Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

We all had to read books in school that we hated. What book that you read for school did you love? (any level of school)

I remember enjoying Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rølvaag and A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Definitely The Old Man and the Sea. Just dreadful! It's certainly possible that this was just lost on a 13-year-old girl and would be much better appreciated as an adult, but I've got no interest in finding out.

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (freshman year high school). My latest reread was in 2022. I still love it now as much as I did then.

Karen wrote: "Definitely The Old Man and the Sea. Just dreadful! It's certainly possible that this was just lost on a 13-year-old girl and would be much better appreciated as an adult, but I've got n..."

Karen - The question is a book that you loved. Sounds like you hated this one.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder.

In grade 11 English, we read The Importance of Being Earnest and I developed a life long love of Oscar Wilde.

Pam wrote: "Karen wrote: "Definitely The Old Man and the Sea. Just dreadful! It's certainly possible that this was just lost on a 13-year-old girl and would be much better appreciated as an adult, ..."

Oh gosh, Pam, you're right. Thank you for pointing that out! Let me revise my answer and say The Grapes of Wrath. I loved that book so, so much when I read in in 9th grade. In fact, I loved it so much that I'm kind of afraid to reread it in case I don't like it as much now. I would hate to ruin the wonderful memory of reading and loving that book.

Wuthering Heights. Read it in 9th grade and loved it.
The Mayor of Casterbridge in 11th grade, also loved this
A Separate Peace in 12th grade was another winner

Pam wrote: "I remember enjoying Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rølvaag and A Separate Peace by John Knowles"

I wonder if you grew up in Minnesota, that's one of the few places where Rolvaag is known.

just lori wrote: "The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (freshman year high school). My latest reread was in 2022. I still love it now as much as I did then."

I also loved The Three Musketeers, though I didn't read it for school. We had an illustrated children's version. Imagine my surprise when I read the full version as an adult and discovered some chapters about d'Artagnan's bedroom exploits!

I liked A Separate Peace and Jane Eyre. We read Pride and Prejudice but I think the language was challenging for me then. (I went to a girls' high school so we might have read more books by female authors than my brother did.) Later in grad school for literature, I read Emma for the first time and I loved it, it is still my favorite Austen.

I only read The Grapes of Wrath about 10 years ago or so and I thought it was terrific and sadly, still relevant in many ways.

Robin - No, I didn’t grow up in Minnesota. I went to high school in Arizona and probably read it in American lit class. I reread it last year and still enjoyed it! Just a remarkable story. I did live in Wisconsin so I could relate to the terrible winters depicted in the book.

There were several that have stayed with me over the years.

On the Beach
Death Be Not Proud
Romeo and Juliet
Sometimes a Great Notion
The Great Gatsby
A Separate Peace
The Scarlet Letter
The Diary of a Young Girl
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Jackie - I forgot about Death be not Proud. I also liked that one!

Pride and Prejudice
Walden
and short stories by Saki and Eudora Welty, particularly "Why I Live at the P.O." by the latter.

Robin P wrote: "Pam wrote: "I remember enjoying Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rølvaag and A Separate Peace by John Knowles"

I wonder if you grew up in Minnesota, that's one of the few places where Rolvaag is known."

We read Giants in the Earth, by O.E. Rølvaag, in Illinois, too. Later, when my husband was in the army, stationed in Germany, we knew a fellow bandsman from Minnesota who was actually related to Rolvaag. Six degrees of separation....

I've never even heard of Giants in the Earth...

I generally liked to loved most books I read in school. To Kill a Mockingbird remains my favorite book. However, I credit Bridge to Terabithia read in 4th grade with making me a reader. It was the first time I read a book that didn't end happily ever after. It showed me that books could deal with real things and everything isn't always fair or works out in the end.

In the 1970's, two movies were made based on Giants in the Earth - the Swedish movies The Emigrants and The New Land. starring Liv Ullmann.

My favorites:
And Then There Were None
Pride and Prejudice
The Princess Bride
A Separate Peace
The Things They Carried

I'll have to check out Giants in the Earth as this is the first time I've ever heard of it.

I loved a number of books I read for school, such as:
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
A Tale of Two Cities
The Grapes of Wrath
Cannery Row
Anna Karenina
Catch-22
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Call of the Wild
Animal Farm

Interesting so many of you read Separte Peace- I just finished it last week and had never heard of it before. Most assigned books I disliked, but reading your lists I can remeber: The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Old man and the Sea
In Elem School I remember my teacher reading The Hobbit out loud and we were rooting her to keep reading even though her voice was getting ragged.

GCSE English covered two books that had an impact and influenced my future tastes. The Yellow Wallpaper, which coincided with a hatred of the colour yellow so I really felt the horror, and A Streetcar Named Desire. Watching the film too didn't hurt, still love it.

Well..... you said any level, so..... :)
I had to read Teaching Music with Passion: Conducting, Rehearsing and Inspiring by Peter Loel Boonshaft for my collegiate choral conducting class, and I absolutely loved it. It got me so fired up. I'm actually thinking about pulling it out and reading it again because I feel like I am getting in a rut.

I was really struggling to come up with something..."had to read for school" very often meant I did not like it or was at best neutral on it. But there were a few!

