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View Full Version : Books you were required to read and liked



Setra
2008-09-24, 07:33 AM
The opposite of that other thread.

Two I liked were

Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry
and
Where the Red Fern Grows

Note that I never had any required reading past elementary school..

Jack Squat
2008-09-24, 07:49 AM
I liked Where the Red Fern grows as well. Other books I liked were The Great Gastby, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984. Although generally, I think of required reading the same as Mark Twain; Classic--a book which people praise and don't read.

Ozymandias
2008-09-24, 07:54 AM
The Shipping News. Paradise Lost. The Iliad. Pygmalion. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Pride and Prejudice. Faust. A bunch of Shakespeare.

Also, a lot of romantic poetry. I had a sort of vague distaste for poetry before I started actually reading it.

SuperMuldoon
2008-09-24, 08:08 AM
All Quiet on the Western Front

Theres a few more but thats the one that really sticks out for me.

truemane
2008-09-24, 08:11 AM
I had to read Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman in High School and I was dreading it. I had a couple of friends who were fans of Ms. Atwood, and the way they talked about her made her sound like some hard-core freak-feminist man-hater of doom.

It just so happens that she IS a hard-core freak-feminist man-hater of doom, but what I didn't expect was for her to be an astoundingly skilled writer as well. I opened the book, read the first page, and then I came to three hours later, hungry and needing to use the bathroom, with only a few pages left to go.

And I've been a die-hard fan ever since.

The other one that knocked me sideways was To Kill a Mockingbird. Wasn't expecting to like it. Loved it.

Raz_Fox
2008-09-24, 08:15 AM
As I said in the other thread, I had a reading-heavy homeschool curriculum. The list is long, but I'll try to remember the best.
The Shining Company, The Phantom Tollbooth, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Cross and the Switchblade and Till we have faces.
I'd choose The Hobbit and The Screwtape Letters as well, but I had already read those by the time school required me to read them.

strayth
2008-09-24, 08:18 AM
Fallen Angels
The Lord of the Flies
Animal Farm (later purchased)
The Great Gatsby
Grapes of Wrath (later purchased, at first I hated it)
Life and Times of Charlotte Doyle
Wind-Up Bird Chronicles
Don Quijote (a recent translation which made it hilarious)
The Odyssey
The Language Files 7.0 (non-fiction)
Tuesdays with Morrie
To Kill a Mockingbird

Glawackus
2008-09-24, 09:18 AM
To Kill a Mockingbird was fantastic. I enjoyed Fahrenheit 451, which I was required to read in school, but I didn't enjoy it while I was reading it in school.

Other than that, I'm having a hard time remembering any other ones.

(Didn't we have this thread a few months back?)

Semidi
2008-09-24, 09:24 AM
The Lover
Neuromancer
Don't Let Me Be Lonely
As I Lay Dying
Invisible Man
Frankenstein
Dracula
Au Rabours
Turn of the Screw
The Count of Monte Cristo
Animal Farm

Tengu_temp
2008-09-24, 09:50 AM
The Doll by Bolesław Prus
The Wedding by Stanisław Wyspiański
Tartuffe by Moliere (gasp, a non-Polish book!)

AKA_Bait
2008-09-24, 10:00 AM
Much overlap with others but here goes:

Wonder Boys
The Metamorphoses - Ovid's
Invisible Man - Ellison, not to be confused with The Invisible Man which was mediocre
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Iliad
Where the Red Fern Grows
A Bridge to Terabithia
The Phantom Tollbooth
Huckelberry Fin
Theogony - Hesiod
The Canterbury Tales

I could list more but the theme here seems to be fiction/mythology rather than non fiction, philosophy and science.

