What's required reading in English schools?

[caspian]

I am personally happy Orwell has his own spot on this site. He's an amazing author and definitely should be required reading in schools. Then again I think Alice in Wonderland should be required, so there ya go :D

I really get interested. I wonder which authors, correctly which works of them are required reading by school programs?

[Dyrwen]

I'll think back to the past four years.. and let's see.

Scarlet Letter, Of Mice and Men, Death of a Salesman, Night, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Frankenstein, Othello..

That's all I remember having to read in English, there were parts of Beowulf and a few other stories, but I can't recall them. I'm pretty sure I barely read any of those or just Sparknoted them at some point. Ah, youthful rebellion and slacking off.

[mono]

Hmm, despite my difficult memory, the ones that I remember:
The Scarlet Letter
The Catcher in the Rye
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Turn of the Screw
Of Mice and Men
Grapes of Wrath
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
Stranger in a Strange Land

[Jay]

Not 100% sure I understood the question, but this semester we were working with:

Gulliver's Travels
Mrs Dalloway
Brand New World
Walden
The Importance Of Being Earnest
Heart Of Darkness
Waiting For Godot
The Bell Jar
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
Absolom, Absolom
Bartleby The Scrivener
The Horse-Dealer's Daughter
Modest Proposal
some of T.S. Elliott's essays
Canterburry Tales
Humphrey Clinker
Tristam Shandy
Macbeth
several sonnets and poems

Aside of a few works we were only required to read parts of the novels.

[RyuKid]

Ill tell you what we have to read In Grade 10:

Romeo and Juliet
The Alchemist
To Kill a Mockingbird
*Frankenstein
*Girl with the Pearl Earing

*=You have a choice between the books one which one to read

There definatley going to be more, I forgot which other ones we have to read.

[YellowCrayola]

Well, in the 10th grade it's the following:

- Of Mice and Men
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Animal Farm
- Their Eyes Were Watching God
- A Midsummer's Night's Dream
- Lord of the Flies

There are more, but I can't remembe them right now.

[becca2389]

All your book lists are really long compared to mine! Maybe this is because you're all at American schools or something? I go to school in the UK and you only get set a maximum of 4 or 5 books a year for the A levels exams that we sit in June. I personally don't think this is enough, but then again it's incredibly hard to revise for more at once

Anyway, for GCSEs (which lasted two years) I did

Of Mice and Men
The Merchant of Venice
Jane Eyre
Poems by Christina Rosetti, Emily Dickinson, RS Thomas and Robert Frost

For AS Levels this year, I'm

Death of a Salesman
A Passage to India
Antony and Cleopatra
The Franklin's Tale from Chaucer

[Nightshade]

my IGcse books were
Animal Farm
An Ideal husband
A view from a bridge
(An anthology by Seamus heaney cant remember what )
and somthing else but cantthink what

AS was
The handmaids tale
Hamlet
Faustus
The whitsum weddings By philip Larkin
A2
a long list but I chose The color Purple and Pamela or Virtue rewarded
Othello
John Keats
sasson
wilfred Owen
Jessie Pope
and then lots of ww1 poems
Pat Barker regeneration trilogy
Birdsong
and anything with ww1 as a theme more or less

[sayswho]

Yeah im in england at school at the moment and ive just finished english (YAWN). We have studied so far (and i'm almost at the end of the two year course):
Far From the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy
Much Ado About Nothing, by William Shakespeare
Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw
Short Stories from different cultures
Opening Worlds Poetry
War Poetry, by Wilfred Owen and Alfred Lord Tennyson
But my friend next to me here in french has a completely different syllabus

[Pensive]

I think that the following novels should be read in the 10th Grade:

Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
A Tale Of Two Cities
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
Pride And Prejudice
The Hobbit

[chmpman]

High school reading I can recall:
Of Mice and Men
Romeo and Juliet
1984
a book by Isacc Asimov, can't remember which
Huckleberry Finn
Lord of the Flies
Alice in Wonderland (we chose this in an honors class to read, not normal syllabi material)
and more...

[Virgil]

I think that the following novels should be read in the 10th Grade:

Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
A Tale Of Two Cities
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
Pride And Prejudice
The Hobbit
Pensy - What did you think of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? I grew up in Brooklyn, so it was one of our required reading.

[Pensive]

Pensy - What did you think of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? I grew up in Brooklyn, so it was one of our required reading.

I liked it a lot. I think that it is good for 10th Grade students, specially for American students.As far as I can recall, itwas published in 1943, probably a few years before you were born. I am very glad to find that you have read it in the school. :D

Can you remember in which grade did you read it?

[Virgil]

I liked it a lot. I think that it is good for 10th Grade students, specially for American students.As far as I can recall, itwas published in 1943, probably a few years before you were born. I am very glad to find that you have read it in the school. :D

Can you remember in which grade did you read it?
Yes it was before my time. I'm old, but not ancient.

I think I read it around the same grade, which would correspond to about 14 or 15 years old.

[hastalavictoria]

so far i've had to read:
Brave New World
A Tale of Two Cities
Gulliver's Travels
MacBeth
Hamlet
The Canterbury Tales
Beowulf
Frankenstein
The Catcher And The Rye
The Great Gatsby
The Crucible

...maybe some others.
and more to come seeing as how i'm not finished yet.

[Ryduce]

NO FAIR!!!!!!!
You guys got to read the good books.I was stuck with The Scarlett letter and Great Expectations AKA Snorefest 3000

Of Mice and Men!!! Jane Eyre!!!!The Catcher in the Rye!!!!!



You guys suck.

[chef]

hey i liked The Scarlett Letter, you have'nt read Hucklberry Finn?

[kilted exile]

Great Expectations AKA Snorefest 3000


I really dont get how people could dislike any Dickens novel - sure he has a tendency to use 25 words when 1 might do, but he is hilariously funny (or that could be just my wierd sense of humour).


On Topic.........At school I got to read:
Romeo & Juliet
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (which the teacher completely ruined)
Some poems by Blake (Little Lamb, Tyger, and Sick Rose)

The rest of the time in english class was spent doing pointless worksheets cos' the teacher couldnt be bothered teaching us.

[rachel]

I really dont get how people could dislike any Dickens novel - sure he has a tendency to use 25 words when 1 might do, but he is hilariously funny (or that could be just my wierd sense of humour).


On Topic.........At school I got to read:
Romeo & Juliet
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (which the teacher completely ruined)
Some poems by Blake (Little Lamb, Tyger, and Sick Rose)

The rest of the time in english class was spent doing pointless worksheets cos' the teacher couldnt be bothered teaching us.

Dickens was achingly sad and hilariously funny in my opinion. G.K.Chesterton once wrote of him something like this' Hans Christian Anderson came to stay with Charles Dickenson at a particularly hard time in his life. When he left Dickenson stuck a sign outside his house that said that Anderson had stayed there two weeks. It seemed like a month. :D

[softball336]

This year I've read:
Invisible Man (no not the "the invisible man"- I was disappointed)
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Lord of the Flies
1984
Heart of Darkness
and we plan to read:
Animal Farm and Hamlet

I wanted to read "Flowers for Algernon" (not sure if i've spelled that right) but my teacher wouldn't let us.

