The Review Archives discussion

So, we all were forced to read books, plays, and poetry for school. What were some of your favorites? Least favorites? We're some of them a big waste of time? Feel free to discuss them here!

My favorite books I've read at school: 1984, The Book Thief, and To Kill A Mockingbird.

Least favorite: Mister pip

You had to read the book thief for school ?!
That's so cool !! All the books I have to read for school suck :'(
AND they're in Dutch, I hate reading in dutch.

Haha yeah it was really quite awesome :) I also read The Kite Runner for school!

And wow that sounds intense

I have a friend that has the choice between Divergent or Ender's Game to read for school. Which is absolutely no fair, because almost everything I had to read was classics. Anyways!

My favorites I had to read:
The Great Gatsby, Pygmalion, and Animal Farm

My least favorites: The Catcher in the Rye, The Fundamentals of Ethics, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Siddhartha, and Regeneration

I haaaated Animal Farm. Ugh. That and Ethan Frome were terrible reads. However, those were the only really terrible books I remember.

I really enjoyed Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, The Secret Life of Bees, Wuthering Heights, The Crucible, and Silas Marner.

Also, I took a crime fiction class in college where we read classic crime books, such as Sherlock Holmes and selected poems from Edgar Allen Poe. Two books stand out in particular from that class, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Maltese Falcon. Both were excellent if you are into that genre! :)

Brittany wrote: "I haaaated Animal Farm. Ugh. That and Ethan Frome were terrible reads. However, those were the only really terrible books I remember.

I really enjoyed [book:Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle St..."

I liked Animal Farm when you just look at it as talking animals, not really as a satire. Although, I know that was the whole point of the story. I had to read The Crucible, I didn't really like it, but I didn't hate it either. It was just sort of blah for me.

Your crime fiction class sounds AWESOME. I've only had to take British Literature (from 1870 to the present) and for the most part I loved it. But since I'm not an English major, I don't get to read that much in school.

Yeah, at my Uni we had to take nine credit hours of class, which is basically three classes. Two classes were composition classes and one had to be a general Lit analysis class. There were SO many options to choose from, like horror, southern fiction, fairy tales, and even a Harry Potter class. I so wanted into the HP class but it fills up like crazy and since I was a sophomore when I was signing up, there were no spots left by the time I could sign up for classes. I wanted to get into the Southern Fiction class (I love books like Fried Green Tomatoes, The Secret Life of a Bees, and The Help) but that was full, too. So I ended up taking the crime lit class. And it was pretty good, too, so I can't complain. :)

My best friend is an English major and I sorta live vicariously through her. She would read to me some of the short stories she had to read for class, or sometimes get an audiobook so we could both listen if it was a novel. She took a children's lit class last semester and she spent all day once reading Dr. Seuss to me, which was awesome. I don't think we have a HP class at my school, but I've definitely heard about them and they sound awesome.

And, you know, I never had to read The Great Gatsby for school. It's kinda sad, seeing how everyone loves it. I hope to read Their Eyes Were Watching God as well as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn at some point, too. Those were popular school reads we didn't do.

It's kinda sad that we didn't get to read The Book Thief in school either. I just read it last year and loved it. The movie is excellent, too!

I had to read Island of the Blue Dolphins when I was in sixth grade, as well as The Phantom Tollbooth and A Wrinkle in Time. I have to say, the latter was my least favorite. :/ We also read Holes in seventh grade.

I had to read Gatsby in my junior year and I was actually one of the very few people in my class who liked it.
I read Island of the Blue Dolphins in the sixth grade too, and I don't really remember why I hated it so much, but I did.
I've tried at least 3 times to read The Book Thief and still haven't managed to finish it. I don't know why. I actually watched the movie to it a few days ago and it was so good! Although it made me cry quite a bit. So I'll probably try again one day. I hate watching movies to books that I haven't read.
I read Holes and a Wrinkle in Time on my own a very long time ago, when I was in like the second or third grade. I don't remember my opinion of A Wrinkle in Time, but I do remember really liking Holes.

I devoured The Book Thief - even though Death kinda annoyed me. I didn't much like A Wrinkle in Time - it was just too all over the place for me. And as a fan of the Wayside School series as a kid, I liked Holes pretty well. :)

I remember reading Wayside School! But it took me forever before I realized that it was by the same author as Holes.
I had to read Hatchet when I was in elementary school and then later the sequel (I don't remember the name) when I was in the eighth grade. I despised both of those books. But that genre wasn't really my thing.

Oh, yeah! I remember Hatchet - we had to read that in elementary school, too. I remember I wasn't too impressed with it.

We had a thing called Accelerated Reading, where we had to earn a number of points for each grading period, and each book we read counted for a certain number of points. I read, like, the first ten books in the Redwall series as a kid. They were really cute. Definitely worth a read, since you liked the animals in Animal Farm. This is based entirely from animals' perspectives.