And lastly one that admission to liking loses me about 9 million man points:

Bridget Jones' Diary

MeklorIlavator
2008-09-24, 10:58 AM
Okay, more overlap, but here's my list:

To Kill a Mockingbird
The Iliad
Where the Red Fern Grows
A Bridge to Terabithia
Huckelberry Finn
The Canterbury Tales
Shakespeare(pretty much any, haven't found one yet that wasn't enjoyable)
Grendel- this one was very interesting as its essentially an argument against existentialism. Of course, there's some Narm at the end that makes it even better (Sing!Sing of Walls!).
Pride and Prejudice- I find the Irony and Sarcasm in this book to be pretty good.
The Character of Physical Law- This was required reading for my AP Physics class, and I turned out to be very good. Easy to understand as well.
Fahrenheit 451
Lord of the Flies
The Once and Future King

I think that's all of them. I guess I was lucky in that my school was by in large good about picking books that you had to read(barring a few...unfortunate exceptions::coughtlovelybonescough::)

Zeta Kai
2008-09-24, 12:02 PM
In no particular order:

To Kill a Mockingbird
1984
A Clockwork Orange
Ender's Game
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The Great Gatsby
Frankenstein

Closet_Skeleton
2008-09-24, 02:37 PM
The Histories, Herodotus
Annuals of Imperial Rome, Tacitus
12 Caesars, Sueteonius.

I'd rather not be forced to remember what I read in English Lit. classes.

Baerdog7
2008-09-24, 03:09 PM
*deep breath*

The Great Gatsby
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Giver
Hamlet
Macbeth
1984
Brave New World
Frankenstein
Death of a Salesman
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Cyrano de Bergerac
Slaughterhouse 5
Farenheit 451
The Martian Chronicles
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Tale of Two Cities

That's all I can think of right now, and in no particular order.

Nevrmore
2008-09-24, 03:23 PM
In no particular order:

To Kill a Mockingbird
1984
A Clockwork Orange
Ender's Game
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The Great Gatsby
Frankenstein

Your school is awesome.

Hunter Noventa
2008-09-24, 04:11 PM
The Killer Angels, a book about the battle of Gettysburg, was good, even if the class I read it for was abysmal.

Monkey Vs. Robot, because it's not what it seems.

Obrysii
2008-09-24, 04:32 PM
All Quiet on the Western Front

Theres a few more but thats the one that really sticks out for me.

I second that.

As well as Slaughterhouse Five, A Clockwork Orange, and Fight Club.

On the other hand, I despised Frankenstein and Dracula, both being slow, tedious, and rather boring.

Mr. Scaly
2008-09-24, 04:52 PM
Hamlet, King Lear, Animal Farm, The Power of One, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Generals Die in Bed all come to mind.

Rare Pink Leech
2008-09-24, 09:49 PM
Books I had to read for school that I really liked:

The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Rime Of The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (okay, so technically it's not a book)
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
V For Vendetta by Alan Moore

I'm sure there are others, but these are the ones that really stand out.

Recaiden
2008-09-24, 09:54 PM
Why can't my school read books like this?
2 for me: The Great Gatsby and Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Quincunx
2008-09-25, 10:40 AM
The Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl. Psychology/memoir/philosophy. If someone else has happened to read this, could you jaunt over to The Depression Thread and convey the book's messages, because I am doing a horrid job of it?

A blanket love for all the poetry in the upper-level Latin classes, including the ones I read in translation outside of class time. Eventually I'll fail my will save and post some epigrams here vs. annoying posters--and yet I liked the long and elegant poems as well.

The Lord of the Flies set me on the path to reading all of William Golding's books, good, bad, and incomplete (a shame, that was going to be one of the good ones).

Reinforcements
2008-09-25, 11:54 AM
I liked Frankenstein, A Clockwork Orange, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, All Quiet on the Western Front, Dandelion Wine, Hamlet, Canterbury Tales, and The Secret Life of Bees. I'm jealous of people who got to read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Hobbit, V for Vendetta, The Giver, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Neuromancer, and Ender's Game in school.

I really want to read The Count of Monte Cristo, mostly to see how similar it is to Gankutsuou.

Telonius
2008-09-25, 11:58 AM
Animal Farm, The Power of One, Lord of the Flies. If we're counting other literary works, Taming of the Shrew, and *almost* the entire poetry unit.