[TEND]

Wow, some of you guys are lucky to get to read so much good stuff in school. Here for required we have had,
Of Mice and Men
Several Edgar Allen Poe short stories
Midsummer Night's Dream
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
Catcher in the Rye
Animal Farm

and I think thats it although they are trying to remove Hamlet.Also since I had a really cool English teacher we got to read 1984 this year. Next year she said we'll do Hamlet even though they're removing it and Watership down, and she said for me she might teach us one of Kafka's short stories :D .

[Boris239]

Somehow all the lists contain not a lot of books. I graduated from a Russian high school- here is an approximate list of what we were reading during our next to last year:

Gogol "Dead souls"
Ostrovsky "Storm" and other plays
Turgenev "Fathers and sons"
Dostoevsky "Poor folk", "Crime and punishment"+ 1 out of "Idiot", "Brothers Karamazov" and "Devils"
Tolstoy "War and Peace" + either "Anna Karenina" or "Resurrection"
Chekhov short stories, "Cherry orchard"
Orwell 1984+ 1 out of Strugatskiy's "Doomed city", Zamyatin's "We" and Huxley "Brave new world"
Chernishevskiy "what to do" (one of the most horrible books I've ever read)

I'm probably forgetting something. The number of books is not a lot bigger, but the size of them is

[Boris239]

I wanted to read "Flowers for Algernon" (not sure if i've spelled that right) but my teacher wouldn't let us.

"Flowers for Algernon" is one of my favorite short stories- I absolutely love it

[permanentstain]

The God of Small Things
Heart of Darkness---my eyes bled
Things Fall Apart
Much Ado About Nothing
Brave New World
Macbeth
The Awakening
The Great Gatsby
The Catcher in the Rye
Of Mice and Men

[blondeatheart]

a lot of shakespeare

[Perceptor]

I had to read..

To kill a mocking bird
A merchant of venice
King Lear
Silas Marner (Jane eyre or pride and prejudice could also have been picked)
and poetry by TS Eliot, Sylvia Plath, WB Yeats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Bishop, Michael Longley.

[mingdamerciless]

weeell my GCSE course seemed to have some awful, some brillaint things to study
To Kill a Mockingbird (grrrrr)
Twelfth Night (actually didn't mind this)
Strange Meeting (tedious)
An Inspector Calls (loved it - lucky as i had to do a workshop, a portfolio and an essay on it)
Then i got to choose a pre 1900 novel to read, so i did tess of the D'urbervilles, but if i hadn't been taking literature as an extra i would have done 'A view from a bridge' *shudder* lucky escape
i think that's all the novels/plays certaintly not the best selection

[Shannanigan]

Well most of this seems pretty familiar to what I read in high school when I was living in California....good to know...

when I moved to St. Thomas my mom sent us to a private school and my education went to hell, though I do remember reading "The Glass Menagerie" and "Death of a Salesman" my senior year...I think that's about it.

[The Unnamable]

The rest of the time in english class was spent doing pointless worksheets cos' the teacher couldnt be bothered teaching us.
Perhaps he/she was busy on Lit Net. :D

[kilted exile]

Perhaps he/she was busy on Lit Net. :D


No, I have my doubts over her ability to even switch a computer on let alone use it.

[superunknown]

Not 100% sure I understood the question, but this semester we were working with:

Gulliver's Travels
Mrs Dalloway
Brand New World
Walden
The Importance Of Being Earnest
Heart Of Darkness
Waiting For Godot
The Bell Jar
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
Absolom, Absolom
Bartleby The Scrivener
The Horse-Dealer's Daughter
Modest Proposal
some of T.S. Elliott's essays
Canterburry Tales
Humphrey Clinker
Tristam Shandy
Macbeth
several sonnets and poems

Aside of a few works we were only required to read parts of the novels.
All in one semester? Blimey!

I go to an American school (in London), but here's what we had to read in grades 9 and 10

9: (I had a teacher who was pretty radical and adventurous and he went outside the traiditional curriculum quite a bit by introducing two very recent novels, and I thought it was great that he was willing to take such a risk and I was taken aback by how passionate he was about the subject, and he's now my favorite English teacher)
The Odyssey
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Catcher in the Rye
Everything Is Illuminated

10:
Huckleberry Finn
Hamlet
A few Hemingway short stories
The Great Gatbsy
Death of a Salesman
The Bluest Eye

For 11th and 12th grade in my school you get to choose what to take out of a list of classes, each of which lasts one semester. I'm in 11th grade, and at the beginning of the year I took Art of Poetry in which we looked at poems by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Frost, Yeats, Eliot, Wilfred Owen, E.E. Cummings, Bysse-Shelley, and a few others (can't remember them all) and then had to write our own poems, and right now in the second semester I'm taking Shakespeare, and we've done King Lear, King Henry IV Part One, and Othello. Next year I've enrolled for, in the first semester, Russian Literature and T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland (one entire semester spent on one poem, and we'll also be reading some of the works he references), and for the second semester I'll be doing 20th Century American Lit (by far the best century for American literature IMO, and really if there's any single country that outshone all others in the 20th century in the field of literature, you just can't beat a country that claimed Pound, Eliot, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Arthur Miller, Heller, Vonnegut, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Langston Hughes, and Toni Morrison, to name but a few).

[bugmasta]

It's been 10 years since I was in high school and I don't remember reading many of the great books on your lists. I have read many of them since and often wondered why we didn't read them in my school. For many of them I think it is because they are not "safe" books. For instance, 1984 and A Brave New World I really wish I had read in high school. However, the books deal with a lot of issues my school district would never allow in a reading program, issues such as sex and substance abuse. I think the closest we came to dealing with a sex in a book was The Scarlet Letter. And I think some parents spoke up against that one! I think it's great that superunknown had a chance to read modern authors like Eggars (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) in his class. I have read his other 2 books and look forward to reading this one soon. I think all the books I read in high school were by dead authors.

[Behemoth]

GCSE: Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Crucible, Poetry Anthology

AS: Hamlet, Translations, The Return of the Native, Keats

A2: Othello, Wuthering Heights + The Return of the Native, Carol Ann Duffy, Captain Corelli's Mandolin

::sigh:: oh, it's been a good few years' reading... :nod:

[aeroport]

Goodness, many of you seem to have attended schools with far more interesting syllabi than I did!

