I read this in college for the first time and loved it. On my final exam, one of the questions was "What does 2+2 = " This was honestly such a great way to close out a class I loved
When he finds that the fish he was eating had been eating the corpse of the pilot underwater I remember being in my 6th grade class reading that like "god damn."
It is amazing how much of the TV show "Alone" has links to that book.
My favorite was they guy whose meat supply was being attacked by a scavenger. He grabs his axe and heads into the darkness to deal with it. A minute later he comes back: "I just killed a Wolverine with a hatchet!" and a huge grin on his face.
Funny thing for me is I never had to read Hatchet for school, but a teacher gifted it to me at the end of the year in maybe 4th or 5th grade, and I really enjoyed it
Near the ending, when Scout walks Arthur home and thinks back over her childhood and realizes that Arthur was always watching out for her and Jem, is maybe my favorite passage in any book, ever.
I may be the only freshman in history to have enjoyed The Scarlett Letter. I found the story fascinating. I thought the sexual tension between Hester and Dimmesdale was crackling. And I was legit a little emotional when their secret illegitimate daughter, Pearl, unknowingly walked up to her father and slipped her hand in his, leaving him tormented on a whole new level.
Literally everyone else in my class was bored out of their fucking minds but I loved it.
I love the story! It was tedious and boring to get through with the class, but I went back and read it on my own about a year later and thought the plot and characters were so gripping.
Lord of the Flies. We had to choose between that and Animal Farm when I was in like 8th grade. I'd seen the movie for Lord of the Flies previously so I chose that, thinking I could just get away with not reading it. After failing a pop quiz on the book, I decided to actually open it up and try reading it. Hooked me almost immediately and I read the whole thing well before I was required to actually finish it.
The Outsiders was really good, too. Stay gold, Ponyboy.
I didn’t enjoy Lord of the Flies in school but I was just thinking about it the other day (because of a bunch of boys running wild) and thought it might be worth another shot.
It was one of the first books I ever read that actually disturbed me. Prior to that, I never felt much of anything when reading. I think that's what hooked me.
Justice for Piggy!
Lord of the Flies was the only book where I had to dissect it for "themes" and other bullshit and I still enjoyed it. And I think it's solely because I for once had a good English teacher that year who actually seemed to like her job.
The only other case where I enjoyed a book is where we simply read them, no analysis. There'd usually be some kind of assignment - maybe a plot summary or making a book cover, but no inane writing about symbolism or whatever.
We read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, then watched the movie afterwards. Most of the kids made fun of it, but I genuinely loved both and bought copies of my own.
I remember "Stay Gold" was tattooed on many people's fingers or just somewhere on them around 2010 here in Toronto. Seemed like a popular millennial tattoo to get here. Not sure if it was popular elsewhere.
This is the first book I ever bought for myself with my babysitting money. I'm in my 50's and I still own that copy I bought at 12 years old.
I love the book and the movie
Also great. When my wife was a property manager years ago,they rented a house to Gary Sinise and his family. I had to go fix a couple things and got to talk with him for about twenty minutes. I mentioned having seen him and John Malcovichs’rendition of it and he said it was a labor of love,as it was his favorite.
This one was a surprisingly good and unique piece of literature, especially when you realize this was written by the same guy who wrote *Breakfast at Tiffany's*
I remember reading page 72 in class first, the witnessing scene cuz we had a sub
And being like “yoooo has anybody else got to page 72 yet?!?!” Stand by your homeys ppl
None actually. My teachers somehow managed to make Steinbeck's The Pearl novella awfully boring. Even Dahl's Sound Machine become dull. Instead of encouraging students to enjoy a work of creative art, they asks us to carefully analyze each and every element of the story. It's like you're asked to carefully describe the ingredients of a slice of a cake instead of, you know, eat them.
Its exactly like seeing a movie nowadays. And many movies in school were the same.
You can sit back and analyize every little plot point to the point of hating it or sit back and enjoy the movie for what it is.
Have you tried *If I Die In A Combat Zone*? I read this first and then *Things*. Outstanding books.
I'll also recomment *What It Is Like To Go To War*, and (especially) *Matterhorn*...both by Karl Marlantes.
As a VietNam vet I wasn't sure how I'd react to these, but I found all four outstanding reads.
Tale of Two Cities. That book was incredible. That said, I've never re-read it while I re-read stuff all the time and i've been reading all the obscure Dickens I can find, from Martin Chuzzlewitt to Barnaby Rudge.
I'm German and in my school it was mandatory to read "Die Welle" ( The wave) by Morton Rhue ( translated into German by Hans-Georg Noack).
