So what books did you read at school?

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.

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

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.

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...

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.

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

How pathetic.

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

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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...

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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

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!

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!

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kratsayra

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

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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.