Gorbash Kazdar
2008-09-25, 01:39 PM
I enjoyed a number of books I read for school, but I'm going to start with the ones I was certain I would not enjoy beforehand, in order of how much I enjoyed them.

The Stranger by Albert Camus. Not only was I quite possibly the only person in my class who didn't hate it, I enjoyed it immensely, to the point that over the next several years I dogeared my copy so badly that when I pulled it off the shelf for another read this winter, it came apart in my hands.

Hucklberry Finn by Mark Twain. It might be surprising to hear given the quote in my sig, but I was very down on Twain up until I read Huckleberry Finn. The reason is that I only knew him for Tom Sawyer before, and I loathe Tom Sawyer, both the character and the work. Huckleberry Finn was a revelation for me, and I subsequently read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and a large number of Twain's essays on my own. I eventually gave Tom Sawyer another try... and I still can't stand it. In fact, I've reread Huckleberry Finn twice and both times stopped as soon as Tom shows up in the book.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. Just loved it. Love the movie, too.

EDIT: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Again, loved it, really enjoyed Apocalypse Now as well.

I'll make a special mention of Shakespeare here... I really love Shakespeare, but I hated reading it for class. I really do not like reading plays - they should be performed, or you lose too much. I sincerely think the insistence on reading, first, rather than viewing plays is the singular greatest disservice English Lit classes do to the development of student's interest in and desire to read. See the play first (in person if at all possible, on a good video production if not), then hand out the book to teach from.

[hr]
Here's the ones I enjoyed, and expected I would enjoy, in no particular order: Of Mice and Men, 1984, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, The Iliad, Beowulf, The Republic, The Face of Battle, From Wealth to Power, A Daughter of Han, and Myths of Empire. There are other more technical/subject specific books I read in college, but I tried to keep to some more broadly appealing ones here.

I also liked The Hobbit, Ender's Game, Where the Red Fern Grows, and All Quiet on the Western Front, but I had read them before they were assigned in class.

Dragor
2008-09-25, 01:48 PM
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle. It's made me close to crying with both laughter and sadness quite a few times. I'm VERY appreciative for my English Literature tutor picking it out.

warty goblin
2008-09-25, 03:22 PM
Hmm, most things I have read for school or are reading now (school? Does it ever end???) I'm rather neutral to, but here's a few I really liked.

The Illiad I'm not afraid to admit it, I'm an Iliad fanboy. I'll admit the first time I read it, there were parts I was less than fond of, but the second reading really did it a lot of good. Sure there are portions which basically read "and Achilles stabbed him so hard bits of pancreas flew a dozen feet into the air, which is far higher than any man today can make pieces of pancreas fly" but it is, IMHO, still one of the best stories about war ever written/spoken/whatever.

The Odyssey Continuing the fun, I also like the Odyssey quite a lot, although in some ways not as well as the Iliad. In others though it is better.


Beowulf If you like fantasy, you at least have to give Beowulf props for being basically the touchstone of the style. Also, for sheer random feats of awesome, it's hard to beat.

Moby **** Sure it was rather long...er, OK, very long, but it was a good story, regardless of any deeper meaning about Man and Nature, or manevolent marine mammels or whatever.

averagejoe
2008-09-25, 04:08 PM
I'm glad someone started this thread. I was a bit tired of all those "least favorite books" threads that seem to inevitably turn into "the books I read in school" threads.

Heck, I liked most of the books I had to read in school; it would probably be easier to list the books I didn't like. Here are some choice picks, though.

Some of them I'd already read, but they were still awesome books:
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Hobbit
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Dream

Others I was only just introduced to, and were awesome books.:
The Things They Carried
The Crying of Lot 49
Othello (Lots of Shakespeare in high school for me)
Stories from The Canterbury Tales
Weinberg, Ohio

Jorkens
2008-09-25, 04:53 PM
Beowulf If you like fantasy, you at least have to give Beowulf props for being basically the touchstone of the style. Also, for sheer random feats of awesome, it's hard to beat.
Read the Mabinogion, it rocks even harder!

