery Row by Steinbeck

Launched me on my trajectory toward alcoholism :dunce:

[Larry of the Lawn]

A Stranger Came Ashore

Had to read this one in middle school, was thinking about it earlier because I was reading a Cthulu Romance novel.

[Kikajon]

O have loved early English ballads, Songs of innocence and experience, works from,Oscar Wilde, The lyrical ballads with a special mention to the rhyme of the Ancient Mariner that I still remember for the great majority by heart.

The sorrows of young werther I read to my sorrow.

Brave New World, The castle of Otranto, Pride and Prejudice.

So many others that I can't recollect.

And yes, in some high schools in Italy, like mine, we read all Dante's comedy: inferno in the 3rd year, Purgatorio in the fourth and paradiso in the fifth.

I have Read and enjoyed the Name of the rose but I doubt it Will ever ne assigned as scholastic Reading.

[RandomUser191]

Don't remember many, but i found "The curious incident of the dog in the night time" to be a very interesting read.

oh and "Old greek tales" was also enjoyable.

[Buckwheat]

Don't remember many, but i found "The curious incident of the dog in the night time" to be a very interesting read.

At which age/level of learning English?

I found the book interesting when I was in primary school, I read it in translation then. We had to read it in the last year of high school, at the age of 18, in English. It was waaaaay too easy both in content and in language for me and most of my schoolmates then. That book really uses basic English.

I am taking a course on children's literature this semester, and I started reading Walter Moers' Ensel und Krete for that yesterday. It is very enjoyable and funny. Not wholly children's literature either, another girl whose first language actually is German said it is hard to read, so I imagine it must be even harder to get some things if you are a child.

[Clueless Northman]

Quite a few. Though when it comes to modern/current languages, that was less impressive than for Latin and Greek, where we really covered the good bits before even hitting university (teachers were pretty good, which helped a lot); with English, German and French, we weren't as thorough, and we wasted time on 20th century shit for no reason.

Poe' short stories. Stevenson's Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Steinbeck's Red Pony (very early on, obviously, compared to the other books). Kafka's Metamorphosis. Zweig's short stories. Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons. Vian's Froth of daydream.

Adding Bulgakov's Master and Margarita would be cheating - recommended by Russian teacher, but she was well aware we'd never be able to read it in Russian, it was a side-reading, translated.

For Greek, special mentions would go to Iliad (specially the book about the death of Hector), some bits of archaic poetry (Sappho being definitely the highlight), Sophocles' Oedipus King and some bits of Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War (particularly the abysmal ending of the Sicily expedition).

For Latin, I'd go with Martial, Catullus, Petronius' Satyricon, Aeneis (specially book 4 about Dido and Aeneas), Tacitus. If that isn't enough to see how much our Latin teacher rocked, he showed us Fellini's Satyricon - to a class of 17-years old :bowdown:

I still can't believe people got to read The Hobbit in school. There must be some generational gap, my teachers would never have assigned anything like that.

Didn't get to read Tolkien at school, but quite early on, it was on a list of recommended readings (for fun, not for school) by one of our teachers.
When I wanted to try Tolkien though, I thought I was old enough to skip "for kids" Hobbit and go straight for LOTR.

[Theda Baratheon]

Oh man i wish i'd learnt the greek tragedies in school. I learnt them in college (16-18) but i don't know if that counts.

[Clueless Northman]

Oh man i wish i'd learnt the greek tragedies in school. I learnt them in college (16-18) but i don't know if that counts.

Well, I took it as "everything before university", so obviously stuff like Tacitus was at 16-18. At school, we had Revelations, and bit of Lysias, Plato, Herodotus.

[Seasick Shrimp]

Well, I'm not sure if I was forced, but if i remember correctly it was at some point in high school that we were to choose a classic (a Swedish one, that is), or just pick some book of high literary praise. Anyway, I picked the book Doktor Glas (which, as you might have guessed, means Doctor Glas), written by Hjalmar Söderberg. It was an AMAZING read, I totally loved it, he put words to so many of my feelings and thoughts, it was quite mindblowing to read actually haha. I dont know if it even exists in an english translation or whether Söderberg is a big name outside of Sweden or not, but I sincerely recommend everyone, Swede or not, to try to get hold of a copy of Doktor Glas, cause it is bloody brilliant. One of my most rememberable reading experiences. With that being said, it was about ten years now that I read it so I don't know if it will hold up on a re-read, but bought it a while ago and am going to read it soon, hopefully it will be just as extraordinary, but of course I have laid the foundations for a disappointment haha...

