So what books did you read at school?

[waryan]

Firstly, I would like to introduce myself to the forums as this is my first post, by saying hello to all.

Anywho... so in speaking with my gf not too long ago, I discovered that although she had attended the same highschool as I, she was assigned very different texts than myself betwixt grades 9&12, such as Frankenstein, Great Expectations, and The Grapes of Wrath.

With envy I recalled reading nothing to be considered classic in public school, the closest being Farenheit 451, but even that was in Junior High!

So what do fellow board members remember being assigned to read in highschool, or have read so far in highschool?

Also, what state did you attend?

Thanks! :thumbs_up

[SirRaustusBear]

I went to high school in North Carolina and I read

Freshman Year
To Kill a Mockingbird
Great Expectations
Romea and Juliet

Sophomore Year
Things Fall Apart
A Doll's House
Cyrano de Bergerac
All Quiet on the Western Front
Siddhartha
Antigone
Epic of Gilgamesh
Night

Junior Year
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Huck Finn
Fredrick Douglas
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Great Gatsby
The Awakening
The Scarlet Letter

Senior Year
Heart of Darkness
1984
Brave New World
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Hamlet
Macbeth
Heart of Darkness
Lord of the Flies
Light in August
Turn of the Screw
The Stranger

I'm probably forgetting a bunch but that's what I can remember. The books were kind of hit or miss until senior year when I loved just about everything.

Edit: remembered a couple more

[johann cruyff]

Freshman Year
Iliad
Antigone
Medea
Epic of Gilgamesh

Sophmore Year
The Divine Comedy(just the Inferno)
The Decameron
Don Quixote
Hamlet
Romeo and Juliet
The Miser(Moliere)
The Sorrows of Young Werther

Junior Year
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Father Goriot
Great Expectations
U registraturi(Ante Kovačić,a Croatian author)
Madame Bovary

Senior Year
The Trial
Demian
Steppenwolf
The Stranger
The Death and the Dervish(Selimović)
The Damned Yard(Andrić)
Ugursuz(also a novel by a Bosnian author,Nedžad Ibrišimović)
One Hundred Years of Solitude

[Erichtho]

Grade 9
Intrigue and Love
Romeo and Juliet
A Village Romeo and Juliet
...

Grade 10
Faust 1
Some poetry by Pushkin
...

Grade 11
The Robbers
Germany, a fairy tale
The Sorrows of Young Werther
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Several short stories by Chekhov

Grade 12
The Reader
Nathan the Wise
Emilia Galotti
Faust 2
1984
A Hero of our Time (excerpts)

I know Ï've forgotten some books... I had no literature class, just a German, English and Russian class, so all works I listed were read in original.

[yassir elamrani]

FRESHMAN YEAR:
Tickets,please.
Indian camp.
The edge.
aroud the world in eighty days.
SOMPHORE YEAR:
shahrazad
Antigone.
Le rouge et le noire.
knock.
Candide.
La civilisation de ma mére.
don't look now.
Tom sawyer.
JUNIOR YEAR:
A begining and an end.(by Najib Mahfoud).
Head of the devil.(Njib Alkilani).
Senior year:
I remember not very well.

[kelby_lake]

Light in August
Turn of the Screw
The Stranger

Who were these written by? Are they good?

[SirRaustusBear]

Light in August is by Faulkner. It is kind of slow with a lot of focus on character's internal happenings but I liked it. A lot of my classmates found it boring but there are a lot of Faulkner fans on this board that can probably explain the good aspects of it better than I can.

Turn of the Screw is by Henry James. I loved it, it's a great mystery about a nanny who sees ghosts haunting the children she is taking care of and the reader must decide if she is insane or if the ghosts are real.

The Stranger is by Albert Camus and is one of the best books I have ever read. I can't recommend it highly enough, but that may be because I agree with the existentialist philosophy it espouses (though Camus did not agreee with the existentialist label).

[believin]

I went to high school in Texas. Here are some of those I remember (and I forgotten lots — forgive me; it was ages ago!):


Freshman
Romeo and Juliet
The Odyssey
Rebecca
To Kill a Mockingbird


Sophomore
Julius Caesar
Animal Farm
The Scarlet Letter
The Glass Menagerie
Poetry of Robert Frost
A Separate Peace


Junior
Antony and Cleopatra
The Crucible
Some stories Fitzgerald's stories


Senior
Beowulf
Macbeth
John Donne's poetry and essays
A Modest Propsal
poetry by Byron, Keats and Wordsworth
Parts of Walden
Lord of the Flies

[DCD1979]

Due to developmental delays, I can't really remember most of what I read. I know Lord of the Flies was sophomore year as well as lots of poetry in that chapter. Don't remember most, but my fave poet is Robert Frost. I share my birthday with E. E. Cummings. I graduated in Ohio in 1998.

