So what books did you read at school?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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. [...]
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).

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

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.

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

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