Books you read for English at school

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I generally had good English teachers at school, and am grateful for the range and number of books they made us read.

Here are the ones I can remember. I may have mixed up some of the years.

First Year (11-12 yrs old)

'The Machine Gunners' - Robert Westall (I felt smug because I had already read this at school, through the Puffin Book Club)

'Across the Barricades' - Joan Lingard (introduced us to Northern Irleand problem, showed us how love can overcome prejudice or something)

ROGUE MALE - Geoffrey Household (cracking boy's own thriller)

Second year:

'A High Wind In Jamaica' - Richard Hughes (I can't remember. Boring. Possibly introduced us to some issue)

'Flambards' - K.M. Peyton (awful. we all revolted and told Mr Shepherd so. He said it was an introduction to the form of the Victorian novel or somesuch nonsense)

'The Phantom Tollbooth' - Norton Juster (tedious. We revolted again and told him we were too old for kids books. He said it was in the tradition of Alice in Wonderland and we didn't understand all the levels it was working on)

Third Year:

'Billy Liar' - Keith Waterhouse (the book for me. Our edition had a lovely cover that made it look like a packet of Woodbines. I started an essay on it with the sentence "Billy Fisher is a very mixed-up young man, though perhaps he doesn't realise it" ha ha)

'Kes' (yes it was called Kes in our edition) - Barry Hines (what's tha' mean Casper, "German's bite?" Terrific.)

"Lord of the Flies" - William Golding

"Julius Caesar" - our intro to Shakespeare

Some other good stuff.

Fourth/Fifth Year:

Hamlet was our Shakespeare set text for GCSE.

Macbeth we did then too, I think, or maybe that was an extra thing we did at A-level. I should remember!

'Great Expectations'

Fuck, what else did we do? Some of the Romantic Poets, some Hardy poems (again, maybe Hardy was 6th form)

Oh yes - 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'. I think.

Some bloody Ted Hughes poetry, which Mr Shepherd obviously loved to bits. Uch, I can hear him reading 'The Thought Fox' to us in his perpetual cold voice.

Must have done something modern novel. All a bit of a blur. No wonder I got a C.

Sixth Form - A-levels

King Lear, The Tempest and Much Ado About Nothing were our three Shakespeares for A-Level

Also ran through Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure quickly

Mr Skelly was great at teaching Chaucer. We started with the Prologue, did The Pardoner's Tale as our set text, but also ran through, in various degrees of detail (sometimes just Mr Skelly reading it to us in his patented Middle English accent), the Wife of Bath's Tale, the Reeve's Tale and the Miller's Tale. All the rudest ones, then.

Mr Kingman's forte was Pope. The Rape of the Lock and Letter to Dr. Arbuthnot were the two major texts of his we did.

John Donne, plus a few other metaphysical poets.

Mansfield Park. Mr Skelly told us one almost always fell in love with Austen's heroines, but maybe Fanny was too wet.

Edward Bond's 'Lear'. Mr Kingman told us after we'd finished it that he thought it was pretty rub. I didn't mind it as a got my dream question on it in the exam and wrote a pretty much perfect essay, which I'm sure played no small part in my making amends for my crappy GCSE result by getting an A hurrah.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:34 (twenty years ago)

I won't be able to recall many, after all these decades. Macbeth and (good grief) Coriolanus. The Crucible. Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Hard Times by Dickens. An absurdist play that I can't call up at all now but liked then - not Ionesco, but can't think who. Some poetry, mostly romantics as I recall. I'm amazed how few I can remember here.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:43 (twenty years ago)

Pre-GCSE:

John Wyndham, The Chrysalids
John Steinbeck, The Pearl
The Merchant of Venice

GCSE:

Billy Liar (the play)
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet On The Western Front
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Macbeth
Lots of war poetry - not just First World War, but everything from Henry V onwards.

And lots of other stuff that I can't remember, of course.