[waryan]

some of these lists make me green with envy!

[papayahed]

Shoot that was a long time ago. The ones I remember are:

The Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
All the Kings Men
The Scarlet Letter
Huck Finn
The Bible
Hemlet
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet
Much Ado About Nothing
As you like it

[believin]

The Stranger is by Albert Camus and is one of the best books I have ever read.


I have to agree on this. I love that book.

I've also seen the title translated as "The Outsider."

[kelby_lake]

Yes, I was about to ask that :)

[kelby_lake]

We did To Kill A Mockingbird, Educating Rita, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It...

[Akeldama]

I can't remember absolutely everything I've read, especially considering that I read a lot on my own and will probably mix it all up. I haven't finished High School yet either...so...

Freshman Year
The Giver
House on Mango Street
The Lovely Bones
Romeo and Juliet
The Odyssey
A Raisin in the Sun
The Glass Menagerie
The Catcher in the Rye

Sophomore Year
The Art of War
Mythology
Whale Talk
Julius Caesar
Animal Farm
Candide
Cat's Cradle
Antigone
Lord of the Flies
Of Mice and Men

Junior Year (current year)
The Grapes of Wrath
A Handmaid's Tale
The Color of Water
The Great Gatsby
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Crucible
The Bluest Eye
Fahrenheit 451
The Life of Pi

[JBI]

Excluding poems, essays and short stories:

The Chrysalids
Twelfth Night

To Kill a Mocking Bird
The Glass Managerie
Romeo And Juliet

Cat's Cradle
Macbeth

The Great Gatsby
King Lear
Death of a Salesman

As you can see, as of now I am almost purely an autodidact.

This is Canada for you, no emphasis on English.

[kelby_lake]

What I read out of interest in high school was:
Crime and Punishment
A Tale Of Two Cities
The Idiot
The Trial
Vanity Fair
The Great Gatsby
This Side Of Paradise
The Last Tycoon
The Beautiful and Damned
Of Mice and Men
Lolita
Fahrenheit 451
A book called The Dark Room (can't remember author)
Brave New World
1984
Animal Farm
Brideshead Revisited
The Loved One
The Ballad of The Sad Cafe
Bleak House
Les Enfants Terribles
Giovanni's Room
Wuthering Heights
To Kill A Mockingbird (assigned)
The Immoralist
Catcher in The Rye
Where Angels Fear to Tread
The Metamorphosis


From busy reader :D

[mrsmtpspur]

Highschool-I really don't remember highschool. But some of the books I remember reading were, Illustrated Man, 1984, Brave New World and Farewell to Arms. Otherwise-read some poetry and plays-typical highschool required reading.

[kratsayra]

ooh, what fun. let's see what I can remember. I can't split it up by grade, then I'll get extra-confused.

I was in Philadelphia, but it was a private school, so I'm not sure how much the state matters.

- Romeo and Juliet
- The Hobbit (did I really read this in a course?! I think so, although it seems odd now)
- The Adventures of Huck Finn
- The Great Gatsby
- The Scarlet Letter
- The Awakening
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
- Fences
- Light in August (I think? or something by Faulkner)
- A Farewell to Arms
- The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
- Candide
- Lord of the Flies
- Love in the Time of Cholera

[RJbibliophil]

Ninth grade included:
Great Expectations
Lord of the Flies
Huckleberry Finn
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Importance of Being Earnest
A Tale of Two Cities

[grace86]

These will generally be in order from 9th-12th grade, but I have mixed them up a little bit on the years.

9th

Romeo and Juliet
Julius Caesar
The Pearl
Wasteland
Death of a Salesman

10th

Tale of Two Cities
Lord of the Flies
To Kill a Mockingbird
Blackboy (10th or 11th)

11th

The Great Gatsby
The Chosen (10th or 11th)
Grapes of Wrath
Moby Dick (parts)
The Crucible
Walden (parts)

12th

Hamlet
Autobiography of Lee Iacocca

[Dori]

What am I reading currently in high school? Words, words, words.

[sprinks]

Well I'm in year 11 right now in Australia and...

Year 8 I only remember doing Lockie Leonard

Year 9 we did Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz

Year 10 we did Anna's Story by Bronwyn Donaghy and Looking For Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta... Also we did Romeo and Juliet, but it was more of a focus on film interpretations of it.

This year (Year 11) we are doing King Oedipus by Sophocles, Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Chosen by Chaim Potok, The Crucible by Arthur Miller and then like poetry etc.

[Granny5]

I can't remember high school much either. It was soooo long ago. But I do remember reading Frost and studying poetry as lyrics by Paul Simon. It was a wonderful class.

