Challenge: 50 Books discussion

While reading The Catcher in the Rye, I can't help but wonder what other treasures are on other school's curriculums - this one wasn't one mine. Since we have a broad cross-section of countries and regions in this group, there should be an interesting variety. What did you forced to read in high school? Would you read it again?

BTW, if you've got ideas for June group reads, please add them to this thread: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8...

Just in case you're interested, here's what I remember being assigned:

The Outsiders
Lord of the Flies
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Tempest
A Doll's House

There must have been more, but these are the ones I remember. I will never read William Shakespeare for pleasure, I know that.

At my High school we had a 'Recommended Reading List' we were supposed to refer to for book reports and stuff but as far as what we were forced to read...

Freshman Year: Great Expectations, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Cask of Amontillado, The Masque of the Red Death, Some assorted Dickenson and other Poe Poems, & Romeo and Juliet

Sophomore Year: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Dead Poets Society, and Julius Caesar

Junior Year: Of Mice and Men, The Crucible, and Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Senior Year: Animal Farm and Night

I personally never finished Great Expectations so I would re-read that. I also really enjoyed To Kill A Mockingbird so I may re-read that again sometime later in life when I start to forget just how great that book was. & I'm constantly re-reading Poe's stories and poems. He's a personal favourite of mine.

Oh yeah, now that you mention it, I'm sure we must have been assigned The Crucible, too. I wonder if it's worth a re-read.

I remember I really enjoyed it, but I was also in a class full of students who could read the different parts like a half-arsed script reading. Not sure how I'd feel reading a play format on my own, though.

I'm not sure how my school years correspond to any one else, but I've put the age range for that year

5th Form (15-16 years): Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

6th Form (16-17 years): Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence and One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis. Poets William Wordsworth and playwrights William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw.

7th Form (17-18 years): Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; 1984 by George Orwell and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Poets Dylan Thomas and Hone Tuwhare; playwrights William Shakespeare and Bruce Mason.

I was extremely lucky to have a teacher who loved to read aloud in the 7th form. He was Welsh and had a voice like Richard Burton. I have a great love of Shakespeare and well written books because of Mr Holden. He give me a life time gift - the enjoyment of books. My only regret is that I didn't have him as my English teacher earlier - I may have appreciated Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Lawrence and Amis more.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Night by Elie Wiesel, The Greast Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Animal farm by George Owell, Romeo and Juuliet (and) Hamlet by Shakespeare, Catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger, The Crucible (can't remember the author)....the only ones of these that I wasn't too fond of were Animal Farm and the Shakespearean plays...I did like the plays itself (story-wise), but couldnt' get into the stories because we had to keep stopping every line to interpret because of the language, so it was hard for me to get into the story.

Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men, Fahrenheit 451, Oedipus Rex, The Trial and Death of Socrates,The Crucible, The Scarlet Letter, Julius Caesar, Othello, The Catcher in the Rye, Heart of Darkness, David Copperfield, A Modest Proposal, The Old Man and the Sea, Complete Stories and Poems,To Kill a Mockingbird,Lord of the Flies, The Grapes of Wrath, Death of a Salesman, Macbeth, 1984, Brave New World, Gulliver's Travels, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Things Fall Apart, Crime and Punishment, Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle

I'm afraid if I go past this, I'll start confusing the ones I did for outside reading and ones that were required. I don't regret any of them, even Catcher in the Rye, which I loathe entirely but can at least justify my reasons for doing so.

ill have to make a list and post to this later! this is fun! but now that i am out of high school i am very disappointed in the lack of major classics that we did read. i wish we would have read better books!

Where to begin? ALL of the above along with: "Johnny Got His Gun", "My Darling, My Hamburger" (which I would still absolutely recommend for June), "Green Mansions", "Go Ask Alice", "Billy Budd, Sailor", "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", "A Seperate Peace", "Invisible Man (Ellison not Wells)", "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest", "For Whom the Bell Tolls" "Of Mice and Men", "War of the Worlds", "The House of Seven Gables", "The Deer Slayer", and many more including the one about the girl in the mental hospital diagnosed with schizophrenia who is cured and released, the name of which I am probably blocking out since I know from personal experience that that doesn't happen. Oh, thank you Google: "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden".

Marissa-dono wrote: "I remember I really enjoyed it, but I was also in a class full of students who could read the different parts like a half-arsed script reading. Not sure how I'd feel reading a play format on my own..."

My teacher had us do this, too! And we read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" this way as well.

What a great topic! As much as I love to read, I think I hated every book I was ever assigned in school. The one that sticks in my mind the most isThe Mayor of Casterbridge. I hated it so much I've never gone near Thomas Hardy again.

In high school I read a lot of the books mentioned here, and have re-read many of them since. Without fail, I have enjoyed them more the second time around, when I wasn't FORCED to read and analyze them to death. One of my all-time favorites is "To Kill a Mockingbird".

One memory that has really stuck with me was reading a short story called "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. It scared the heck out of me!

Here are some of the books that I read in high school. Hopefully I remember them all!

To Kill a Mockingbird
White Fang
Huck Finn
Tom Sawyer
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
The Lord of the Flies
The Old Man and the Sea (hated it)
Of Mice And Men
The Red Pony
The Pearl
The Canterbury Tales
The Raven
The Cask of Amantillado
Johnny Tremain
Inherit the Wind
The Tell Tale Heart
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Outsiders
Moby Dick
The Grapes of Wrath

I think thats it. My favorite was To Kill a Mockingbird and my definitely least favorite was The Old Man and the Sea

I remember The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe being read to the class when I was about 7-ish - its remained one of my favourite books ever!

Other books I remember from school include:

The Canterbury Tales
Macbeth
Richard II
Henry V
Midsummer Nights Dream
Hamlet
Pygmalion
Anthony and Cleopatra (or was it Caesar and Cleopatra?!!)
The Spire - (Golding - hated this book)
Manfield Park
Northanger Abbey - cannot stand Jane Austen! sorry all you Austen fans!
The Mayor of Casterbridge - absolutely adore Hardy
The Handmaids Tale
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (love it!)
The Crucible

There are probably others - but school was a long time ago!

Its a shame I didnt do any Dickens - I still haven't read any.

Also the Brontes - although I've made up for that!

oddly enough, i can't remember even ONE of the required books in high school. but in junior high (12-14 years) these books were some of the required reading: To Kill a Mockingbird, which is one of my favorite books of all time; The Crucible, which i re-read just recently and found to be only okay; Lord of the Flies, which i hated; True Grit, which i didn't finish because i absolutely could not STAND the fact that they spoke without using contractions. it distracted me from the story. Animal Farm; another all time favorite that i've read at least twice since. i know we read some shakespeare, but i don't recall which one. i've read shakespeare on my own since then and really enjoy it, but would probably get more out of it if i were able to discuss it with a group.

i was just looking at some of the other entries here, and in know that i read Of Mice and Men and other Sandburg, but can't remember if it was required reading or something i read on my own. i *always* had a book of my own with me from the time i was a kid. (which got me into trouble in maths because i would hide the book in my desk and read during class.)

oh! another book we were required to read was The Red Badge of Courage. absolutely detested it.

interesting! i would have loved to go to school in britain or us, you guys read so many brilliant books. in the german curriculum for english (a-levels) we had shakespeare (don't remember which play...), poe (the tell-tale heart) and jane austen (Pride and Prejudice). hated jane austen back then. but then i was in opposition to everything my english teacher liked, so i don't need to state she fancied jane austen (...). since then i've reread (luckily!) and reconsidered.
are there any other non-natives - what did you read?