Good Books that you were forced to read at school

Post Reply New Topic

This is a companion thread to the "crap books" one. The aim is to identify books that you were introduced to as part of school reading which really ended up being quite good.



The Pigman - Paul Zindell: This was actually quite good, although Zindells other books are better.

Z for Zacheriah - Post nuclear, very interesting.

Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham - No way I'd have read this otherwise, but it was good.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - Short enough to be an ok read, though it felt a little "censored" - maybe he wanted to write more detail but wasn't allowed to publish.

The poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - wow... good stuff. Ancient Mariner and Kublai Khan particularly.

<edit> forgot George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984</edit>

Catcher in the Rye

Flowers for Algernon

The Lottery - Shirley Jackson

Macbeth - Shakespeare

Treasure Island

(College level book) Dante's Inferno

I love books, so I can't really think of a book they forced me to read.

I liked an Inspector Calls and Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men - Didn't seem censored to me, as it probably had the most profanity of any book I've ever read. Pretty decent read, though.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Night by Eli Wiesel

The poetry of W.B. Yeats
The Poisonwood Bible
Things Fall Apart
A Separate Peace
Dubliners
The Good Earth
The Overcoat and Other Stories
Lord of the Flies
1984
Brave New World
Moby-Dick
Sophie's World
The Custom of the Country

Animal Farm - George Orwell
Macbeth - Shakespeare
Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit (short story) - Sylvia Plath

Several but I only really took notice of Lord of the Flies for some reason.

"To Kill A Mocking Bird" by Harper Lee...which I absolutely loved to read many times.

1984, Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies.

Ditto to
Animal Farm, ( Orwell ), and Lord of the Flies, ( Golding ).

And
"In Memorium", Alfred Lord Tennyson,
also:
"Far From the Madding Crowd", Thomas Hardy, neither of which I would have got round to reading otherwise, or not for a long time anyway, and
"To Kill a Mockingbird", Harper Lee

Apart from those there isn't a single book I am grateful/beholden to school for being exposed to. Almost all the other books listed above I read off my own bat.

I liked the Canterbury Tales, but was disappointed when we didn't read the Miller's Tale in depth.

"Pedro Paramo"
Plato
"To Kill a Mockingbird"
"The Tale of the Ancient Mariner"
"Othello"

Of Mice And Men
Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22
Maus

Some others that I can't remember....