What books did they make you read in school?

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7th Grade

The Outsiders
The Westing Game

8th Grade

The Slave Dancer
Flowers For Algernon
...and a play about Anne Frank. I forget the title.

9th Grade
The Odyssey
A Tale Of Two Cities
To Kill A Mockingbird
Ethan Frome
Night

10th Grade

The House On Mango Street
A Separate Peace
Julius Caesar

11th Grade

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Scarlet Letter
The Crucible
Of Mice And Men

And, as I took dual credit classes in the 12th grade, our curriculum differentiated from the high school curriculum.

Oh yeah, The Crucible, I remember we did that one and all. And Our Day "you really are a berk" Out. That was canny good. It's all coming back to me.

A script of a play called ''the Field'' - I thought I would die of boredom before it was finished.
here is a scene:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjKJnsMwHk0[/youtube]

For the most part, sh***y ones.

I ended up loving two of the books that were assigned in school: All Quiet on the Western Front and The Great Gatsby were both great, and I still love them to this day. Flowers for Algernon was good but I don't feel compelled to read it again. The Crucible, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Great Expectations, and Of Mice and Men made little impression on me. I thought the story of The Odyssey was terrific, but actually reading it was torture. Maybe it was a bad translation.

The only book that I outright hated was The Catcher in the Rye. Of all the novels that have had untold amounts of praise heaped upon them over the decades, this may be the least deserving. Even at the height of my whiny teenage angst and cynicism, I wanted everyone who fawned over this book to just grow the f**k up. I would never give this crap to a kid. This book offended me, but not for the same reason that it's offended so many others. Usually uptight people are offended by the book's profane language, but I was offended that such an unlikable jackoff of a character was being hailed as some kind of hero. And of course, in high school, you're not allowed to interpret a book differently from the majority, so of course I failed the homework for this book.

I was never forced to read Lord of the Flies, thank Jebus. Based on everything I hear about it, it sounds like exactly the kind of pretentious "message" book that I would hate.

To the people who were assigned Dracula and Frankenstein, I wish I had gone to your schools.

It's too bad that my school didn't let students choose their own books to write book reports about. I would have chosen the novelization of Speed 2: Cruise Control, or maybe Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, just to see what kind of reaction it would get.

the lost thing, adventures of the 5th grade nothing by judy blume, walking the boundary by jackie collins, bridge to terrabithia and others i dont remember in primary. in highschool it was 2 weeks with the queen, letters to leslie, stone cold, to kill a mocking bird(the most boring book ever. i still have the copy they let us keep because they were so ratty and i cant throw it out because its a book and i cant give it away becasue no one will take it.), othello and julius caesar- shakespears most boring plays. and frankenstein- i didnt bother reading that because id already read it a couple of years before and didnt want to put myself through the agony again. macbeth was ok. its like they were trying to turn us off reading. and all of these save shakespears works and frankenstein were bellow my reading level and all the high school books were very dull.

the worst book i ever had read was A Scarlet Letter. It was so exhausting, melodramatic, and annoying to read. I'm reading a book on case studies of the Andes in the 18th century that's more interesting than Mr. Hawthorne's book.

Carry on, Mr. Bowditch.
By right of conquest: with Cortez in Mexico.
Robinson Crusoe.
Ivanhoe.
Treasure Island.
A compendium of Sherlock Holmes stories.
The Bible.
Out of the Silent Planet.
Perelandra.
Technology in the Ancient World.
Caves of Steel.
Tambu.
Pilgrim's Progress.
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
The Lion of the North: a tale of the Thirty Year's War.
Hades Factor.