[Petrarch's Love]

Wow, this is prompting sudden nostalgic flashbacks to high school...and making me realize I'm now old enough to be nostalgic about high school. :lol:

Freshman Year

To Kill a Mockingbird
Animal Farm
Romeo and Juliet
Great Expectations
Assorted Poetry

Sophomore Year

1984
All Quiet On the Western Front
Greek and Roman Mythologies
Twelfth Night
The Count of Monte Cristo
(Independent report on Howard's End)

Junior Year (what a year!)

Sermons by Jonathan Edwards and other early Americana
Essays by Ben Franklin
The Scarlet Letter
Walden
Poems by Whitman, Dickinson and others
Huck Finn
The Great Gatsby
The Grapes of Wrath
The Old Man and the Sea and Hemingway short stories
The Catcher in the Rye
(Independent project on Willa Cather's My Antonia)

Senior Year

Beowulf
Grendel
Canterbury Tales (unfortunately in translation :( )
Sonnets by Wyatt and Surrey
King Lear
Pride and Prejudice
(missed last half of the year, so don't know what the reading was)

[aabbcc]

(Exluded pieces of national literature whose names would probably not mean much to you.)

9th Grade
Homer - The Iliad (selected parts)
Homer - The Odyssey (selected parts)
Aeschyles - Prometheus Bound
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Sophocles - Antigone
Euripides - Electra
Euripides - Medea
Plautus - Aulularia
Virgil - Aeneis (selected parts)
Ovid - Metamorphoses
Epic of Gilgamesh
Bible - excerpts and selected parts
St Augustine - Confessions
+
Salinger, J.D. - Catcher in the Rye
Golding, W. - Lord of the Flies
Orwell, G. - Animal Farm
Some national lit plays

10th grade
Alighieri, D. - Inferno + selected cantos from other parts of Commedia
Boccaccio, G. - Decameron
Petrarca, F. - Canzoniere
Shakespeare, W. - Othello
Shakespeare, W. - Hamlet
Shakespeare, W. - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Calderon de la Barca, P. - Life is a Dream
Moliere - we had a choice between his plays
Cervantes, M. de - Don Quijote
Corneille, P. - Cid
Racine, J. - we had a choice, most of us did Fedra
Goldoni, C. - La Locandiera
Goethe, J. W. - The Sorrows of Young Werther
Goethe, J. W. - Faust (only first part was mandatory)
Schiller, F. - The Robbers
Pushkin, A. S. - Eugene Onegin

11th Grade
back in my old school:
Lermontov, M. Ju. - The Hero of Our Time
Balzac, H. de - Father Goriot
Flaubert, G. - Madame Bovary
Turgenev, I. S. - Fathers and Sons
Gogol', N. V. - The Overcoat
Dostoevsky, F. M. - Crime and Punishment
Dostoevsky, F. M. - Writings from the Underground

whilst we were about to do the latter, I changed school, and in new school:
Alighieri, D. - Purgatory
Ariosto, O. - Orlando Furioso
Ariosto, O. - Gerusalemme Liberata
Alfieri, V. & Goldoni, C. - a bunch of plays, though we had certain freedom in choosing what we wanted
Wilde, O. - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Hugo, V. - The Hunchback of Notre Dame or Les Miserables (I did the former)
Shakespeare, W. - Macbeth
Voltaire - Candide

They also made me make up for all the things I missed in their school, so I read a lot aside these. I didn't manage to read it all, so I left some for 12th grade, hoping they would forget about, but they didn't...

12th Grade
Alighieri, D. - Paradise
Verga, G. - I Malavoglia
Svevo, I. - Zeno's Conscience
Pirandello, L. - One, None and a Hundred Thousand
Pirandello, L. - The Late Mattia Pascal
Pirandello, L. - Six Characters in Search of an Author
Camus, A. - The Stranger
Ionesco, E. - we were given a choice between his plays
Proust, M. - Combray and/or Swann's Way
Beckett, S. - Waiting for Godot
D'Annunzio, G. - a novel of choice
Sartre, J.-P. - Nausea
Kafka, F. - The Trial


I probably missed some; other than not-so-known pieces of national literature, I excluded short stories, essays and such texts, and I included only works read for subject native language / literature, not also the things we read for foreign language / literature classes, or other classes.

[ben.!]

I'm currently in year 12.

Stuff I read out of interest AND I read for schoolwork were as follows:

6th Grade:

Bridge to Terabithia (We had it read to us!)