Our school had four parallel top sets in each subject, and the top sets in English studied different books. I remember always being jealous of the books the other sets got to study - 1984 instead of Brave New World, for example.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:46 (twenty years ago)

Year 8 - Goodnight Mr Tom Tom Club
Year 9 - Julius Caesar Salad
Year 10/11 - I'm The King of the Bouncy Castle
Romeo and Juliet
War Poems
Lord of the Flies
Animal Farm
VIth form - Frankenstein
King Lear
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
post romantic poets
Talking Heads

It seems like a very small amount of books for 7 years. There was definitely another at VIth form. But what was it?

― Raston Warrior Robot (alix), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:47 (twenty years ago)

John Steinbeck, The Pearl

Ooh yes - we did that in our 2nd year too. Never really got the point of it.

And 'Animal Farm' of course we did too.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:50 (twenty years ago)

Oh, we did quite a few of William Blake's poems too. 4th year, I think.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:51 (twenty years ago)

No, I didn't get the point of The Pearl either, and didn't enjoy doing it at all.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:52 (twenty years ago)

There Is a Happy Land - Keith Waterhouse, My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Measure for Measure, The Rape of the Lock, Joseph Andrews, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, "The Rain Horse" - Ted Hughes, The Whitsun Weddings - Philip Larkin, The Pearl as well.

That's all I can remember at the moment.

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:53 (twenty years ago)

And some of the War Poets for A-level. God, it's all coming back now.

Why did we all have to do The Pearl???

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:53 (twenty years ago)

Pre-GCSE: Something called Terry on the Fence about a good kid who gets sucked into crime or something and ends up on a fence, Buddy about a kid whose rogueish Dad is a Buddy Holly fan, and lots of stuff I can't remember.

For GCSE: Kiss, Kiss (short stories) by Roald Dahl, To Kill A Mockingbird, A Man For All Seasons, some early 60s kitchen sink thing set up north that I can't remember the name of, yes I can - A Kind of Loving, Of Mice and Men, and probably some other stuff but NO SHAKESPEARE WHATSOEVER.

For A-Level: Othello, The Merchant of Venice, some 70s play set in Manchester called The Comedians, The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, and some boring shit by Wordsworth.

― Teh HoBB (the pirate king), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:54 (twenty years ago)

gah - misplaced italics!

― Teh HoBB (the pirate king), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:55 (twenty years ago)

I thought it was ILLEGAL to do no Shakespeare at GCSE or something.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:56 (twenty years ago)

Um... from vague memory

The Merchant Of Venice, Macbeth, Hamlet, Lord Of The Flies, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Of Mice And Men, 1984, Day Of The Triffids, Death Of A Salesman.

Lots of poetry too, though not much I remember. Wilfred Owen (Dulce Et Decorum Est + others), Percy Bysshe Shelley (Ozymandias), Spike Milligan (Unto Us - essential reading for anti-abortionist Catholic indoctrination).

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:59 (twenty years ago)

Pre-GCSE: Something called Terry on the Fence about a good kid who gets sucked into crime or something and ends up on a fence, Buddy about a kid whose rogueish Dad is a Buddy Holly fan, and lots of stuff I can't remember.

I love this.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 11:59 (twenty years ago)

'Terry On The Fence' is available for 1p from a variety of sellers.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:04 (twenty years ago)

I can only remember as far back as sixth form, for some reason. Though I have a dim recollection of English GCSE being a mixture of Romeo & Juliet, WW1 poetry, and old Eastenders scripts?

Plays:
Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker
Hamlet
King Lear

Novels:
Wuthering Heights (didn't much like it at the time due to horrific teacher)
????? blank but must have been SOMETHING else. Maybe A Handmaid's Tale?

Poetry:
anthology called '6 Women Poets': Grace Nichols, Gillian Clarke, Fleur Adcock, Selima Hill, Carol Rumens and Liz Lochhead. Looking back I am quite impressed with their contemporariness (I know there is a proper word but I can't spell it). But at the time the format seemed a bit twee and the boys hated it.
More WW1 poets.
Oddments of Plath and Wordsworth and Heaney and others.