9: Romeo and Juliet
The Oddysey (thoroughly abridged, of course)
Lord of the Flies
The Gift of the Magi

10: Julius Caesar
Animal Farm
To Kill a Mockingbird

11: British Lit:
Some of the Canterbury Tales
Macbeth
Excerpts from Beowulf and Gulliver’s Travels
A Modest Proposal
The Merchant of Venice
Various samples of English poets: Gray, Pope, Marlowe, Donne, and so on

American Lit:
The Scarlet Letter
The Great Gatsby
excerpts from Walden
Civil Disobedience
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (those Puritans sure had a knack with titles, didn't they?)
The Crucible

12: AP American Lit
Hamlet
Brave New World
The Stranger
Frankenstein

(I took a dual-credit class in addition; we read the following)
Their Eyes Were Watching God
various short stories and essays, among them The Art of Fiction (James), Hills Like White Elephants, Barn Burning, The Loons, The Story of an Hour
plus three novels by an author of our choosing, for which I did three early novels by Henry James

[JRR006]

It's been a few years... let's see.

The Odyssey
Hamlet
Romeo & Juliet
The Canterbury Tales
Night
Brave New World
Lord of the Flies
Heart of Darkness
Things Fall Apart
Animal Farm
Jane Eyre
The Great Gatsby
Black Like Me
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Farewell To Arms
Oedipus Rex and Antigone

We read a few pieces by Kafka. I remember we read "The Awakening" by Chopin... and assorted poetry.

[Manfred]

I find it somewhat disheartening that virtually every American school teaches nearly the same course of study. Many of the books mentioned were the very same ones we were required to read when I was in school, and that was 30 years ago. It isn't so much that these are not classics, but that we are still teaching the same thing Dad and Grandad read.
As a student, I found many of these works to be vital and exciting, but others were dry and dull; especially to young minds. Why are these reading lists never revised?

[readingrainbow]

I have to say that in public American schools book shortages seems to be a huge issue that needs to be addressed. My generation is barely literate, unversed, potato couches. The books that are avaliable to the school, and happen to be avaliable in the appropriate quantity are the ones we read. I must say that until my sophmore year of school when we got a heaven sent teacher that we had no materials to care for. He brought his own books and let use them at times and through this we have gathered a wider range of reading.
Eigth grade advanced Engish....
Romeo and Juliet
The Odessy
Ender's Game
Treasure Island
The Invisible Man
Freshman year(Themes of Literature)....
The Pigman
Juius Ceaser
Antigony
Sophmore year(American Literature)....
The Crucible
The Scarlet Letter
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The American
The Pilgrim Delima
Junior year(Classical European Literature)....
1984
Frankenstine
Dracula
Robinson Crusoe
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Macbeth
Gulliver's Travels
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Stranger
Oedipus Rex
Canuberry Tales
Othello
Senior year(Advanced World Literature)...
Yet to be known.

[Manfred]

They seem to be more interested in training young people for the business world, these days.

[readingrainbow]

I really don't understand why the force it down our throats. We have one principal at our school that tries to force feed us the belief that the business world is the only world. I myself, find that I hate business. I don't want to be a skirt suit kind of girl. I'm more of a maiden skirt and corset girl. Haha...funny. Err..The United States public school system sucks. Well, it's the State's fault.

[spendle]

During the summer semester I took a Literature class, the class was broken up into three different sections: Short Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. We also had an optional section on the Fiction Novel. In the Short Fiction section I read "Barn Burning" by William Faulkner, along with other selections. In the Poetry section we cover many different styles of poetry written by many different poets; the poems that I wrote about were "Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare, "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell, and "she Being Brand/new" by e.e. cummings. We read "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles and "Death of a Salesman" by Auther Miller for the Drama section of the class. I did take on the optional assignment on the Fiction Novel, and I read "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I wrote essays on all of these works and I truly enjoyed all of them.

[Manfred]

I really don't understand why the force it down our throats. We have one principal at our school that tries to force feed us the belief that the business world is the only world. I myself, find that I hate business. I don't want to be a skirt suit kind of girl. I'm more of a maiden skirt and corset girl. Haha...funny. Err..The United States public school system sucks. Well, it's the State's fault.

I once heard it said that it is the job of the wealthy to rule, and the job of the educated to facilitate that rule. Everyone else, I suppose, are unsuspecting victims of the system. Welcome to facilitation 101.

[Jazzy_zZz]

10th grade:
Animal Farm
Little Red Pony
Of mice and Men

grade 11:
Ferenheit 9/11
Barometer
Cat's Cradel
The Chrysalids

Grade 12:
The Wars
Edible Woman
1894
One flew over the cookoo's nest
Maiden's tales ( not sure of the title but from Margeret Atwood...)


p.s this is from a second language class.. from what I remember.....Last year

[Serenata]

9th-
Romeo and Juliet

10-
Antigone
Animal Farm

11-
To Kill A Mockingbird

British Lit-
Beowulf
Canterbury Tales- Well, 7 or 8 of them.

[i_be_jimi]

this is a place to talk about the books you have and are reading for school

i just finnished Hullabaloo in the guava orchard by Kiran Desai
unless absolutly nessisary i would not sujest any one read this book

now tell me about what your reading....

[Stephanie B.]

well since i am in fact a high school student... The joys of low expectationsin the public school system
So far we have started To kill a Mockingbird and stopped at chapter 17 when the trial started then we began reading Romeo and Juliet and never finished that and the odyssey is yet again another book we started and never finished. Thank the lord that I've already read all of these more than once and so I'm not a complete ignoramous and don't form my opinions on the movie adaptations of classical literature. Well i have just been shoved off my soap box but do not dispair I'll soon return to rid the world of all people ignorant of the womderful world of literature.

[Niamh]

The Education system in Ireland has changed since i went to secondary school, but if i can remember for the junior cert you did some of the following;

(Certain books where done only by certain levels ie honours, ordinary or foundation. also following is system used within my secondary school.)

Goodnight mr Tom- all levels
Pride and Prejudice- Honours
The Hobbit- all levels
The silver sword- All Levels
To Kill A mocking bird- Honours and Ordinary level
Lord of the flies- Foundation and Ordinary

Romeo and Juliet- Honours and ordinary
Merchant of Venice- Honours and Ordinary
Our day Out- Foundation.
As for poems... cant really remember but i did do some Heaney and Robert Frost.


For the leaving cert it used to vary each year. not sure what its like now though.

I think it rotated something like this.

Hamlet, Playboy of the Western World, Emma (The ones i did)
King Lear, Portrait Of an Artist , Silas Marner?
MacBeth, Juno and the Peacock,.......??????

(cant remember! :( )

I think you also had a choice of plays like ( Pardon my spelling) Philadelpia Here I Come, Rozencranz and Guildenstern are Dead.

As For poetry... We use to have this Book called Soundings. Your teacher selected what poems you would learn according to what they believed might come up on the leaving cert exam. it had everything from Paradise lost- Milton, Keats, Donne, Dickinson, Marvell, Shakespeare, Chaucer etc. There was also an Irish section so had to learn Yeats, Kinsella, Kavanagh. I think there were one or two more.

there was also creative writing and media. (Analysing newpaper articles etc)

now they get to study films as well.

There was definately mre but i cant remember.:) It has been almost seven years since i left.

[Redzeppelin]

For the juniors: Huckleberry Finn, Black Boy, The Great Gatsby, The Red Badge of Courage, Spoon River Anthology.

