What's required reading in English schools?

[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 )

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!

[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"?

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.

[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.

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. Thanks to my teacher I have read some good novels so far. I doubt if anything has changed in the curriculum (rigid authorities ), 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~

[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)