[Theda Baratheon]

Well, I took it as "everything before university", so obviously stuff like Tacitus was at 16-18. At school, we had Revelations, and bit of Lysias, Plato, Herodotus.

ahh well i took classics in college so i was expecting to like that stuff anyway haha.

[StannisForKing299AL]

Hmmm...

Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, Turn of The Screw, All Quiet on the Western Front...

Yeah, I'd say the books we had to read were pretty good. Maybe I was just lucky :dunno:

[Byfort of Corfe]

Andersonville by MacKinley Kantor (surprisingly for a novel we read it in a class called Popular Non-fiction, ah, Texas education!). Beowulf, The Odyssey and I also enjoyed The Taking of Pelham 123. I absolutely hated everything about Catcher in the Rye. I don't count Shakespeare, I was reading that on my own. Most of what I read in High School and indeed today is non-fiction, but I enjoy the occasional novel and always loved the Hornblower and Aubrey Maturin Naval fiction series.

[Darth Richard II]

Hmmm...

Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, Turn of The Screw, All Quiet on the Western Front...

Yeah, I'd say the books we had to read were pretty good. Maybe I was just lucky :dunno:

I'm beginning to think I was just very unlucky. :p

[Sword Of Mid Afternoon]

As a Freshman in HS (circa 1997) I was assigned 5 or 6 books to read over the summer before classes began in September. I only chose to read one... selecting the first one I was able to find at Borders at the time, which was Frank Herbert's Dune.

I owe much to whomever assembled that reading list those many years ago..... Dune became, arguably, my favorite SF/F saga of all time. I still try to read the entire series once a year or two (The real ones... not the low grade fan-fic-quality latter day knock offs) and thoroughly enjoy them every single time.

My only regret is the fact that Mr. Herbert was un able to finish his masterpiece... leaving only some notes... which his son utterly disregarded and wrote the most absurd & ridiculous ending to a series in the history of sports.

[Zoë Sumra]

Hmm. I was thinking about Mist over Pendle earlier. We read it in the second year of secondary school (now called year 8 in the UK), largely because our school was very close to Pendle Hill (one of Roger Nowell's descendants was actually in my class), and I really enjoyed it... till many years later when I saw The Crucible.

I don't like The Crucible, but I don't like a lot of important 20th century works of art, so that's nothing unusual. I will say that TC killed my love of Mist Over Pendle. I read Mist over Pendle seeing Margery as the lead in a fantasy novel, as I was accustomed to protagonist belief in witchcraft only in the fantasy context. Unfortunately, of course, it wasn't, and ten people were executed for somewhere between "local feud" and "being Catholic".

[Kaminsod]

John Greens "Looking for Alaska", along with "Macbeth" were really the only two required readings that i enjoyed.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

The ones that I remember are The faraway tree, Revolting Rhymes, Merchant of venice, To Kill a Mocking bird, The BFG and Guards Guards.

[Anythingatall]

Hmm. I was thinking about Mist over Pendle earlier. We read it in the second year of secondary school (now called year 8 in the UK), largely because our school was very close to Pendle Hill (one of Roger Nowell's descendants was actually in my class), and I really enjoyed it... till many years later when I saw The Crucible.

I don't like The Crucible, but I don't like a lot of important 20th century works of art, so that's nothing unusual. I will say that TC killed my love of Mist Over Pendle. I read Mist over Pendle seeing Margery as the lead in a fantasy novel, as I was accustomed to protagonist belief in witchcraft only in the fantasy context. Unfortunately, of course, it wasn't, and ten people were executed for somewhere between "local feud" and "being Catholic".

Pie Eater! :P

We read The Crucible, I hated it at the time but I hated everything we studied as the school had a way of sucking the interesting out of everything. Funnily enough my teacher also tied it into the Pendle witches.

[RandomUser191]

At which age/level of learning English?

I found the book interesting when I was in primary school, I read it in translation then. We had to read it in the last year of high school, at the age of 18, in English. It was waaaaay too easy both in content and in language for me and most of my schoolmates then. That book really uses basic English.

at the age of 19, end of highschool. it was part of our final exams in english. yes, the vocabulary and grammar are very simple but i don't think that was the point of reading it. we had to analyze the whole damn book (along with Salinger's Catcher in the Rye). Catcher was just annoying...

[Buckwheat]

at the age of 19, end of highschool. it was part of our final exams in english. yes, the vocabulary and grammar are very simple but i don't think that was the point of reading it. we had to analyze the whole damn book (along with Salinger's Catcher in the Rye). Catcher was just annoying...

Erm. Did you happen to go through the same school system at around the same time as myself? (Hint: I had to analyse the both books for the end of high school too.)