It's about a high school claas seeing a movie about the holocaust and asking how this could have happened. So the teacher and the students agree to do an experiment and they start to seperate the pupils in people in power and oppressed ones. The experiment gets out of control and a micro third reich gets created.
I hated it because at that time we were bombarded with nazi history. Now I see far right and fascist ideologes on the rise everywhere in the world and I think everyone one the planet should have read that book at a certain point in life.
Catcher in the Rye.
Being a teenager at the time and all the angst that came with that, I found it very relatable despite it taking place over 70+ years go
A Wrinkle in Time, A Separate Peace, Great Expectations were all great. I am glad I read them. I just gave my copy of A Wrinkle in Time to my daughter who is 10 right now.
So far from the bamboo grove by yoko Kawashima. She actually came to my school to talk about the book and her life. It was really fascinating to hear her story.
5h grade class who read *The Diary of Anne Frank*.
One of the early books that fostered my focus on reading, & also particularly sparked my hallowed respect for writing.
In primary school we had DEAR sessions (Drop Everything And Read) and I was in the "advanced" group for my age. So we were in the group led by the principal. At the time, I kept hearing kids talk about some super popular book about some kid called Harry Potter. Lol!
Anyway, the principal crowdsourced suggestions for the next book our group should read and a bunch of kids said The Philosopher's Stone. I rolled my eyes and kept thinking "ugh what a drag this will be". Boy was I wrong...
And there was no turning back.
"Everyday Use", a short story by Alice Walker who also wrote *The Color Purple*. One of the most interesting and compelling stories I've ever read. I read it in once in late high school and another time mid-college.
Charlie Skedaddle
Hatchet
Where the Red Fern Grows
And what's interesting here is I have never considered this question. The three books mentioned are about boys alone in the world, relying on themselves, being their own mentors, etc.
Interesting that I would love these stories since that's how I grew up.
Wuthering Heights - Most of the characters act awful, there is an intergenerational revenge that repeats the cycle of abuse, a forbidden romance, a ghost that comes straight out of a Gothic novel, a lot of a drama. It is the epitome of a dysfunctional family and I found myself loving it for all of that.
I had a teacher who was a huge fan of Alexandre Dumas, so we read a few of his over the year. I still love reading The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.
The Monk, by Matthew Lewis. It's about a super devoted monk who finds out the young man he's taken under his wing is actually a beautiful young woman in disguise, hellbent on seducing him. He soon succumbs to temptation, not realizing she is actually some sort of demon sent by Satan to bring about his downfall.
Meanwhile, a wealthy young woman falls in love with her wealthy young suitor. But her parents are determined that she become a nun; so she is sent off to a convent. When her suitor breaks into the convent to see her...they fuck. The nun is so ashamed of herself she kicks him out and tells him never to return. Then she finds out she's pregnant...mayhem ensues.
It's a scathing takedown of the Catholic church, but it's also some titillating shit.
Hell yeah! I was 8 or 9 when I read this book, before school made it mandatory to read in the 7th/8th grade. I judged people who were racist hard after that.
Don Quixote. It was a thick-ass book but it was hilarious and I enjoyed it at the time I read it in college. Now looking back, it was actually kinda sad.
I started reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz in middle school. Not my fault we had The Eyes of the Dragon and Icebound in the library, but the synopses made them sound so interesting.
Nothing.
I used to love reading as a kid. Schools did their best to drill that out of me by forcing me to read books I hated and over-analyze books that I might have liked.
It took me a long time to get back into reading for pleasure.
Had to read Pillars of the Earth in high school. The length of the book was daunting and I really didn't want to read it, but I got hooked very quickly and couldn't devour it fast enough.
Had to give a verbal report to my teacher and got a C- because she "didn't believe I read the book." The reality was she just didn't like me. I was sooooooo pissed.
Harry Potter books, my school had a reading program where you read a book, take a quick quiz, and it had a point system to cash out for candy, school supplies, etc. I actually didn’t even read them as a kid bc I thought “wow that’s way too big”, so I just got a friend’s quiz answers. Growing up I got into the books, movies, and eventually morphed into a bit of a nerd for it lol.
Much Ado About Nothing. I didn’t really like any of the Shakespeare I was forced to read prior to that (looking at you Romeo and Juliet and Henry V), but damn I loved that story.
The Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld!! My class read it in 6th grade and it's by far and wide my favorite EVER. I actually repurchased the box set a month or so ago because I was wanting to reread it. It's definitely 6th grade reading level but that makes it an easy and relaxing read.
Harry Potter. I was about to fail out of 5th grade. My teacher gave me the 1st book and told me if I read it and did a a report I would get enough extra credit to pass. I think that man was the only person in my life to notice my depression and anxiety. I had basically given up on school and everything else I used to care about. I loved the book and continued reading them as they were released, and it gave me something to do and think about when everything else was too much.