7th Grade:

Crossfire
Bridge to Wisemen's Cove

8th/9th Grade (Can't remember which):

Animal Farm

10th Grade (I took an advanced English class, called Enrichment English):

Things Fall Apart
Arthurian Legends
Lord of the Flies
Hound of the Baskervilles
Beowulf
Lord of the Rings
Erik the Red & other Icelandic Tales (Just Erik the Red)
The Republic (Selected bits)

For Drama:

A Midsummer Night's Dream

11th Grade:

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Importance of Being Earnest

For Drama:

Kinuta (The Silk Board)
A Doll's House
Summer of the 17th Doll
The Removalists
Medea

12th Grade:

Snow Falling on Cedars
Macbeth
The Crucible

For Drama:

The Caucasian Chalk-Circle

Stuff I read not related to school:

Heart of Darkness
War of the Worlds
The Time Machine
To Kill A Mockingbird
1984
A Clockwork Orange
Dubliners
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Sign of Four
A Study in Scarlet
The Hobbit
Life of Pi

That's all the stuff I've read that I can remember! Also, that's all the high literature I read, not the popular fiction type novels like Nick Hornby, Stephen King and Anthony Horowitz, or Lemony Snicket.

[kelby_lake]

I read The Metamorphosis! Weird but good
I read some of Catch-22 and liked it but it's v. long

[moose gurl]

9th Grade:

To Kill A Mockingbird (Lee)--loved it
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Smith?)--loved it
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)--I love anything Shakespeare
Animal Farm (Orwell)--didn't like it then, would probably like it now...
The Miracle Worker (Gibson)--a play about Helen Keller's tutor; was decent


10th Grade:

Picture Bride (Uchida)--about a Japanese woman who is sent to the Americas to meet her new husband and her struggle to adapt to society, very very good
Black Like Me (Griffin)--about a white reporter who colors himself black and travels through the South to find out how it feels to be hated because of race; a true story and incredibly riveting
Night (Wiesel)--probably one of the best accounts of the Holocaust, and there are a bunch
The Crucible (Miller)--meh, not a huge Miller fan
Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)--<3
The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)--yuck


11th:

A Light in August (Faulkner)--a favorite
The Awakening (Chopin)--not a huge fan, but not terrible
Great Expectations (Dickens)--a least favorite, though I love A Tale of Two Cities
Death of A Salesmen (Miller)
Wise Blood (O'Connor)--excellent
Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)--the best story about class differences involving a man who loves a woman who is above him in status
The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway)--another least favorite
A Raisin in the Sun--a play about a black family that stumbles upon some money and how the dreams over what they are going to do with it tears them apart


12th:

Hamlet (Shakespeare)
Cymbeline (Shakespeare)--though I think I spelled that wrong, this is my favorite Shakespeare play
Henry V (Shakespeare)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare)--also read in 6th grade
As You Like It (Shakespeare)--also read in 7th grade
Brave New World (Huxley)--loved it, but not as good as 1984
1984 (Orwell)--incredible
The Giver (Lowry)--while this is a children's book of sorts, we read it alongside Brave New World and 1984 for contrast, and I really enjoyed it
Pride and Prejudice--a least favorite
The Chosen--an excellent book about a Jewish boy who struggles against the expectations of those around him, very very moving
Wuthering Heights--YET ANOTHER least favorite
Macbeth (Shakespeare)--not my favorite Shakespeare
Parts of Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales--both enjoyable, though I wasn't crazy about them


Freshman/College:

The Joy Luck Club (Tan)--I really hated this book and didn't understand how it fit into our course at all, really awful
Generation X (Coupland)--Incredible anti-culture book, loved it
The Bluest Eye (Morrison)--Also loved it
The Bell Jar (Plath)--My all-time favorite work in this class, absolutely amazing, very real to me
Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)--I loved, loved, loved this book.
The Aeneid (Virgil)
The Iliad (Homer)--better than the Aeneid, IMO, very good
The Wisdom of the Prophet (Muhammad)--phrases from the Hadith, the Islamic text, actually interesting
The Mahabharata (condensed)--the ancient Indian script condensed to about 200 pages, again, actually really fascinating
Confessions (St. Augustine)--yuck
Purgatorio (Dante)--really disappointed because I never got a chance to read the Inferno first, but overall really enjoyed it
Praise of Folly (Erasmus)--meh, the first half was hilarious, the second half was a drag
Basically the entire Old Testament--incredibly painstaking
Hamlet (Shakespeare)--I'd read it a few times before


I'm from Alabama (Southern US).
This was just my required reading list since freshman year, high school. I left out all the poems and short stories we read, even the ones I really liked (Ambrose Bierce, Achebe), because this post is long as it is.
I also loved Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck) but I read that on my own time.

[Dark Muse]

In no particular order, as I cannot remeber exazactly when in highschool I read the following, and these are the best I can recall off the top of my head:

Oh and I went to Highschool in CA.