For the seniors: Macbeth, Hamlet, Taming the Shrew, Crime & Punishment, Heart of Darkness, Grapes of Wrath - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (time permitting).

[livelaughlove]

Freshman year, my English class read the The Odyssey, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Othello, Lord of the Flies...Soph year was Macbeth, Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart, Sister of My Heart... and this year (advanced Am. Lit) we have read the Scarlet Letter, Puddn'head Wilson, Minister's Black Veil, The Things They Carried, Yellow Wallpaper, and about to get started on Great Gatsby.

In middle school (junior high for some), we did things like Midsummer Night's Dream, To Kill A Mockingbird, etc.

[ellen c]

we had to read Midsummer Night"s Dream and I hated Shakespeare!
later on in life during the blitz in London, a friend gave me his copy of the complete works of Shakespeare - he said it would help me to sleep!

Far from it - I discovered the tragedies and history plays and forgot all about Hitler and the bombing, it is really marvellous stuff.
I still do not care for the comedies!

[Vedrana]

I went to school in Australia, and like some of the British people in this forum, I would have to say our syllabus does not require THAT many texts.

Teachers are allowed to choose from a list of texts, and our teacher in year 12 chose for Paired Text study The Crucible and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. For single texts we read King Lear and watched The Piano. In poetry, we did Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and a few other miscellaneous poems. In addition to that, for Individual study I chose to pair up A Doll's House, which happens to be on the list of prescribed texts, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

In year 11, we did Macbeth (which I loved), To Kill a Mockingbird (Which I was not so keen on), and Wilfred Owen.

I have since discovered that Year 10 had to read The Lord of the Flies, which our class didn't read in year 10. The other year 12 english class studied Frankenstein (I was extremely jealous) and The Great Gatsby. All I can say about Year 10 English was that I was none too impressed by the choice of texts. We had to do Romeo and Juliet, although I would have liked to do a Shakespeare comedy, since we did tragedies in years 11 and 12.

[Valcaster]

You say that's a lot? You can count yourself lucky, our syllabus for the test we have to sit on the end of highschool consists of 30 books :P
(unlucky though from English literature we have only 'Macbeth' and "Heart of darkness')

[Vedrana]

I would hazard the guess that the reason the SSABSA education board in South Australia only allows such a small number of texts to be studied is mainly because it's believed that you simply can't go in depth with more than the four texts and the one thousand lines of poetry. And this is because the exam is only three hours long, and in that time you are required to write two essays and answer a Critical Reading section (which you can't really 'prepare' for). So really, if we had been given thirty texts in one year, that would make studying for the exam 'slightly' more complicated.

But anyway, I am in awe of anyone who can manage to study thirty texts in depth in one year!

[Mugwump101]

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn was rather good and I loved it. I read it Freshman Year in High School.

We had to choose from a list of books which book to do for literary criticism and I choose The Iliad by Homer.

[paulteach]

Hello - I am an English teacher and have worked in 3 public schools in California...Each level is required Shakespeare. American Lit. is Junior year and British Lit is Senior year...the rest depends on the parents, book availbility, money, and so on...

[Lozenge121]

For GCSE, we studied:

Of Mice and Men,
A View From the Bridge,
Romeo and Juliet and whatever poetry we wanted

And for AS, I'm studying;
The Mayor of Casterbridge
King Lear,
Carol Ann Duffy and
The Glass Menagerie

[pacook]

In Ohio, we read our freshman year - Julius Caesar, Antigone, To Kill a Mockingbird. Sophomore - all I can remember is The Birds and I Am the Cheese
junior Year - all American Authors. Senior - Macbeth, The Giver, Beowulf, Canterbury Tales

[Lozenge121]

I read To Kill a Mockingbird, after getting halfway through it at school and them deciding they didn't have enough books, so we switched to Of Mice and Men, I love To Kill a Mockingbird.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Oh let's see...

Grade 9-

Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare
To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee
Lamb to the Slaughter by Dahl(and some other short stories)

Grade 10-

Othello by Shakespeare
Great Gastby by Fitzgerald
Catcher in the Rye by Salinger

Grade 11-

Macbeth by Shakespeare
The Crucible by Miller
Frankenstein by Shelley
A study of Genesis (studying the Bible in English was interesting)
The Rhyme of the ancient Mariner by Coleridge
Great Expectations by Dickens(for an Independant Study Unit)

Grade 12-

King Lear by Shakespeare
Odeipus Rex by Sophocles
The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne
Heart of Darkness by Conrad
Dante's Inferno (a few cantos in depth, the rest more generally)
Atonement by McEwan (for an Independant Study Unit)

[litgirls]

Well we're reading Sense and Sensibility and Dracula. hmm...

[metal134]

Here's what I can remember as the reading when I was in HS (in no particular order):
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Animal Farm
The Inferno
The Odysser
Lord of the Flies
Frankenstein
Beowulf
Antigone
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
The Importance of Being Ernest
The Sound and the Fury
Gilgamesh

[Ruth?]

For GCSE we did
To Kill A Mockingbird
Twelth Night/Romeo and Juliet
The Mayor of Castorbridge/Far From The Madding Crowd/Great Expectationsand a poetry anthology, with two sections on poetry from different cultures and some by Carol Anne Duffy (I espeially loved <i>Havisham</i>) and oher poets that I don't recall.

AS level this year I am doing
A Streetcar Named Desire
Frankenstein (Some classes are doing Emma)
A poetry anothogy with loads of poems spanning eras and countries
and Hamlet For which unfortunatly my teacher is a drip, and most uninspiring, which is a shame as I really love Shakespeare

[Ruth?]

Oh, and The Crucible at GCSE, for English and Drama (Man that got confusing exam wise)

[Bysshe]

I'm still only in my GCSE year, but we've studied:

Pride and Prejudice - Coursework
Macbeth - Coursework
A selection of WWI poets - Coursework

Lord of the Flies - Exam
An Inspector Calls - Exam
A selection of pre-1914 poems, including work by Keats, Donne, Browning, Shakespeare and others - Exam

And now we're studying a selection of "poems from other cultures".