The A.B.C. Murders: My 6th grade english teacher taught this alongside a unit on logic and my lifelong love of Agatha Christie books was born.

The Alchemist: we read this in my AP french class and it was one of those cases of the right book hitting you at the right time

The Raven: I'm sure we read various works of Poe throughout my education but I very distinctly remember one day in high school with a substitute teacher. He was a much beloved retired teacher who chose to give a lesson on Poe and his reading of The Raven...I wish somebody had recorded it. Truly spine chilling. He could have given Vincent Price a run for his money.

I remember these books from high school fondly:
The Grapes of Wrath
My Ántonia
An American Tragedy

In college I didn't get to read much literature (the downfall of studying engineering). I did have one English requirement, so I chose 20th Century Literature. I thought I was signing up for the term where Sci-Fi was the topic. I was very wrong — I ended up with Westerns (just a "little" different), and my professor wore plain cowboy shirts and his name was Starr Jenkins! I'm sure we read more than one book, but the only one I remember was
Little Big Man (the one made into a movie starring Dustin Hoffman).
I was enjoying the book, but never got to finish it. I read enough to pass the test though!

Like Tracy I fondly remember The Grapes of Wrath.

I also enjoyed Sister Carrie

I found The Canterbury Tales tedious to read but also oddly fascinating.

Tracy wrote: "my professor wore plain cowboy shirts and his name was Starr Jenkins!"

with that name he just had to be a Western specialist.

I often didn’t finish (and sometimes didn’t even start) books I “had” to read. However, The Giver by Lois Lowry captivated me. It will always be a favorite of mine.
I love books that are about rejecting the status quo - especially when the norm is prejudiced or unjust, and especially with a bit of sci-fi or fantasy added in.

Robin P wrote: "In the 1970's, two movies were made based on Giants in the Earth - the Swedish movies The Emigrants and The New Land. starring Liv Ullmann."

***Correction - Giants in the Earth was Norwegian, the movies were based on a Swedish book!
Sorry for the bad information on my part - my brother, the movie expert, corrected me.

Elementary School
Charlotte’s Web
Incredible Jumbo
Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang
The Outsiders

High School
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
A Night to Remember
On the Beach
Pygmalion
Macbeth - I did this for a Theatre English class, and I got to be one of the witches. I reread the play this year, and I realized I'd forgotten a lot of the play, but I still had my speeches memorized.

I hated The Grapes of Wrath so much in high school that I dropped AP Literature. But I read it again in my 30s and adored it. I just wasn't ready for it in high school.

The first book I remember loving from school was The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope in 5th grade. I re-read it over and over.

I liked The Outsiders the middle school and The Catcher in the Rye in 9th grade.

From AP Lang, I loved The Sun Also Rises, Brave New World, and Stranger in a Strange Land. Then in undergrad my favorites were The Coquette and The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories.

Katie wrote: "I hated The Grapes of Wrath so much in high school that I dropped AP Literature. But I read it again in my 30s and adored it. I just wasn't ready for it in high school.

The first ..."

I totally agree that many high schoolers aren't ready for some of the classics. I was from a very sheltered background, and because back then skipping grades was a thing, I was only 12-16 in high school. I had no experience of struggle, passion, mourning, crisis, etc. I did read a lot even then and was influenced by some of the books (for instance, Les Mis, about how unfair the justice system was), but a lot of them went right by me.

The Dairy Of A Young Girl
Dairy of Ann Frank, I literally got an 0 because I refuse to read it. Just to have read it this year and realize what a gem I missed out on.

We read a lot of Ambrose Bierce all through school, which I remember enjoying. I don't know if he is on the usual American school curriculum or if we got a heavy dose because we were in Ohio (where he was born).

I remember doing a project in high school where we read both The Scarlet Letter & The Crucible, doing a kind of compare & contrast, & I really enjoyed that. I don't know why I'm so obsessed with 17th-century Puritans.

In college, my very first writing teacher turned me on to Lorrie Moore & that was a real revelation for me. Still a fan, 25 years later.

Besides To Kill a Mockingbird (My favorite book of all time...)

When I was a sophomore in high school we read Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. I flew through that book in a couple of days. I was fascinated by the psychology ... and decided to major in psych for college as a result.

Karen wrote: "Definitely The Old Man and the Sea. Just dreadful! It's certainly possible that this was just lost on a 13-year-old girl and would be much better appreciated as an adult, but I've got n..."

I loved this book! I didn't have to read it for school and just read it on my own.

I can't remember what novels I read in high school, etc now since I read many novels back then.

I do remember hating The Edible Woman when I had to read it for one of my Women's Studies classes in university. For my English classes I took Poetry & Drama so didn't read novels for English, just on my own when I wasn't in semester.

Hamlet by Shakespeare. I know it is a play, but the English teacher who taught it that year was amazing. He told a story about using an insult from Shakespeare on the Assistant Principal, who could not retaliate later, as he would have to admit he didn't understand it at first.
All of the students avidly looked up and memorized the insults in the play. :D

I remember loving The Great Gatsby and Cry, the Beloved Country but it is hard for me to remember a lot of what we read. I also loved Our Town and Hamlet if we're including plays.