We didn't get to do it at school, though.

adanedhel9
2008-09-25, 05:25 PM
Most notably, One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I read this freshman year of university and liked it; after a recent re-read, it's become my favorite book.

Others include Things Fall Apart, Maus, Cuando era puertorriquena, The Kiss of the Spider Woman, Around the World in 80 Days, Othello, and Oedipus Rex. Almost all of these came from two classes - senior high school English and freshman "symposium" (combo literature/writing/debate/learn to be a university student/culture class... thing) at university.

finnmckool
2008-09-26, 10:43 AM
Lord of the Flies was quite good. "Sucks to yer assmar, Piggy." I still tell people that.

"The Bald Soprano" (college)

Memoirs of an Invisible Man

Telonius
2008-09-26, 11:30 AM
Oh, nearly forgot another great one ... Utopia, for 12th grade theology.

DaisyGMYAD
2008-09-26, 04:00 PM
In high school, I loved Invisible Man. I was so happy to see other people thought the same.

The one book (well, play) that I adored but I haven't seen mentioned yet is Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. Its a fantastic look at the Scopes Monkey Trial with great discussion on Darwin and reconciling faith with science. Its even better to watch it acted out live!

Fiery Diamond
2008-09-26, 04:15 PM
For me, To Kill a Mockingbird

finnmckool
2008-09-27, 08:55 AM
Oh and Mom made me read Jeeves and Wooster. God I love PG Wodehouse.

Artemician
2008-09-27, 09:09 AM
The Illiad I'm not afraid to admit it, I'm an Iliad fanboy. I'll admit the first time I read it, there were parts I was less than fond of, but the second reading really did it a lot of good. Sure there are portions which basically read "and Achilles stabbed him so hard bits of pancreas flew a dozen feet into the air, which is far higher than any man today can make pieces of pancreas fly" but it is, IMHO, still one of the best stories about war ever written/spoken/whatever.

The Odyssey Continuing the fun, I also like the Odyssey quite a lot, although in some ways not as well as the Iliad. In others though it is better.


After reading the Aeneid, I found that reading the Iliad became physically painful for me. Virgil did it *so much better* it's not even funny. And that was with half the book unedited because of his early death.

warty goblin
2008-09-27, 02:26 PM
After reading the Aeneid, I found that reading the Iliad became physically painful for me. Virgil did it *so much better* it's not even funny. And that was with half the book unedited because of his early death.

Funny, I had exactly the opposite reaction reading the Aneid. "Hey" I went, "This is basicaly the Odyssey stuck in front of the Illiad, except the hero is an ass, the battles aren't as good, the Trojans' enemies in Italy are never humanized in the way that they are in the Illiad, it lacks any really thoughtful analysis of the extremifying, humiliating and dehumanizing effects of war and nobody, nobody comes close to being as well characterized as Achilles and Hektor are."

Also, Aeneas is a tool.

chiasaur11
2008-09-27, 02:32 PM
Oh and Mom made me read Jeeves and Wooster. God I love PG Wodehouse.

Quoted for truth.

I got a Wodehouse collection for 25 cents at a garage sale. Best deal ever.

Of course, I never got to read Wodehouse for school. Read it on recommendations from Doug Adams.

Seriously, the man makes GOLF fun reading. Even without massive cheating.

Knaight
2008-09-27, 05:10 PM
Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry
Romeo and Juliet
Anthem
Things Fall Apart(I think, its a Chinua Achebe Book)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Odyssey
To Kill a Mockingbird
Warriors Don't Cry

Jorkens
2008-09-27, 07:44 PM
Quoted for truth.

I got a Wodehouse collection for 25 cents at a garage sale. Best deal ever.

Of course, I never got to read Wodehouse for school. Read it on recommendations from Doug Adams.

Seriously, the man makes GOLF fun reading. Even without massive cheating.
Apparently Lemmy from Motörhead is a massive Wodehouse fan. Which is one of those bits of information that I just can't incorporate into a sensible worldview.

Unique
2008-09-27, 07:51 PM
I'm sure it's been said, but...

1984.

It was like slogging through hell in novel form, and I loved it.

