Required School Reading

[urcoolcarrie]

I have to read Three Cups of Tea for my summer reading this year. Yeah, I'm not even going to think about it until August. I hate it.

As for during the school year, I had to read A Tale of Two Cities. I HATED that book. I chucked it somewhere deep inside my closet the second I was done reading it, and its long lost. I never want to see that book again.

[Carrisa]

Apparently, I have to read some book called Animal Dialogues or something like that over the summer. I thought I didn't have to read any required reading because I'm taking three separate English courses, but the school site said everyone has to read this book. At least it's about animals.

The last book of the year in my English 10 class was Lord of the Flies. It was kind of like torture, but I stomached it as best I could. My mind kept drifting every time I'd started reading, but I did catch on to what the author was trying to convey. He just had to be so darn wordy and symbolic about it.

[debussygirl]

My summer reading is Walden.
Blech.

[addictedbooklover]

I have to read a book of short stories, which definitely aren't my thing, and I chose a very boring book. I have less than 2 weeks to finish it, but so far it's taken me at least a week to read 20 pages. If I don't like a book, I don't finish it, but now I have to and I don't know if I can

[Jadey]

Nup, not in my last year anyway. No subjects are compulsory so im not doing english. So no reading.
But the past years they gave us like, book assignments and whatnot.
And in our first years of high school they made us read for 10-20mins at the start of each english class

[samajama]

I'm reading Macbeth eventually this year. I read LOTF and Odyssey, too. LOTF was awesome and the latter almost killed me, hahah

This thread has sadly been abandoned. I was rumanging through my old posts and saw this, though and it's needs to be corrected! I re-read the Odssey and the Aeneid and finally read the Iliad this year. Love them all! Shame on you, past self.

[fanMNM]

I didn't realize this thread existed! It's awesome!

I'm not a student anymore...now I'm the English teacher assigning the books to be read I love reading all the comments about the books everyone had to read and what the reactions to those books were. Anyone have any new ones to add?? Feedback helps me make better choices for my students!

[debussygirl]

Blech this year I'm going to have to read Wuthering Heights. d:

Those characters frustrate me to death.

[blasphemous_contessa]

Required school reading introduced me to Orson Scott Card. I loved Ender's Game Animal Dreams, Things Fall Apart, Brave New World, and Lord of the Flies (freshman Humanities english). In the sixth grade we had to read Mara, Daughter of the Nile and it's still among my favorites. The sophomore year it was all greek tragedies and Shakespeare (EW!) junior year we read things like The Scarlet Letter, Invisible Man (the one about a nameless black guy not the H.G. Wells one) as well as some Mark Twain and poetry. I loved Snake River Anthology But the "required" reading my senior year was great! We had one of those former hippie political activist teachers so we read things like The Handmaid's Tale, Hogg, Life After Man and other stuff that I didn't show my mom. As well as the school board approved stuff (which was mostly books I used to steal from my older sisters as a child and had already read anyway)

School required reading was the best.

[Jeakat]

I'm from England and from the looks of it, our required reading is so much different. I've finished school now (long ago actually) but I remember that we didn't have all that many things that we had to read at home and most of our reading material we got on with in class. Anyway, I digress.

Shakespeare was huge, huge feature in my school days! Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Nights Dream were the top three. Unfortunately my middle school didn't seem to communicate with my secondary (high) school, do I ended up having to do Macbeth twice (as well as the Tudors for history, yawn )

One of the books we had to read, and it's still one of my favourites, was Of Mice and Men. Others were An Inspector Calls and for drama, The Crucible. Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure we went to theatre to see all of these. I think my teachers wanted us to get a visual to get us to pay attention. It worked, I still distinctly remember the dreamy guy who played Puck and that's going back a good 12 years!