[liesl]

i'll try to remember most of the stuff i've done (stretch my mind a bit :p )

GCSE
Lord of The Flies
Hamlet
something by D.H.Lawrence
poetry by Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy etc. (went to a terribly dull poetry reading by all of the authors)

AS level
Othello
poetry by John Donne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

A level
Top Girls - play by Carol Churchill
poetry by Emily Dickinson
The Woman in Black - Susan Hill
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
Measure for Measure - Shakespeare

1st Year University (different Modules)
The Literary Canon
Hamlet
Paradise Lost - Milton
Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
Lyrical Ballads - Wordsworth
Pride and Prejudice - Austen
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Dubliners - James Joyce
The Wasteland - T.S.Eliot
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

Other Canons
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
Carol Ann Duffy poetry
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S.Lewis

US Genre Writing
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson poetry
Robert Frost poetry
Tales of Mystery and Imagination - Edgar Allan Poe
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee

Special Author - Thomas Hardy
Far From the Madding Crowd
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Jude the Obscure

2nd Year University
Writing Women
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil - Fay Weldon
Rebecca - Daphne DuMaurier
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

Identity and Writing
The Knight's Tale - Chaucer
The Duchess of Malfi - Webster
John Donne poetry
Aphra Behn poetry
The Rape of the Lock - Alexander Pope
Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
Othello
The Tempest
Shakespeare's sonnets

Post War US writing
Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
The Crucible - Arthur Miller
Sylvia Plath poetry
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Seize the Day - Saul Bellow
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D.Salinger
Elizabeth Bishop poetry

Novel and Narrative
Bleak House - Dickens
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing

phew! i must admit the list looks longer than i thought it would, i guess i've had to read a lot. As you can see uni is all about many books, don't do literature at uni unless you REALLY enjoy reading! This list also highlights that i've had to do a few books twice (carol ann duffy, othello, hamlet, the bloody chamber)

[Niamh]

The Woman in Black - Susan Hill



That is one of the best plays i have ever seen! When i was fifteen my english teacher brought my class to see it when it was on in the theatre. I was more afraid of that ghostly woman in black than i've ever been afraid of a horror movie. The intensity the actors created on the stage was amazing!

[colormyworld]

For AP English we did/have done:

Summer Reading (picked three):
-Brave New World
-Life of Pi
-Pride and Prejudice
-White Noise
-Jane Eyre
-and something else...

During school we read:
-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
-Waterland
-Beloved
-Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
-Maus (comic book)

In debate class we read 1984

[iloveamano]

I don't really remember 9 or 10th grade, but last year's choice made an impression and so did this years' books.

The Crucible
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Great Gatsby
Ceremony (by Leslie Silko)
Hughes poetry and Walt Whitman

this year:
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
Running in the Family
Siddharta
The Stranger
The Baron in the Trees
A Midsummer's Night Dream
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Hamlet
No Exit (currently)

I was looking at all the other book lists and I realized that, true West Coast style, the district and teachers had us reading mostly Modernist and Postmodernist literature. Philosophy wise, we mostly dipped our toes back and forth in the same two pools, Existentialism and anything dealing with a spiritual cavity and hollow society unfit for whatever our true desires are. And no philosophies with absolutes of any kind, religious or not, really, don't even ask. I just thought it was interesting that O'Riley tags California as a "secular progressive state" and that we seem to read accordingly. Though I wonder if any nonsecular-progressive state reads almost the opposite, whether they have more of the Classics of American Literature in their curriculum....

As for Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Chronicle...) , does anyone not next to Mexico have him constantly mentioned in class? I personally loved his Chronicle of a Death Foretold but cursed his 100 Years of Solitude.

[liesl]

That is one of the best plays i have ever seen! When i was fifteen my english teacher brought my class to see it when it was on in the theatre. I was more afraid of that ghostly woman in black than i've ever been afraid of a horror movie. The intensity the actors created on the stage was amazing!

although i am not fortunate enough to have seen the play i would still recommend the book to anyone, either without seeing it acted out the character of the woman in black had me terrified. More terrified than i ever was from any other book or film..i had to sleep with the light on whilst i read it! :p

[tinustijger]

I'm in school in the Netherlands and for English we read:
- Cal, by Bernard MacLaverty
- Of Mice and Men
- Pride and Prejudice
And we did some other books, I don't really remember...

For Dutch we read a few more books ofcourse:P

[AimusSage]

I'm in school in the Netherlands and for English we read:
- Cal, by Bernard MacLaverty
- Of Mice and Men
- Pride and Prejudice
And we did some other books, I don't really remember...

For Dutch we read a few more books ofcourse:P
Indeed, a few more, still not many, what is it, 10-15 books? depending on Havo or VWO level.

[Aiculík]

Errr... what is GCSE? And what age is "grade 10"? :eek:

In my country, we have
elementary school, which has 9 grades, age 6 (if the kid's birthday is before August 31) to 14,
secondary school, which is 4-5 years (usually 4, but some private, bilingual etc. have 5), age 14 - 18,
university (called "high" school :))

Kids are supposed to read a lot - they usually get a list of books, 1 book for each month of school year (well except smallest kids in first grades of course).

But no way they could read Hobbit or LotR! These books are not considered appropriate to shape young reader's literary taste... though new generations of teachers disagree... From "world" literature, higher grades of elementary shools, and secondary schools are supposed to read books by Dickens, Hemingway, Salinger, Stendhal, Moliere, Voltaire, Gogol, Remarque, Rolland, Wilde, Mann... to mention just few. But usually they consider it all boring and cheat anyway. :D

[tinustijger]

Yes, it's a few,, I'm doing VWO and in three years we had to read 12 books. That's doable anyway :P
But I don't mind reading the books, love reading them as a matter of fact, I just hate it that you're so busy with analysing and everything,, it's nice for a few books, but sometimes I just wat to read!

[AimusSage]

Yes, it's a few,, I'm doing VWO and in three years we had to read 12 books. That's doable anyway :P
But I don't mind reading the books, love reading them as a matter of fact, I just hate it that you're so busy with analysing and everything,, it's nice for a few books, but sometimes I just wat to read!
I had a teacher who was asking details on a book I read two years ago, how am I supposed to know what colour raincoat it was, it might have been significant, but Aaarrrghhh... I DON'T CARE! I don't memorize details like that, but oh well, just another example of the wonders of dutch education in regards to literature. I was actually one of the few who read and enjoyed the books, but don't ask me for weird details or to explain it in a way that's pleasing to the teacher... Suffice to say, in the end I got a 5 on my diploma for literature, while people who just read a downloaded essay got a higher mark. :flare:

It's good to know not much has changed over the years. :)

[Madhuri]

I am amazed at how much you guys read at school. We didn't read any novels. Here the books are recommended by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). For English we had two books that contained short stories by Indian as well as other authors. If we wanted to read novels we could get those issued from the library. I remember even when I was in a higher standard (don't remember which class), I would read Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew, etc. Well, actually I had no idea what else to read, but, once when I was in the library my English teacher caught me and scolded me and said that these books are suited for 4-5 class students. She said that she doesn't want to see me with such books next time. I went in the other section and picked up Anne of Green Gables, LM Montegomery. I used to think that books that have very small font and no pictures will be very boring reads. But, I soon found out that I was wrong and this book made a lasting impression on me. I still remember it's story. :D Thanks to my teacher I have read some good novels so far. I doubt if anything has changed in the curriculum (rigid authorities :rolleyes: ), except for a few short stories included or excluded.

Besides all this we used to write essays, learn grammar, read poems etc.