MisterSaturnine
2008-09-27, 08:41 PM
Almost every book in my Lit class last year--One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Everything is Illuminated, Waiting for Godot, and Hamlet. The one exception was Their Eyes Were Watching God. I wanted to be friends with Tea Cake, but other than that, nothing.

I'd read Everything is Illuminated before and loved it, but I liked it even better with the discussions we had in class (I have a really good teacher and really good classmates), which cemented it as my favorite book. I'd recommend it to anyone.

Trizap
2008-09-27, 10:40 PM
Catcher in the Rye
Cyrano De Bergerac
A Midsummers Night Dream

Klaz Eidron
2008-09-29, 05:58 AM
-Don Quixote (In the original spanish, since I'm a native speaker)
-1984
-Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde
-A Clockwork Orange
-Treasure Island

potatocubed
2008-09-29, 06:52 AM
Shakespeare.
Also, The Country Wife, a Restoration comedy play about sex. :smallsmile:
The works of Coleridge.

All the books and the rest of the poetry were tripe.

Jinura
2008-10-02, 10:10 AM
My history books.... What?

Oh yeah and the "Shamers Signet" ( danish book...)

Ceska
2008-10-02, 10:21 AM
I liked almost any of the books we got to read, but we had no long lists (unless we took German as oral exams, only two did, go figure). I dreaded Hugo v. Hofmannsthal's "Jedermann" as well as Kabale und Liebe by Schiller (Intrigue and Love is the English title), went on to read die Räuber and liked it. I liked 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World as well as Faust, Sorrows of the Young Werther (I think that is the English title of Die Leiden des jungen Werther), ETA Hoffmann's Sandmann and Kafka's Metamorphosis. Generally I liked about any book we got to read or I read at the same time fitting to the subjects (though Marx took ages).
I also read a few history books in class instead of annoying my teacher in history, but those hardly count.

Colmarr
2008-10-03, 12:59 AM
Z for Zachariah, by Robert C. O'Brien. Almost everyone else in my year hated it, but I loved it for some reason.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. We were given a week to read it. I was done 23 hours later.

Shakespeare's tragedies. They're all good. I'm not as much a fan of his comedies.

The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. Loved the sense of claustrophobia in this play. Unfortunately I then tried to read Death of a Salesman and got so depressed I never touched another Miller.

Yarram
2008-10-03, 07:43 AM
Z for Zachariah, by Robert C. O'Brien. Almost everyone else in my year hated it, but I loved it for some reason.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. We were given a week to read it. I was done 23 hours later.

Shakespeare's tragedies. They're all good. I'm not as much a fan of his comedies.

The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. Loved the sense of claustrophobia in this play. Unfortunately I then tried to read Death of a Salesman and got so depressed I never touched another Miller.
Obviously you're Aussie +D. Yeah I agree with all but the Shakespeare's tradgedies. They really do nothing for me. =P

"The Handmaids Tale" and "Holes" I thought were really good books that I had to study. =D

Teron
2008-10-03, 04:44 PM
Books I had to read for school that I really liked:

V For Vendetta by Alan Moore

Seriously?!

TheEmerged
2008-10-03, 06:33 PM
Seriously?!

Seriously. I was shocked to learn my old home school has added it to its reading list too. Turns out there are three or four graphic novels that are part of the reading list now.

---------------

In my own case, I was a voracious reader as a youngster and had generally read anything on the reading lists before it was required. There is one noteworthy exception though: "The Ugly American". What's ironic is that most people who use that term have *obviously* not read the book, or completely misunderstood the term.

While it wasn't required reading in school, I felt required to read "Starship Troopers" after seeing the movie. I wanted to see what it was about the book the producer/screenwriter had felt such a need to parody...

Colmarr
2008-10-05, 11:45 PM
Obviously you're Aussie +D.

I am indeed :smallsmile: What gave it away?

EDIT: Other than my profile saying Australia :smallbiggrin:

sun_tzu
2008-10-06, 02:50 AM
"Germinal", by Zola.
Anything by Molière. Good God, the man was a comedic genius.