There may have been a few short stories we read as well that I simply cannot recall.

Of Mice and Men
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
The Little Prince
The Wizzard of Earthsea
Siddhartha
The Crucible
Othello
I also remember there was a book on mytholgy we read that I cannot remeber the name of

[Trystan]

Did you like them? Were you unsatisfied with them?

I read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare, and Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. And a little while before those three, I read Romeo and Juliet.

Personally, I liked Mockingbird, and disliked Shakespeare and Thomas. However, I feel that I can appreciate them both a lot more today.

[Dharmabeat]

For AS I studied Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and selected poems of Robert Frost. This year (A2), for the drama module, I've read Shakespeare's The Tempest and a play called Translations by Brian Friel.

When I was younger, we read Frankenstein for GCSE and selected poems from an anthology that included Seamus Heaney, Simon Armintage and others.

To be honest, I've not really enjoyed anything I've studied at school...

[Orpheus]

My school must have been a VERY poor one (I mean that both financially as well as the quality of education given). I cannot remember reading more than a handful of books in class or out of class in high school. Although I've ready nearly everything that has been listed, it wasn't until after graduation that I did so. That's really irritating. All of those hours locked away and we didn't even do anything worth while.

I went to school at Saint Francis HS in MN.

[cipherdecoy]

To Kill a Mockingbird
A Raisin In The Sun
A Dip In The Poole
Journey's End

How pathetic.

[Mockingbird_z]

at school. well it was a long tima ago, now i am at university so...
we had to read a lot at school but mainly Russian literature. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Bulgakov, Bunin, Blok, Gorky, and poetry. oh, Shakespeare! we read Romeo and Juliet too and Hamlet !!!!1
Certainly I read other books apart from what they said I had to read.
I loved Jack London.
only when I began learning English and was able to read in original did i start reading foreign literature.
First book I read in original was The Grapes of Wrath, I loved it.
then came:
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Sun also rises (Fiesta)
short stories by O.Henry
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Catcher in the rye
1984
The Return of the native (Tomas Hardy)
Sense and sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Old curiosity shop (Dickens) but in translation
Hundred years of solitude (also in traslation)
and some other books
this summer I am gonna spend reading a lot =)
wish me good luck

[Mockingbird_z]

ohh, I forgot to mention Virginia Wolf =) Missis Dalloway

[Hank Stamper]

For AS I studied Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and selected poems of Robert Frost. This year (A2), for the drama module, I've read Shakespeare's The Tempest and a play called Translations by Brian Friel.

When I was younger, we read Frankenstein for GCSE and selected poems from an anthology that included Seamus Heaney, Simon Armintage and others.

To be honest, I've not really enjoyed anything I've studied at school...

It seems like they have a far better education system in the US! I also went to school in the UK and frankly, compared to the lists here, it is a <<insert rude word here>> embarrassment.
From what I can remember we studied An Inspector Calls, Romeo & Juliet, the Merchant of Venice, Animal Farm and To Kill A Mockingbird

They are the only texts that stick in my mind, and I can safely say we studied nothing else of note. I did go to a very poor school though. Although it is probably more of a reflection of how utterly inept our education system is - many of the books US students are reading in high school, we are being taught at University

[sofia82]

Oh I become envious of all these lists. I have to do something to change the whole curriculum at school, but unfortunately i can do nothing ...

I wonder from which grade students start reading literary works in England, America & Australia? And which books!

[smartgirl]

I only finished my freshman year, so the list won't be long...

Night, Romeo and Juliet, we the living, othello, the old man and the sea, a greek mythology book, and (I'm sure) a couple more that I forgot.

But now... for summer reading, I have to read To kill a Mokingbird and Farenheit 451.. this will be...interesting!

[bej6s]

9th & 10th: (British school system)
Twelfth Night
Romeo & Juliet
Lord of the Flies
A Kestrel for a Knave
...

11th: (Virginia school system)
The Crucible
The Scarlet Letter
Death of a Salesman
Heart of Darkness
The Awakening
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Jane Eyre
lots of poetry

12th: (more focused on writing)
The Poisonwood Bible
The Bluest Eye
The Red Badge of Courage
Invisible Man
A Lesson Before Dying
more poetry
*and a huge book (~600pp) about a kid who had visions he claimed of the future, was really short, story was really slow; if anyone knows what I'm talking about, please tell me the title. I can't remember it.

[Niamh]

- The Hobbit (did I really read this in a course?! I think so, although it seems odd now)


I did the Hobbit in school also. :nod:
My secondary school only split up into Junior Cert and Leaving cert. Can remember much of what i read though.
Junior Cert

The Hobbit
The Silver Sword
Goodmight Mr Tom
Romeo And Juliet
and a few more that i cant remember and a whole load of poems.

