What books did they make you read in school?

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Ana54
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21 Aug 2007, 4:51 pm

For me...


Kindergarten: none
Grade 1: these five "readers" called One by One; Sing A Rainbow; Gingerbread Snaps; Long Long Ago; and Star Light, Star Bright.
Grade 2: a continuation of the reader series: Up Up and Away and My Favorite Things.
Grade 3: a further continuation of the reader series, Birch Bark.
Grade 4: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing
Grade 5: The Big Lie, The Curse of the Blue Figurine, Snow Treasure
Grade 6: I forget
Grade 7: A Midsummer Night's Dream; Catherine, Called Birdy; A Murder for Her Majesty; The Witch of Blackbird Pond,
Grade 8: Cue For Treason, Romeo and Juliet, The Royal Diaries: Elizabeth II, Red Rose of the House of Tudor; The Adventures of Ulysses, The Outsiders
Grade 9: The Outsiders again (different school), The Chrysalids, The Old Man and the Sea, another book I forget the name of about a Jew befriending a German named Konradin von Hohenfels, A separate Peace
Grade 10: Lord of the Flies and Ford of the Lies (Brave New World)
Grade 11: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, A Separate Peace again (different school), The Sun Also Rises, King Lear
Grade 12: The Wars, Fifth Business



username88
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21 Aug 2007, 4:53 pm

Ive done everything I could to forget that part of the timeline.



Irulan
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21 Aug 2007, 5:06 pm

There were too much to remember them all. But I read all of them or at least in elementary school. When I was in high school our teacher didn't have a habit of checking whether we really read those books so I used to do it rather rarely, prefering reading booklets with the most important things about said books wrote down to reading those books. :lol:

From all the books you wrote down I was made read in school: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (in college), The Old Man and the Sea (primary school), Romeo and Juliet (high school), A Midsummer Night's Dream (college).



jfberge
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21 Aug 2007, 5:07 pm

I remember having to read Watership Down, which never struck me as any kind of classic or important piece of literature. Fascist rabbits? It just didn't work for me. The rabbit vernacular didn't help the story, either.

Speaking of rabbits, I did enjoy Of Mice and Men, despite being miserably depressing. I also liked A Separate Peace, 1984, and Brave New World.

For some reason, we never had to read Catcher in the Rye. When I finally bought a copy many years later, I read it 3 times in a week. I was surprised how similar Holden's language was to my own adolescent tongue, despite having been written in the late 40s. It's probably just as well I didn't read it when I was young, as I would have identified with Holden too blindly. He's an appealing character for an uncritical audience.



richardbenson
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21 Aug 2007, 5:10 pm

lord of the flies, in jr high


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MrSinister
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21 Aug 2007, 5:30 pm

I remember having to do the two-year GCSE syllabus in the two years before I actually had to study it for real, so instead of reading something different, I ended up reading Animal Farm and Macbeth for four years in a freakin' row.

And for A-Level, I read A Passage To India and Tess of The D'Urbervilles. The former was so irritatingly bad that my in-the-margin notes got more and more scornful, angry and vitriolic as the book progressed, and the latter was so unutterably depressing I almost slit my wrists.


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pluto
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21 Aug 2007, 5:37 pm

Reading was one of the few things about school I didn't mind as I liked the books we were
given. Animal Farm,Our Man In Havana and The Great Gatsby.


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Redrocket
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21 Aug 2007, 6:01 pm

I really don't remember every single book that I read during school. I give credit to those who do.

I do definitely remember reading Animal Farm, I liked that book. I do remember reading Romero and Juliet and I think excerpts of Macbeth. I think I also read Julius Caesar. There's a number of them that I either fully read or had to read excerpts of but I just don't recall right now.



whiteskunk
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21 Aug 2007, 7:30 pm

Crime and punishment.
All Quiet on the Western Front.
War and Peace.
The Happy Hooker. (personal choice for a book report) :twisted:
Catch 22


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blue_bean
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21 Aug 2007, 8:20 pm

Hating Alison Ashley
The Silver Sword
The Outsiders
Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy
Of Mice And Men

And others I can't remember to mention because they don't have films attached to them :P



RainSong
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21 Aug 2007, 8:50 pm

Some I can remember from high school... I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones I remember (in no particular oder).

Tuesday's With Morrie
Of Mice and Men
Grapes of Wrath
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Scarlet Letter
Animal Farm
A Raisin in the Sun
Jane Eyre
Dracula
Huckleberry Finn
Elements of Style
The Handmaid's Tale
1984
Brave New World
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Slaughterhouse Five
Little Women
Romeo and Juliet
Julius Caesar
The Great Gatsby
Lord of the Flies
A Separate Peace
Antigone


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IdahoRose
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21 Aug 2007, 8:57 pm

RainSong- They made you read Dracula!? I would've read that for fun!

They made us read To Kill A Mockingbird, but I never got around to finishing it.



RainSong
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21 Aug 2007, 8:59 pm

IdahoRose wrote:
RainSong- They made you read Dracula!? I would've read that for fun!

They made us read To Kill A Mockingbird, but I never got around to finishing it.


It's on this year's summer reading list. I read it for fun before; now I'm struggling to get through it again. It is a good book though.

Ah, I forgot that one. We read To Kill A Mockingbird in freshman year. To be honest, I really disliked that book.


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IdahoRose
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21 Aug 2007, 9:07 pm

RainSong wrote:
IdahoRose wrote:
RainSong- They made you read Dracula!? I would've read that for fun!

They made us read To Kill A Mockingbird, but I never got around to finishing it.


It's on this year's summer reading list. I read it for fun before; now I'm struggling to get through it again. It is a good book though.

Ah, I forgot that one. We read To Kill A Mockingbird in freshman year. To be honest, I really disliked that book.


Me too. That's why I didn't finish it even though I was supposed to. I didn't do very well my last year of school...



RainSong
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21 Aug 2007, 9:09 pm

IdahoRose wrote:
RainSong wrote:
IdahoRose wrote:
RainSong- They made you read Dracula!? I would've read that for fun!

They made us read To Kill A Mockingbird, but I never got around to finishing it.


It's on this year's summer reading list. I read it for fun before; now I'm struggling to get through it again. It is a good book though.

Ah, I forgot that one. We read To Kill A Mockingbird in freshman year. To be honest, I really disliked that book.


Me too. That's why I didn't finish it even though I was supposed to. I didn't do very well my last year of school...


This is the first year where I haven't done my reading. I'm interested to see how that will go... I'm reading up on SparkNotes now, but I don't really think it will help me much.


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Trigger11
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21 Aug 2007, 9:18 pm

Grapes Of Wrath
The Scarlet Letter
Huckleberry Finn
Romeo & Juliet
Hamlet - We did a jury trial for this one and I was the defense lawyer. He was guilty, but only of manslaughter, so I was able to reduce the charge.
The Great Gatsby
The Old Man & The Sea
Treasure Island
Mutiny On The Bounty
Han Solo At Star's End - My choice!
Star Wars - My choice for my Junior Thesis! I failed, since my teacher claimed I just watched the movie. Sure, the movie influenced my assessment, but I read the book. She was a b***h. She also got me In-School Suspension one day for skipping her class to go to the Computer Lab instead. A perfect record and her and the Vice Principal put me in with all of the Grits (head banging, switchblade carrying, metal-heads of the '80s).

The only one's I actually read were The Old Man & The Sea, Han Solo At Star's End, and Star Wars. The rest I just watched the movies or made it up.


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