― Archel (Archel), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:07 (twenty years ago)

god my memory is bad, but here goes with a very partial listL

3rd year: '1984', 'decline and fall'
4th year: 'homage to catalonia', 'howard's end', 'miss lonelyhearts'
5th year: 'macbeth', 'lord of the flies'
L6: stevie smith (poems), 'othello'
U6: 'mansfield park', some old greek bollocks.

― N_RQ, Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:09 (twenty years ago)

Dimly – and probably inaccurately – remembered:

A level: Mansfield Park, Hard Times, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Hard Times, Bonfire of the Vanities, Tender is the Night, Howard's End, Canterbury Tales prologue + Miller's tale, TS Eliot poems, Auden poems.

GCSE: 2 Shakespeare plays per year iirc plus A Man For All Seasons, 1984, All Quiet on the Western Front, A Kestrel for a Knave [was this pre-GCSE?] wow I'm having a hard time remembering these.

Pre-GCSE: Lots of Shakespeare, Dickens, Goodnight Mr Tom... this is really difficult.

― beanz (beanz), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:17 (twenty years ago)

I'll only remember when other people mention them I think.

― beanz (beanz), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:17 (twenty years ago)

King Lear, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, The Pearl, The Old Man and the Sea, Wuthering Heights, Lord Jim, A Handful of Dust, The Shrimp & the Anemone (I think), The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, The Picture of Dorian Gray. I'm sure there were more.

― Penelope_111 (Penelope_111), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:20 (twenty years ago)

Buddy! We did that! I remember the cover. It was dire.

― Raston Warrior Robot (alix), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:22 (twenty years ago)

I forgot Animal Farm (and no doubt many others) in my list.

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:22 (twenty years ago)

Bewilderingly, when the protagonist of Terry on the Fence is trying to climb over a wall to get away from the caretaker of the school that he has been lured into burgling by a gang of bad kids, one of the bad kids, who is on the top of the wall, leans down with an outstretched hand and shouts "Grab 'old, Tel!", but the caretaker, when recounting these events afterwards says "I didn't catch what he said - something about an old television". This always seemed a bit implausible to me.

We also saw Buddy on the telly (or on the 'old Tel), 'starring' Roger Daltrey as Buddy's Dad.

― Teh HoBB (the pirate king), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:27 (twenty years ago)

I was going to ask how the threadstarter could remember all that, but then realised it was Nick.

How come you all read Mansfield Park? Of the 5 Austens I've read (none of which were at school), it's easily the most stolid and long-winded. Northanger Abbey's my favourite, then P&P, with S&S and Persuasion equal third (I've not read Emma - seeing the TV adaptation annoyed me so much I couldn't face it).

My favourite books I read at school were Geoffrey Trease's "Cue for Treason" (age 9, I think, a rollicking tale of intiruge and plot in Elizabethan times), LP Hartley's "The Go-Between" and (can't remember the author) "Unman, Wittering and Zygo".

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:27 (twenty years ago)

Oh yes, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion too.

― Penelope_111 (Penelope_111), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:29 (twenty years ago)

Goodnight Mister Tom
Across the Barricades
Lord of the Flies
Blood Brothers
A Midsummer Night's Dream
MacBeth

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:31 (twenty years ago)

Mr Magus Is Waiting For You, when I was in first year of secondary school.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:32 (twenty years ago)

oh yeah and war poems!!

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:34 (twenty years ago)

oh and some text about Derek Bentley who was a victim of British Justice.

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:36 (twenty years ago)

I was going to ask how the threadstarter could remember all that, but then realised it was Nick.

I realised many years ago that my recall for my schooldays is significantly better than the norm. I don't like to think what this says about me.

I don't think my memory is very good generally.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:42 (twenty years ago)

GCE (yes, i'm THAT old): 1984, Macbeth, Far From The Madding Crowd (Or was it Return Of The Native? we read both at school)

(the CSE set did Kes and Lord Of The Flies. we woz robbed...)

only other thing i can think of that we read is Day Of The Triffids. and something about football.

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:47 (twenty years ago)

I didn't enjoy Kes much. I remember a phrase near the beginning, describing waking in darkness: 'The air was of a gritty texture' – and I can't stand it. I think it's the formulation 'the noun was of a adjective noun' that really grates. Needless to say, Mr B4ntick loved it.