For my leaving cert however, we spent two solid years practically analysing;
Hamlet
The Playboy of the Western World
Emma
and a mother load of poems for our Leaving cert exams.

[cipherdecoy]

Three more than my school. And yes, it is pathetic of both our schools and teachers. I know we had books at our disposal at school. The teachers chose not to use them. I've always kind of disliked elementary and high school teachers. I didn't find a single one of them "inspiring." Most of them did the very minimum of what was required and didn't give a darn about the students. I had one teacher, Mr. Palmer, for US History who did care that we learned. For the others, who weren't nuns, it was just a paycheck with a long vacation. They said as much. I'm not making the assumption.

Over here we follow the O Level syllabus, and we are required to do no more than two books because of limited time I think. I don't know about other countries, but for mine, we study the books for the Literature examination and nothing more. Well, in Singapore, it's all about examinations.

[John Goodman]

To Kill A Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, Tale of Two Cities, The Great Gatsby... as well as various short stories (I'm positive I missed a novel or two).

Plays:
Twelfth Night
Romeo & Juliet
Macbeth
Hamlet

[Joyeuse]

Well, I'm only a Freshman right now also, so this is just Freshman year.
oh, and I go to school in Florida, but it's private and I'm in Honors, so I guess it doesn't really make a difference what state I'm in.

To Kill A Mockingbird
Catcher in the Rye
Cry, the Beloved Country (By a guy named Alan Paton. Not sure how famous it is, but it was awesome. I find that I'm in love with African literature, though. So maybe I'm just biased, seeing as a lot of the other kids didn't like it.)
assorted short stories
assorted poetry
The Old Man and the Sea
The Human Factor (Graham Greene novel. It was a choice novel. Included it here because even though it is kind of just a trashy spy novel, at the same time, Graham Greene was great at making trashy spy novels works of lit.)
Crime and Punishment
On the Road
The Odyssey
Romeo and Juliet

This Summer I'm going to have to read Six Characters in Search of An Author, No Exit, Farenheit 451, and one choice book. I'm so excited. This is one of the best summer reading lists I've ever seen. I love plays and I've already read Farenheit 451 and it's one of my favorite books, so, suffice to say, I'm a happy man.

[slobone]

My school reading list wasn't that different from the others mentioned here, but I would like to put in a word for their summer reading lists. They had the inspired idea of assigning books that were actually fun to read in the summer. So I read things I probably wouldn't have otherwise, like The Once and Future King, and Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. I know there were others but I don't remember the titles at the moment...

And best of all, for some reason we never had to write a paper about these books when we got back to school.

[cipherdecoy]

In the US, teachers have a lot of leeway in choosing, I think. At least they did when I went to school.

One of my friends is an Englishman, but grew up in Singapore and now lives in the Canary Islands. He loved Singapore. Can't wait to go back. Said it was beautiful. I've never been there. The closest I've been is Hong Kong and Macau.

I guess the grass is always greener on the other side :rolleyes: Singapore is a clean, convenient and safe place. But our government's terrible if you're going to judge it by modern standards. It's definitely not beautiful to me, building after building isn't my idea of beauty :sick:

Anyway, over here, we have anything but leeway. Well not anything, but you get the idea. I think everyone is just as critical of their own countries, but oh wells.

[Ethan Roy]

I'm am only currently in the nith grade, but I have finished most the books we're to read in high school, keep in mind I attend a french school:

And then there were none
A midsummer night's dream
Romeo and Juliet
MacBeth
Lord of the flies
The crysalids (not sure if that's teh correct spelling)
A brave new world
The great gatsby
Hamlet
the martian chronicles

that's all I can remember off the top of my head

[Vincent Black]

I went to a public school in Australia

of the top of my head:
The butterfly war (crap)
Bend it Like Beckham (the book not the movie, yes it was crap and yes other English classes in my grade did Animal Farm) (crap)
Looking for Alibrandi
Romeo and Juliet
To Kill a Mockingbird
Macbeth
The Lord of The Flies

And yes we watched a lot of movies and studied sub cultures...

[Hank Stamper]

Bend it Like Beckham

I'm surprised they don't make you read Shane Warne's autobiography

[kilted exile]

As I have mentioned previously I was in the "idiot class" for lit. As such we only really read anything of note in the final 2 years I was in high school - the second year was when I was retaking the subject after getting a D the first year.