OH! We called that AR! In sixth grade I got almost all of my points from Warriors! I've read Redwall, but only the first one. I liked it, and I'm not really sure why I never read anymore of the series. I think I tried to read a different series by the author and didn't like it, so it turned me off to all of his books.

We called it AR, too!

Yeah, the Dutchman series or something? About sailing ships? I didn't like that one much, either. But I read a ton of Redwall. I think I got to Triss, then ended up growing out of them. I still have my well worn copy of Redwall, though. Since it was a childhood fav, it'll always have a place of respect on my shelf.

And would you believe I didn't read Warriors till, like, two years ago? I was borrowing them from the Uni library. XD But I love them so much! I can't wait till Bramblestar's Storm comes out next month! Luff me some Jayfeather!

Yes! It was something about the Dutchman! I don't think I even finished it. All I remember is the boy had a dog named Den and then for some reason he changed the dog's name to Ned.
I started reading Warriors when there was only the original series. But I love them so much, I buy one every time one is released. I'm excited for Bramblestar's Storm too!
Have you read Watership Down? From what I understand, it's about rabbits. I've been wanting to read it, but I haven't been certain.

I've actually been wanting to read it! I hear it's similar to Redwall, but a little more...sophisticated.

We should totally read it together! I can set up a Buddy a Read section here if you like. (Or if you're a member of YAholics Anonymous, we can do it there.)

Totally! That'd be awesome!
And I'm not a member of YAholics Anonymous. But still, buddy reading would be great.

My favorite books that I've read for school were definitely The Great Gatsby and Jane Eyre. I loved those! :) However, I didn't like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, or Frankenstein.

Feel free to join, if you'd like; it's another group I mod and it's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. ;)

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

But I can always set up the Buddy Read here if you like. ^.^

I just joined it! lol Thanks!

Montana wrote: "My favorite books that I've read for school were definitely The Great Gatsby and Jane Eyre. I loved those! :) However, I didn't like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, or F..."

When I got done reading The Catcher in the Rye, I threw the book down my hallway. But surprisingly, we took the test for Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye at the same time and I did better on the Catcher in the Rye questions than the Great Gatsby ones.

Lol! Maybe you did better cause you hated it so much! Oftentimes it's easier for us to remember the books we hate than the ones we liked.

This is true. It's probably why I also usually only review books I didn't like. Almost all of them are 1 or 2 stars. I could talk all day about why I hated a book, but I draw a blank when someone asks me why I loved one.

Montana wrote: "My favorite books that I've read for school were definitely The Great Gatsby and Jane Eyre. I loved those! :) However, I didn't like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, or F..."

I only got half way through Jane Eyre. Mr. Rochester was such a douche. That's why I liked Heathcliff so much from Wuthering Heights. He might have been crazy but at least he knew how to treat a woman.

I pretty much loved everything we read in school, except for The Scarlet Letter.

I didn't like the way my twelfth grade English teacher made us read The Joy Luck Club, though. We didn't read it from cover to cover. She just picked random chapters and skipped around so it was just weird.

I really liked The Crucible when I read it junior year.
I had my students act it out during my student teaching, and they loved it, so I plan on doing that again if I ever have to teach it again.

Oh, and I loved Animal Farm. That is such a good book. I need to get it for my collection.

Let's see... I pretty much loved everything we had to read by Shakespeare in high school, and then I loved my Shakespeare class in college. The Taming of the Shrew has got to be my favorite play.

Oh, and The Canterbury Tales. Please tell me that other people loved them! Please, please, please! :)

We read Holes in seventh grade, which just so happened to be the year the movie came out, and I really enjoyed it. I bought a copy of it, but I lost it.

I feel like I might have liked everything I ever read in school.

Erin, I loved all of those. I also loved Their Eyes are Watching God, The Salem Witch Trial, A Raisin in the Sun, and so many others! We read a lot of plays! Oh I also loved most of the Walter Dean Myers.

We read and acted out Twelve Angry Men when I was a freshman in high school, which was really fun. We also read Romeo and Juliet, which I wasn't that crazy about, and Hamlet, which I really liked. I also read Pygmalion when I was a freshman in college, and I loved that one.

Jackie (fireandicebookreviews.blogspot.com) wrote: "Erin, I loved all of those. I also loved Their Eyes are Watching God, The Salem Witch Trial, A Raisin in the Sun, and so many others! We read a lot of plays! Oh I also loved most of the Walter Dean..."

I didn't have to read any of those for school, although I was supposed to read Dope Sick for my Young Adult lit class in college, but we ran out of time. We had to read like ten or eleven novels for that class plus the text book. It was fun. That's where I was introduced to The Hunger Games.

Oh yeah- in 7th grade I had to read the Hunger Games!

And if you don't take AP english as a senior at my school, the spring reading book is a choice of a bunch of different dystopian books like Ender's Game :)