― beanz (beanz), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:52 (twenty years ago)

I remember our teacher reading us The Diary of Anne Frank in primary school. We then had to write our own diary imagining we were being persecuted by Nazis. Wtf?? Looking back this seems so wrong. Mine ended 'but finally my sister died. And then... I DIED TOO. The end.'

― Archel (Archel), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 12:54 (twenty years ago)

here are the ones i remember:

School Daze! What Did Your Teachers Ruin For You And/Or More Positive Reflections On Required Reading

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 13:02 (twenty years ago)

oops - missed that thread.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 13:05 (twenty years ago)

Here's what I can remember (obv. there were a lot more):

"The Scarlet Letter"
"Othello"
"Twelfth Night"
"The Tempest"
"Julius Caesar"
"Crime and Punishment"
"Beowulf" (abridged)
"Canterbury Tales" (abridged)
Frederick Douglas's autobiography
"Wuthering Heights"
"Beloved" by Toni Morrison (sp?)
"I Heard the Owl Call My Name" ("by Hoo Jones" as my friend joked at the time)

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 13:13 (twenty years ago)

Oh yes, and "Frankenstein," and "Of Mice and Men"

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 13:15 (twenty years ago)

Animal Farm (at O Grade and Higher, apparently on 'different levels'), the Crucible, Merchant Of Venice, The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Julius Caesar, a War Poets collection, Of Mice And Men, 1984, something by Ted Hughes, The Charge Of The Light Brigade and Wordsworth. Also an Australian teen play called 'The Chicken Run'.

Strangest of all, possibly, was a selection of Steptoe & Son scripts.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 13:15 (twenty years ago)

this year's gcse choices

s1:
midsummer night's dream
twelth night
christmas carol

s2:
crysalids
animal farm
an inspector calls

s3:
romeo and juliet
to kill a mockingbird
pride and prejudice
of mice and men

s4:
macbeth
lord of the flies

higher:
great gatsby
go between
death of a salesman
streetcar named desire

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 13:22 (twenty years ago)

your standard shakespear stuff (hamlet, macbeth, midsummer)
great gatsby (junior year)
anna karenina (senior year)
brave new world (sophomore year)
portrait of the artist as a young man (senior year)
great expectations (junior year)
tale of two cities (sophomore year)
no idea what else. some greek stuff. I managed to never have to read Lord of the Flies for some reason.

my freshmen year was a joke, for a variety of reasons I didn't get into the "honors" class and was stuck it what was practically a remidial course taught by a gym teacher who taught out of a 50 year old textbook and made people read a play no-one has ever heard of out loud the WHOLE YEAR. I convinced him to let me spend class time in the library.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 13:24 (twenty years ago)

High School (I forget the years):
1984, Animal Farm - Orwell
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Chrysalids - John Windham
Lord of the Flies
Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
Shoeless Joe
Obasan - Joy somethingorother
Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, Hamlet
Prayer for Owen Meaney
Man For All Seasons
To Kill A Mockingbird
Death of Salesman
Waiting for Godot
Man of La Mancha
I somehow managed to avoid The Crucible, Fifth Business and The Handmaiden's Tale through luck.

Uni Critical Reading and Writing:
Midsummers Night Dream
Othello
Out of Africa - Karen Blixen
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Frankenstein - Shelley
Lord Jim - Conrad
As I Lay Dying - Faulkner
The French Lieutenant's Woman - Fowles

― Rufus 3000 (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 13:26 (twenty years ago)

For some odd reason I had to read Of Mice And Men for 3 different English classes in 3 different years. I turned in the same paper on it every time, for 3 different As.