Blake - The lamb/ The Tyger/The sick rose (trainee teacher, she was trying to teach us meter, it didnt work - she had no control, we were an unruly lot)

Kesey - One Flew over the Cuckoo's nest (useless, teacher told us everything that happened in the book before we read it & refused to mark my essay because she disagreed with my premise about McMurphy not being a martyr)

Shakespeare - Romeo & Juliet (teacher picked some people in class to read out the different parts - the rest of us were left to either slept or talked among ourselves)

McCaig - Assissi

Crichton Smith - assorted poems

Not much there for 2 years, rest of the time was spent on worksheets or messing around in the school library.

[mjga]

Light in August
Turn of the Screw
The Stranger

Who were these written by? Are they good?

The Stranger by Camus is outstanding. I have taught this many times over and always am fascinated by the response. I have students who LOVE this book and cannot put it down. They argue points and are so empathetic to Mersault (main character). Then I always have a group that HATES it. My romantics I call them. They find the main character cold and unemotional and his life without purpose annoys them.

[coolestnerdever]

I'm currently in high school in Ontario, and it sucks because every year we only read one classic book and one Shakespeare play. Oftentimes the books we read aren't even that challenging either.

Grade Nine:
To Kill a Mockingbird
Romeo and Juliet

Grade Ten:
Animal Farm
The Taming of the Shrew
The Catcher in the Rye (I picked it to read for my cumulative project)

Grade Eleven:
The Catcher in the Rye (because my grade ten teacher never told me we would read it in grade eleven)
Macbeth
Emma (Picked for cumulative project)

I'm hoping next year the selection will be better.

[Sorceress]

The Scarlet Pimpernal, Oliver Twist, Harry Potter book 1-3, Heidi, Don Quixote, hmmm.... and many I don't remember

[TurquoiseSunset]

Lord of the Flies
A Midsummer's Night Dream
Romeo and Juliet
King Lear
The Hobbit
Animal Farm
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Great Gatsby
...I know there are a few more, but I really can't think of them now.

At my school (and most schools in my country) we didn't have summer reading lists and so on...I think I would have liked that. I read a lot over school vacations anyway, but it would've been nice if a few books were suggested to us, even if only for interest sake. Only now (I can afford books now since I started to work last year :)) am I starting to realise what I've missed out on. I have a lot of catching up to do!

[Tersely]

USA High School in Maryland-

9th-
Romeo and Juliet
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Various Shakespeare Sonnets
(can't remember the rest..)

10th-
I don't remember anything here besides The Crucible, this class was early American Lit and sadly not my strong point

11th-
The Great Gatsby
The Grapes of Wrath
(again I don't remember the rest..)

12th-
Macbeth
Hamlet
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(The best year so far and thats all I remember)

...my list is terrible.

[Jlee28]

I just graduated so you would think I'd remember...I know a few...

9th
To Kill A Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies
Romeo and Juliet

10th
White Fang (?)
Julius Caesar
...can't remember the rest!

11th
Don Quixote
The Last of the Mohicans
A Tale of Two Cities
Frankenstein
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
Things Fall Apart
Wuthering Heights
The Odyssey
...more I can't remember

12th
Assorted Sophocles plays
The Glass Menagerie
The Great Gatsby (2nd time I read it)
Macbeth
The Merchant of Venice
The Tempest
King Lear
Hamlet (2nd time through it)
...and more

I think I read some of these outside of school. I went to a private US school. I was the kid who took all the Lit classes though (I also read a lot of Byron, Hardy...etc. in one of my poetry classes). I think I took 5 or 6 voluntarily lol. Obviously one of them was a Shakespeare course as well.

[Loike]

I was at school (between the ages of eleven and sixteen) in England, and read, amongst other incredibly childish texts that I'm too ashamed to type here amidst such legends as Crime and Punishment:

Romeo and Juliet
Lord of the Flies
Best Words (a poetry anthology).

As you can see, the English syllabus wasn't exactly the most challenging or widespread - only three texts per academic year! - but thankfully the English Lit. course at college provided further (although still not quite big enough) scope for the avid reader. I read as part of the course:

Jane Eyre
Tony Harrison's poetry
The Crucible
Antony and Cleopatra
The Rover
William Blake's poetry
The Homecoming
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

They were the set texts, but I also read The French Lieutenant's Woman and The Handmaid's Tale for an extended essay that I had to write as part of the course.

I am so envious of those who were able to study Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina! :(.

xx

[dramasnot6]

11th:
Macbeth
Brave New World
Pride and Prejudice
The Crucible
12th:
Othello
No Sugar
The Handmaid's Tale
Frankenstein

I really wish we had read more classic lit earlier on,but the curriculum for all the English classes before 11th grade lit was awful.

[thelastmelon]

We didn't read a lot of novels in school, but here are a few that I can remember:
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende

I also remember reading a book titled Stone Cold, but I have no idea who the writer was.