EDIT -- I just realised that Anne of Green Gables also comes under children novels, which means, I never grew out of kids section ~sigh~ :rolleyes:

[chaplin]

I had a class that required:

Life of Pi
Peace Like a River
Man's Search for Meaning

Three books that were very different from the other required reading for my other English classes, e.g. Huck Finn, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath)

[~*Dark Faerie*~]

Well I'm a homeschooled high school student in the US so I don't know exactly if this will answer you question but I'll give it a go. We combine both my literature and history together--in other words when we studied the Medieval era we read Chaucer, Sir Arthur Malory, the Koran, Beowulf, etc.
Obviously they're not all original in English, but I've included world lit. Since that's what I do for "English/literature class"


In middle school here's a few (I can remember):

Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night


9th-------------------------

The Consolation of Philosophy
The Koran
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People
Beowulf
Dante's The Divine Comedy
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Canterbury Tales
Le Morte d' Arthur
The Prince
Utopia
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene
Henry V
Hamlet
King John
Julius Caesar

10th--------------------------------------

Meditations by Rene Descartes
The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge
Pride and Prejudice
Frankenstein
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Oliver Twist
Jane Eyre
The Scarlet Letter


*sorry I did this fast if there's any typos*

[Nightshade]

The Koran?! What all of it.... how do you study an interpritation Koran as a text I Imagine alot of the languge contextal points ae lost pluss alot ties in with Islamic history and people....although I suppose one with a tafseer.

Who's interpritation/translation?

[Niamh]

the new curriculum in Ireland for junior certificate now consists of Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Artemis fowl, as well as all the ones they had when i was doing my junior cert (ten years ago:sick: )

[Truth>Reason]

We get to read Of Mice and Men, I only just started 3rd Year so I don't know all the books we are going to read, although we may read Animal Farm, which I have already read.

[Lyn]

On the syllabus I know for GCSE, the amount of reading required is pathetically low.
For the exam:
- one modern novel, usually Of Mice and Men or Lord of the Flies
- a selection of poetry (around 25 poems usually covers the exam requirements).
For coursework:
- one Shakespeare play (usually just extracts - they can get away with two scenes and a basic knowledge of the plot)
- one modern play (An Inspector Calls or something akin)
- one pre 1914 novel (Usually done through short extracts from Dickens).

And that's it for two whole years. In my opinion, the A level course is also really light. For example, in the first term all they really have to read is one modern novel and one Shakespeare play.
in comparison to courses in other countries, I think this leaves students who go on to study English at University really very unprepared, unless they have read more widely independently.

[~*Dark Faerie*~]

The Koran?! What all of it.... how do you study an interpritation Koran as a text I Imagine alot of the languge contextal points ae lost pluss alot ties in with Islamic history and people....although I suppose one with a tafseer.

Who's interpritation/translation?


Oh no! :eek: I guess I should have put that up there. No, I read selections from the Koran. We were studying that time frame (i.e. The Rise of Islam). I use a college history textbook (Western Civilization by Jackson J. Spielvogel), along with other sources for studying, then we read first sources (the Koran). I like to consider it more of an introduction, something I'd like to study more in depth at a later time. Almost all on the list I read in full, though a select few like the Koran, I don't read all of, since one school year really does not give enough time for.
Frankly with so many books we have to buy each year, we search for the best edition for what we're looking for but, if our library has an edition we'll just use that. Otherwise it can become very expensive. For the Koran we used: 1st Touchstone ed. Simon & Schuster, which was at our library.
I hope that answers your question!;)

[brimstone]

For GCSE :
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A View From The Bridge by Arthur Miller
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A collection of modern poetry
Some Australian short stories.

For AS Level, I did :
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Thomas Hardy poetry.
The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare (for coursework)
All My Sons by Arthur Miller

[integrity]

You guys are reminding me of some of the required reading I had when I went to high school back in the mid-80's (in California):

The Great Gatsby
Canterbury Tales
Fahrenheit 451
Grapes of Wrath
Catcher in the Rye
Lord of the Flies
Macbeth
Oedipus Rex
The Crucible
Of Mice and Men
Beowulf
Never Cry Wolf
Julius Casesar
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Crucible
Animal Farm
Scarlet Letter
1984 (read that in the year 1984, naturally)
The Death of Ivan Illych
Pgymalian
One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich

I hated John Steinbeck back then (cursed him through every chapter I was "forced" to read). Now he's one of my most beloved authors.

Edit: Oops, didn't realize how old this thread is...sorry for the bump. What do you want...I'm just a goofy newbie. Gahhh...

[TomatoSauce]

From what I remember as the blur that is high school, here's how things went.

Freshman year:
To Kill a Mockingbird (I was surprised. I had read this when I was much littler)
Romeo and Juliet
and some stuff I forgot

Sophomore:
We mainly read excerpts from translated world literature like The Tale of Genji, the Odyssey, the Illiad, the Epic of Gilgamesh, etc.

Junior:
The Scarlett Letter
The Great Gatsby
What is the What (Eggers)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
lots of Annie Dillard, Carl Sagan and associated authors who write about literary theory [except my favorite, of course, Michel Foucault]
The Crucible
and some other stuff

Senior:
Hamlet
Macbeth
1984
Their Eyes Were Watching God
How to Read Literature like a Professor
A Room with a View

My year pursuing my French baccalaureat consisted of Candide, A Sentimental Education, something by Marimee, Flowers of Evil, Confessions of a Child of the Century, Madame Bovary, The Plague, The Stranger, Nausea, something by Cesair and something else by Zola. There was more but I guess I forgot.

[Dr. Hill]

This year:

Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
The Awakening, Kate Chopin

Medea, Euripides
Beowulf, ?
Othello and Macbeth, Shakespeare
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Hard Times, Charles Dickens
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

[Homers_child]

Hmm this year I read...

Beowulf
Excerpts from Canterbury Tales
Epic of Gilgamesh
Excerpts from La Morte D'Arthur
Renaissance poetry like John Donne, Raleigh, Marlowe, Suckling, etc.
Restoration such as Johnathan Swift, Pope etc.
Romantic poetry
Victorian poetry

Novels/Plays of...
Fahrenheit 451 (I would have preferred 1984 but oh well, I read it myself)
Macbeth
Hamlet
Frankenstein
Slaughterhouse Five

Hmm, right now we are reading poetry from the 20th Century and are about to read I think some excerpts from The Stranger by Camus.

[joao_oliveira]

I wouldn't mind being english just to read and study all that stuff. You have to read some of my favorite novels, which I had to discover on my own.

[five-trey]

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
Waiting for Godot (Beckett)
Invisible Man (Ellison)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
Oedipus Rex (Sophocles)
To A God Unknown (Steinbeck)
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)
The Crucible (Miller)

That was the focus of our study in the past year. These were only the full length novels we read, however. In addition to that, we had to read a plethora of excerpts, essays, and poetry from writers like John Milton, Thomas Paine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman.

Aside from that, I read on my own:

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Mourning Becomes Electra
Native Son
Moby Dick
Of Mice and Men

[mystery_spell]

Not sure that I can remember them all, but this was high school...

Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane
Twelfth Night William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare
Macbeth William Shakespeare
King Lear William Shakespeare
Hamlet William Shakespeare
A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams
The Plays of Oedipus Sophocles
A Doll's House Henrik Ibsen
The Crucible Arthur Miller
A Raisin in the Sun Lorraine Hansberry
Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë
Great Expectations Charles Dickens
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift
The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Awakening Kate Chopin
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
The Color Purple Alice Walker
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
The Perks of Being a Wallflower Stephen Chbosky
Lord of the Flies William Golding
A Separate Peace John Knowles
Animal Farm George Orwell
Brave New World Aldous Huxley
1984 George Orwell
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
Rocket Boys Homer H. Hickam, Jr.
Sister of My Heart Chitra Banjeree Divakaruni
Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston
Passage to India E.M. Forster
Bread Givers Anzia Yezierska
As I Lay Dying William Faulkner
Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
Ethan Frome Edith Wharton
Bless Me, Ultima Rudolfo Anaya
The Once and Future King T.H. White
The Odyssey Homer
Triangle David Von Drehle

As I mentioned, I could not remember all of them. But, on top of these, we also read a lot of poetry.

[acdouglas92]

Well, these are the novels I've had to read so far in my high school career, as far as I can remember:

Beowulf
The Joy Luck Club (Tan)
The Odyssey (Fagles translation)
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Odor of Chrysanthemums (Lawrence)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and Henry IV (Shakespeare)

...and that's all I can remember. Hope that helps!

[AmericanEagle]

Romeo and Juliet
To Kill a Mockingbird
As You Like It
Lord of the Flies
Animal Farm
Obasan - Joy Kogawa
Macbeth
The Handmaid's Tale
Snow Falling on Cedars
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet
Heart of Darkness
The Glass Menagerie

[Takeahnase]

I've just finished my English Literature A level and over the two year course, these are what my class read:

Hamlet
The Tempest
Translations
The Bell
Our Country's Good
The Merchant's Tale
Hard Times
Poetry Anthology

For GCSE all I can remember studying is Macbeth. Everything else is lost from my memory. :blush:

[meh!]

I can tell you what I had to read in five years at school (if I'd stayed for sixth year I would have read more, obv):

To kill a Mockingbird
The Cone Gatherers (excellent book by Robin Jenkins)
Othello
Macbeth
Of Mice and Men
I read the curious incident of the dog in the nightime for my 'personal response' (an essay)
I can't remember anymore, but there were a few.

I really can't remember all the poets but some were:

Phillip Larkin
Seamus Heaney
.. that's all I can remember, haha.

Only a couple of years ago as well.

[AllyFizzle]

Just graduated high school and it seems alot of schools have added In Cold Blood into the curriculum. Already in it were:
The Catcher in The Rye
The Great Gatsby
Shakespeare

[hot4jwg]

Great Expectations
Animal Farm
The Scarlet Letter
The Crucible
The Old man and the Sea
The Great Gatsby
Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes
Beowulf
Of Mice and Men
To Kill a Mockingbird

[IceM]

As a Junior in High School, let me rattle off some of the books/plays we've had to read.

Heart of Darkness
Othello
Bless Me, Ultima
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Antigone
Oedipus Rex
The Pearl
Of Mice and Men
Lord of the Flies
The Crucible
The Scarlet Letter
Slaughterhouse 5
Ethan Frome
Freakonomics
1984
Brave New World
The Old Man and the Sea
Animal Farm
Mere Christianity

[Travis_R]

I've had to read:

Julius Caesar
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
1984
Flowers for Algernon
Finding Fish

and each year I've also had to read a novel of my own choosing, which were Slaughterhouse-5, The Sound and the Fury and Lolita. As you can see, most of my teacher's choices were sound except for Finding Fish.

[Mariamosis]

I remember reading "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Metamorphosis" in middle school.

....the reading list (that I remember) from the 4 years I was in high school:

Night
Oedipus Rex
Macbeth
Beowulf
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Fallen Angels
Lord of the Flies
The Scarlet Letter
Animal Farm
The Crucible

I remember my older brother had to read "A Tale of Two Cities", "Of Mice and Men", "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "The Catcher in the Rye" among others.

[ForKnowledge]

Atlantic Canada

To Kill a mockingbird
the giver
the oddessey
lord of the flies
knight
romeo and juliet
stone angel
lotr the fellowship
the pearl
huck finn
the catcher in the rye

[lowradiation]

I find myself strangely interested on the choices of Literature throughout school.

From Year 10/11 age 15/16 (GCSE Level):

J.B Priestly - An Inspector Calls
William Golding - Lord Of The Flies

(I honestly CANNOT for the life of me remember what else we did...)

From A Level (Age 17/18):

Year 12:

Austen - Pride
Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
Caryl Churchill - Top Girls
Shakespeare - Richard III
Hardy - Tess
John Fowles - French Lieutenants Woman
Shakespeare - Measure For Measure
Tennyson - Selected Poetry

I'm now doing english literature and history and degree level, just finished all the texts for first year:

Shakespeare - Titus Andronicus
Aphra Behn - Oroonoko
Milton - Paradise Lost
Defoe - Moll Flanders
James Hogg - Private Memoirs and Confessions...
Coleridge - Selected Poetry
Austen - Sense and Sensibility
Bronte - Jane Eyre
Bram Stoker - Dracula
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper
Conrad - Heart Of Darkness
Kipling - Kim
Woolf - A Room Of One's Own
Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea
Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
Angela Carter - The Bloody Chamber
Alan Warner - Movern Callar
Annie Proulx - Close Range and Others

I have my reading list for my second year modules but I can't be bothered typing it out!

[LitNetIsGreat]

I was thinking that was a little short on the primary texts for first year degree, but then I saw that you were doing history too so it seems about right. Either way it goes to show just how limited GCSE study really is in terms of breath of material. I know that it is only situated in the 14-16 age range, and everything that comes with that, exams/coursework etc, but in terms of the vast majority of people who don't study literature beyond this level for me only shows its real inadequacy in giving people a wider scope of what is out there. Not good enough for me at all. Yes there would have been extracts of things further down the line, perhaps a whole Shakespeare play (usually Romeo and Juliet) but in terms of providing the vast amount of people in society with anything like a timeline of literature the two year GCSE certificate is far from anything like acceptable for me.

[Werefairy]

This year I've read:
Invisible Man (no not the "the invisible man"- I was disappointed)
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Lord of the Flies
1984
Heart of Darkness
and we plan to read:
Animal Farm and Hamlet

I wanted to read "Flowers for Algernon" (not sure if i've spelled that right) but my teacher wouldn't let us.


You should pick up "Flowers for Algernon" for yourself. It was a wonderfully book. I never cared for being told what books to read. I started reading every minute I could get my hands on a book around the age of 9. I loved "Flowers for Algernon" so much, I have the book to this day. I couldn't let it go. I can't wait until my children are old enough to read it for themselves. It's a book to treasure.

[IceM]

As a Junior in High School, let me rattle off some of the books/plays we've had to read.