I remember in my junior year I had this very odd teacher, Ms. Tandy, a very large black woman with a tiny, birdy, finch-like voice, who got no respect from hardly any of her students ever, who had us read, among other things, Ellis' Invisible Man and Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, which were GREAT and both books that no other English teachers in our school were exposing their students to.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 13:42 (twenty years ago)

It was in my Poly Sci class that we read Animal Farm, fwiw.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 13:43 (twenty years ago)

"I Heard the Owl Call My Name" ("by Hoo Jones" as my friend joked at the time)

I just felt like I had to pull that one out because it's funny, and probably no one noticed it.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 13:43 (twenty years ago)

Freshman:
Julius Caesar, Romeo & Juliet, Antigone,
Wuthering Heights
Odyssey
special project, I did Percy Shelley
10 grade:
American Lit
Huckleberry Finn
Scarlet Letter
Ethan Frome
Great Gatsby
Their Eyes Were Watching God
World Novels:
The Stranger
Crime & Punishment
Darkness at Noon
Germinal
As I Lay Dying
Native Son
Beloved
This one about WWII in Holland that involved some graphic torture that I remember to this day.
11th grade:
Brit Lit B: Romanticism to Present
Pride & Prejudice
Dracula
All the poets
Something modern & short that I don't remember: Grendal?
12 grade:
AP English
Moby Dick
Adam Bede
Hamlet
Light in August
Invisible Man

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 14:06 (twenty years ago)

several folks in our class wanted to read "animal farm" because they thought it was the porno.

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 14:09 (twenty years ago)

When I looked at this thread title the name of a play called "The long short and the tall" came to me in my head (for the first time in 15 years) but I don't recall the story just the teacher who held the class at the time. and I suddenly remembered the name 'Bamforth'. Checking this out on the web and YES the play does have a character called Bamforth.

I feel odd knowing that this particular memory record has not been accessed all this time.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 14:10 (twenty years ago)

John Knowles' A Seperate Peace almost ruined literature for me.

― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 14:34 (twenty years ago)

The Odyssey
To Kill a Mockingbird
Grapes of Wrath
A Separate Peace
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds
Wuthering Heights
The Scarlet Letter
Crime & Punishment
Great Gatsby
Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Taming of the Shrew
The Pearl
The Old Man and the Sea
Ethan Frome
Lord of the Flies
Heart of Darkness
Of Mice and Men
A Tale of Two Cities
Oliver Twist (that may have been 8th grade) and probably several more which I can't presently recall.

― luna (luna.c), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 18:25 (twenty years ago)

I don't remember when:

the old man and the sea
to kill a mockingbird
of mice and men
the adventures of tom sawyer

the devil's disciple
macbeth
midsummer night's dream
julius caeser

there must have been more

― RJG (RJG), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 18:33 (twenty years ago)

haha I completely forgot ETHAN FROME, which some friends of mine (including ilxor Tinman: Self-Destruct or whatever he is calling himself now) made an insanely retarded "film" version of for a project.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 18:38 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, my friends and I were always going to make a movie called Quasi-Fromo on Ice, but it never happened.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 20:13 (twenty years ago)

We had to do Carol Ann Duffy poems every bloody year. My school must have been rubbish, we didn't do anywhere near as many books as some of you seem to have done.
For GCSE we did Macbeth, Pygmalion, and Pride and Prejudice. It seems incredible that we only did one novel and two plays in two years, but I really can't remember doing anything else. I hated Englsih Literature, and didn't do it in Sixth Form.

― Cathy (Cathy), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 20:21 (twenty years ago)

GCSE

To Kill A Mockingbird
A Clockwork Orange
1984
Romeo and Juliet
The Merchant of Venice
A Passage to India

A-Level (French Lit)

Candide
L'Etranger
Les Mains Salles

― Ben Dot (1977), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 22:24 (twenty years ago)

"oops - missed that thread."

oh, that was just an old I Love Books thread, Alba. I guess I shoulda just cut & paste my post from that thread. It gave me serious flashbacks thinking about that stuff.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 20 July 2005 22:28 (twenty years ago)

I would like to say that everyone on this thread seems to have gotten a better education than me! Are there any western Canadians on here who can also attest to the rather cursory attention paid to literature study in our high schools? I'm an English major now and if I'd read half these books as a teenager I'd be set.

― fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Thursday, 21 July 2005 04:20 (twenty years ago)

Oh yeah, Ethan Frome was one we read too.