[hhc]

I'm currently attending gymnasium, the equivalent of highschool in Greece. I don't know if you're interested in what teenagers are reading in school in a tiny, forgotten corner of the world, but I'll tell you anyway.

In 3 years, we have read:
1) 33, by Manos Kontoleon, a book about divorce addressing teenagers
2) Loxantra, by Maria Iordanidou, a book about a woman in Istanbul in the beginning of the 19th century
3) Uncle Petros and the Goldbach conjecture, I don't really remember by whom, a book about math and its impact on man
Warning: do not read any of the above books. Waste of time

Conclusion: If you're complaining about reading nothing classic in highschool, what can I say?
Education in Greece is a true hell for any litterature-loving teenager.

[Orual]

9th grade: portions of The Odyssey (though not enough that I understood Odysseus' journey was a story within a story), The Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Romeo and Juliet, various lit book short stories (I recall "The Interlopers," "The Lottery," "The Most Dangerous Game," "The Scarlet Ibis," something about shopping, and something where the boys declare that they are ugly at the end.)

10th grade: Fahrenheit 451, Julius Caesar, various lit book short stories (I recall "The Lottery" again, "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury, "Leiningen Versus the Ants," and something about a flood.)

11th grade: Nickle and Dimed, Of Mice and Men, and lots of non-fiction essays.

I've always been disappointed in the literature I've read at school. We don't read enough and don't delve in to what we do read. How do we get away with saying that To Kill a Mocking Bird is about nothing but racism and Fahrenheit 451 is about nothing except censorship?

[aabbcc]

I'm currently attending gymnasium, the equivalent of highschool in Greece. I don't know if you're interested in what teenagers are reading in school in a tiny, forgotten corner of the world, but I'll tell you anyway. [...]
Conclusion: If you're complaining about reading nothing classic in highschool, what can I say?
Education in Greece is a true hell for any litterature-loving teenager.

Isn't lykeio the equivalent of high school, and gumnasio that which is before lykeio? :confused: In that case, just wait till you come to lykeio and they push down your throat Homer and the rest of the crew. A friend has been telling me about that, being quite frustrated by how much they read classics, particularly antiquity (he goes to classical school though, like me in another country, so maybe it is due to the type of school and not national curriculum itself).

[idiosynchrissy]

I read tons of great books in H.S. (These are just the ones that I remember. A couple of them may be from before high school as it's all a big blur now.) I went to school in Texas.

White Fang
Death of a Salesman
A Doll's House
The Odyssey
Hamlet
MacBeth
Beowulf
Ethan Frome
The Scarlett Letter
Huck Finn
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Cyrano de Bergerac
The Great Gatsby
Fahrenheit 451
Animal Farm
Of Mice and Men
The Crucible
All Quiet on the Western Front
A Separate Peace
The Grapes of Wrath
Romeo and Juliet
The Glass Menagerie
Bless Me, Ultima
Flowers for Algernon
Stranger in a Strange Land
Walden
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Johnny Got his Gun
Night
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Dandelion Wine
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Canterbury Tales
Our Town
Twelve Angry Men
The Red Badge of Courage
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The Age of Innocence

[Nosajason]

I graduated nearly four years ago, but my memory has always been a shambles from the time I left the womb. Here's a tentative list in no particular order:

The Great Gatsby
The Most Dangerous Game
Old Man and the Sea
Macbeth
Hamlet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Lord of the Flies
Death of a Salesman
Black and Blue
Catcher in the Rye
Canterbury Tales
Some Poe
Frankenstein
The Crucible

Honestly, there's probably only a little more, but I can't remember. I didn't read the obvious ones like Of Mice And Men; I had to read those outside of school. That's fine though. In fact, I prefer reading and learning in college and on my own time. I'll stick to my old adage: High School in New Jersey will always be a systematic regiment of making one's mind soggy.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Grade 9:

The Merchant of Venice
To Kill A Mockingbird
A Ton of Short Stories

Grade 10:

Othello
The Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby


Grade 11:

Macbeth
The Crucible
Frankenstein
Great Expectations
Excerpts from The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner
Excerpts from the Bible (In english class, it was strange)

Grade 12:

King Lear
Heart of Darkness
The Scarlet Letter
Oedipus Rex
Excerpts from The Inferno
Atonement

[mercymyqueen]

We read far more than most, because of our system

I remember the books, but not necessarily the years in which they were read

The Awakening, Night, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Scarlet Letter, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist, Macbeth, Hamlet, Siddartha, A Tale of Two Cities, and many others

We read far more than most, because of our system

I remember the books, but not necessarily the years in which they were read

The Awakening, Night, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Scarlet Letter, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist, Beowulf, Macbeth, Hamlet, Canterbury Tales, Siddartha, A Tale of Two Cities, and many others