Heart of Darkness
Othello
Bless Me, Ultima
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Antigone
Oedipus Rex
The Pearl
Of Mice and Men
Lord of the Flies
The Crucible
The Scarlet Letter
Slaughterhouse 5
Ethan Frome
Freakonomics
1984
Brave New World
The Old Man and the Sea
Animal Farm
Mere Christianity

I'll add my Grade 12 titles that were required:

Things Fall Apart
Their Eyes were Watching God
The Road
Wuthering Heights
The Death of a Salesman
Angela's Ashes
Song of Solomon
The Crucible

Also, a handful of poems from Blake, Hughes, Cullen, and Frost.

[Veho]

My school was seriously lacking in choice in comparison with most. We read:

Macbeth
Of Mice and Men
An Inspector Calls
Romeo and Juliet
And analysed two war poems.

Pretty poor, really.

[prendrelemick]

I was thinking that was a little short on the primary texts for first year degree, but then I saw that you were doing history too so it seems about right. Either way it goes to show just how limited GCSE study really is in terms of breath of material. I know that it is only situated in the 14-16 age range, and everything that comes with that, exams/coursework etc, but in terms of the vast majority of people who don't study literature beyond this level for me only shows its real inadequacy in giving people a wider scope of what is out there. Not good enough for me at all. Yes there would have been extracts of things further down the line, perhaps a whole Shakespeare play (usually Romeo and Juliet) but in terms of providing the vast amount of people in society with anything like a timeline of literature the two year GCSE certificate is far from anything like acceptable for me.



Of course a student will also study and analyse poetry, newspaper and magazine articles, radio and TV scripts. But you are right there doesn't seem to be much Literature in there.

[ChicagoReader]

Huckleberry Finn
Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
Romeo and Juliet
Ragtime
The Godfather
Heart of Darkness
Agape Agape
Cosmopolis
The Road
Coming Through Slaughter
Endgame
King Lear
Canterbury Tales
The Duchess of Malfi
Everyman
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Many more but can't remember off the top of my head

[lowradiation]

I've been working as a teaching assistant in the English department of my old school the past week, as I'm still at university. I've brushed up on the syllabus they are currently using, the sixth form (ages 16-18) changes fairly often, anything pre-age 16 rarely changes.

Ages 11-16 have looked at the texts: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Sherlock Holmes, Holes, Boy In Striped Pyjamas, An Inspector Calls, Lord Of The Flies, Jaws, poetry by Yeats, Duffy, Armitage, as well as war poetry such as Wilfred Owen. That's all I've picked up on but I'm sure there'll be more.

Ages 16-18 in recent years tend to cover a Shakespeare in each year, a poet in each year as well as a couple of novels. I studied Tennyson, Measure For Measure, Richard III, French Lieutenants Woman, Top Girls as well as the synoptic paper when I was in Sixth Form (3 years ago). Since it has changed to texts including Orthello, Dubliners, A Christmas Carol, more Tennyson.

[dfloyd]

The American Declaration of Independence.

[Leobloom]

For GCSEs I read Journey's End, Macbeth, a collection of poems pre-1914 and post-1914, collection of short stories based on culture and, of course, Of Mice and Men.
To be honest, I don't care what's required reading. The texts are easy to read and analyse. I've always done my own reading. In my class, the vast majority just didn't care. The kids connect the books to school and, no matter how great the book or poem is, they just won't care. I'm not saying none of them care, I did, but the vast majority don't. Most of my friends couldn't remember the last time they read a book.

[cyberbob]

In high school I remember:
Lord of the Flies
A Sound of Thunder
Romeo & Juliet
Julius Caesar
Speak
Fahrenheit 451
The Metamorphosis
Pride & Prejudice
Macbeth

This is all I recall and I only graduated 1 year ago! They were all boring except P&P, Metamorphosis, and LOTF somewhat.

Some of you got good ones like 1984, Tale of Two Cities, The Road, and even Freakonomics.

[Lykren]

I remember having to read, in order
Antigone
The Bean Trees
Romeo and Juliet
Great Expectations
Lord of the Flies
Of Mice and Men
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Brave New World
Macbeth
Heart of Darkness
The Stranger
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
and Pride and Prejudice.
I'm sure I forgot some.

As to what should be read, I really wish they had made us read Anna Karenina so I could have discovered it earlier. Brideshead Revisited also seems like a good choice.

[Motherof8]

By "English schools " did you mean only schools in Great Britain? I went to an American school but my Freshman year we read the first part of David Copperfield, Sophomore year Julius Caesar and A Separate Peace, Junior year The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Maybe that shouldn't count, as it was only a story) and Senior year Beuowolf, Canterberry Tales,Hamlet and She Stoops to Conquer.

[Volya]

Assuming the OP meant English school as in schools from the UK, then there aren't actually any specific books that you HAVE to read. You just have to choose a certain few from different styles/eras. I'm pretty sure you have to study two novels, two poets, and two plays.

[Christelle]

Thanks

[hannah_arendt]

You are talking here about english schools. However I want to mention about the situation in the country where I live in. Here pupils have to read only fragments. Do you read in UK all novels (I mean not fragments) ?

[kev67]

When I took my English literature O level in 1983, we studied Macbeth, Jane Eyre and some poems, but I cannot remember what the poems were. I got a C. Also from school, I can remember reading

Julius Caesar
Animal Farm
A Christmas Carol
War of the Worlds
Great Expectations (extracts)
A Tale of Two Cities (extracts)

I think we were supposed to read quite a lot of them as homework, which obviously I didn't do.

Poetry wise, I can remember us doing

Daffodils (William Wordsworth)
Upon Westminster Bridge (William Wordsworth)
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Thomas Gray)
Sea Fever (John Masefield)
Cargoes (John Masefield)
Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds (William Shakespeare)

[mande2013]

Grades 9-12 only, all that I can recall:

The Great Gatsby
Old Man and the Sea
*1984
*A Tale of Two Cities
*The Scarlet Letter
The Crucible
A Raisin in the Sun
Death of a Salesman
You Can't Take it With You
The Color Purple
Henry V
Macbeth
Othello
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Hamlet
Deliverance (James Dickey)
Notes from Underground
Death of Ivan Ilyich
Catcher in the Rye
The Color of Water
Nine Stories
Araby
The Dead
The Metamorphosis
The Wasteland
Several poems by Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and many others I can't recall


*Assigned in History, not English

P.S. I read Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Julius Caesar in 8th grade I think.

[Goodman Brown]

Wow no body mentioned Poe!,,I remember Reading a lot of American short stories,,,,,,,of course I'm talking early 60's

[bounty]

poetaster and I have just been talking a little bit about hawthorne and young goodman brown! what a neat coincidence.

[WICKES]

Did you mean in schools in England? Or schools in countries that speak English as a first language?

[ennison]

In English schools Do you only mean schools in Great Britain? Is there a fool moon tonight? You need to go on a course.

[ennison]

Every American child should read the Declaration of Independence over and over.