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 21 July 2005 04:22 (twenty years ago)

also 1984

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 21 July 2005 04:22 (twenty years ago)

I teach.

Year 8

Skellig - David Almond
Catherine Called Birdy - Some Twit
Holes - Louis Sachar

Year 9

Wolf On The Fold - Judith Clarke
Bend It Like Beckham - Gurinder Chadha (Film)
Guitar Higway Rose - Can't Remember

Year 10

Romeo & Juliet - Bill Shakespeare
Animal Farm - George Orwell
What's Eating Gilbert Grape (Film)
The Divine Wind - Some Dude.

― Mike Stuchbery (Mike Stuchbery), Thursday, 21 July 2005 04:27 (twenty years ago)

The very first book I remember having to read at school was when I was about 9 or 10 years old, and we had to read Mistress Masham's Repose by T H White. It was all about the idea that Gulliver had brought back some Lilliputians with him after his travels, and they were discovered living on a small island in the middle of a lake on the estate of a run-down English country manor house, by the little orphan girl who lived there. It was a fabulous book.

― C J (C J), Thursday, 21 July 2005 04:35 (twenty years ago)

9th grade:
Lord of the Flies
Romeo and Juliet
"The Most Dangerous Game"
"The Lady or the Tiger"
10th grade
lots of short stories, I transferred in part way through and never read "The Minister's Black Veil" which our Teacher was obsessed about. Symbolism and "Unversality and Timelessness" arghghgh
My Name is Asher Lev (the mythic ancestor, what?)
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Once and Future King
Julius Caesar
11th grade
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Billy Budd (we had two different versions of the book in class, so we had two different names for the ship in both of them, ha ha. We saw the movie in class)
The Crucible
Ethan Frome
The Scarlet Letter (taking test on this, me: "What's this bit about a scaffold she keeps banging about??")
12th grade
Our Town AND The Skin of Our Teeth, WHY?????
As I Lay Dying
Macbeth
Sula
King Lear and The Picture of Dorian Gray

for 10th grade social studies
1984
Brave New World
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
11th grade
SIX(!!!!) Gore Vidal novels
AP European History
Armada
The Agony and the Ecstacy
The Carolly Erickson biography of Marie Antoinette, that was good
Some HUGE book about Hitler

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Thursday, 21 July 2005 10:32 (twenty years ago)

9th grade: julius caesar (had already read this, tho), the sword in the stone, the iliad, antigone, some of the canterbury tales, much ado about nothing
10th grade: a canticle for leibowitz, the good earth (second time i'd been forced to read this in three years), things fall apart; poetry by dylan thomas, robert frost and w. b. yeats
11th grade: a few chapters of last of the mohicans, the scarlet letter, huckleberry finn, the great gatsby, one flew over the cuckoo's nest
12th grade: oedipus the king, hamlet (we spent a WEEK on this,, wtf), brave new world, crime and punishment, as you like it

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 21 July 2005 10:42 (twenty years ago)

Oh yeah, "My Name is Asher Lev" reminds me that we had to read "The Chosen" in 9th grade, which caused some kids to think they were geniuses every single fucking year by blacking out some of the letters in pen so that it read "The Loser".

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Thursday, 21 July 2005 13:15 (twenty years ago)

Was this all required reading? I am completely bewildered. Surely some of the books listed you just read extracts from? I mean, the Iliad???
Why did my school not trust us to read books?

― Cathy (Cathy), Thursday, 21 July 2005 13:25 (twenty years ago)

I can't remember many:
Z for Zachariah
The Chrysalids
Hamlet
An Inspector Calls
Of Mice And Men

― Colonel Poo (Colonel Poo), Thursday, 21 July 2005 13:35 (twenty years ago)

I am suddenly kind of alarmed. The only novel we had to read in Year 10 and 11 was Pride and Prejudice, and only a handful of people even read that. Before Year 10 I don't think we read anything even slightly canonical. We were never taught anything that wasn't going to be on the exam, and only the absolute minimum for that (where there was a choice between two or three texts in the exam, we were only taught one).

― Cathy (Cathy), Thursday, 21 July 2005 13:44 (twenty years ago)

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