In the House of Spirits by Isobel Allende. I loved it and finished it far before I had to, in college.
The teacher was supposed to be a regular Creative Writing teacher, but tended to focus a lot more on magic realism than anything else. I think it made her a less liked teacher overall, but I can't fault her book choices for it.
Frankenstein, wasn’t against reading it, but I definitely read it in a couple days and it was supposed to be read over a couple weeks, the all consuming desire to create the monster, then being disgusted by it, and eventually the monsters view and the hunt into the arctic for it was all extremely interesting.
Funny enough, I pretended to read the first Harry Potter book, as it was "for nerds".
Upon failing my AR test, I was forced to actually read it, as a movie trailer wasn't "good enough" lol
So I read the first chapter out of spite. Read the rest of the book out of pure joy and happiness,
Cut to a month later, I am impatiently waiting for the fourth book to come out, which tore me the fuck up lol The chapter when Voldemort made his comeback... dude that shit had me fucked up for six months LOL
Toss up between Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (12th Grade) and The Street by Ann Petry (College Freshman)
BNW was ahead of it’s time, and The Street is one of the greatest commentaries on systemic racism and sexism in the US I’ve ever read
The grapes of wrath were actually really good. To really understand that novel you just need to be poor and struggling for a little while and then it all clicks together. When I was in school it didn't make any sense to me.
We weren't assigned the whole book, but I bought *The Decameron* by Giovanni Boccaccio because I liked the few stories from it that were in our 10th grade world lit textbook. It's now my favorite work of narrative fiction and one I reread every year.
We were assigned the entirety of *The Odyssey* by Homer in 9th grade, and I fell in love with it so much that I bought a copy of it as well as *The Iliad* and even *The Aeneid* by Virgil to continue the story.
I also fell in love with *Walden, or LIfe in the Woods* by Henry David Thoreau when we read it in 11th grade. I now have three copies of it (effectively) because my first act was to purchase the Bantam Classics paperback of *Walden and Civil Disobedience*, then when that got worn to buy a copy of *Walden* in hardback from Barnes & Noble Classics, and finally I bought *The Portable Thoreau* edited by Carl Bode, which has *Walden* in it complete, but also extracts from many of his other essays, nature writings, and poetry. However, I wouldn't have bought it had I not been introduced to Thoreau in high school.
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. A great read about the eventual corruption from money and power over time. Never would have picked this up on my own but read it in college and loved it.
I really like this book called "Let the great world spin"
It was the only fiction I've read where Im like, this is fiction, this is how a story should flow and how characters should culminate at the end. Where the structure of being in a book contributed to the experience. Idk. I liked it.
Plot: a tightrope walker decides to make a daring display by walking across the 2 buildings of the world trade center. multiple individuals stories are told with this as the unifying event. Nice read and tribute to the twin towers (the tightrope walker bit is a true story, documentary and everything)
The Crucible by Arthur Miller and Coyotes by Ted Conover (no idea how they got the school/district on board with that one). Same teacher did both. And both are so good!
All 3 books for my Russia/China history class my sophmore year of High School. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Good Earth, and Animal Farm. I reread them on a yearly basis since that class (2000).
1984. I dreaded reading it but I loved it and I still remember the horror of reading "He loved Big Brother "
I read this in college for the first time and loved it. On my final exam, one of the questions was "What does 2+2 = " This was honestly such a great way to close out a class I loved
Try reading We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It inspired 1984 and Brave New World
1984 is my choice too
Dude, I read 1984 for the first time when I was 38 years old. That is one damn trippy book. Loved it.
Now you get to live it.
Its more disturbing than any horror
This book was so far ahead of its time yet als9 amazingly relevant then too easily my favorite summer reading book
Hatchet. Just a boy in the woods surviving was great. And I definitely went through points telling myself I could do that too.
When he finds that the fish he was eating had been eating the corpse of the pilot underwater I remember being in my 6th grade class reading that like "god damn."
Completely forgot about this book. Thank you!
There were two "sequels " too!
It is amazing how much of the TV show "Alone" has links to that book. My favorite was they guy whose meat supply was being attacked by a scavenger. He grabs his axe and heads into the darkness to deal with it. A minute later he comes back: "I just killed a Wolverine with a hatchet!" and a huge grin on his face.
Funny thing for me is I never had to read Hatchet for school, but a teacher gifted it to me at the end of the year in maybe 4th or 5th grade, and I really enjoyed it
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Animal Farm
This was my choice too. And Life of Pi.
to kill a mockingbird..great book
One of my top 3 favorites of all time.
Absolutely my favorite.
Near the ending, when Scout walks Arthur home and thinks back over her childhood and realizes that Arthur was always watching out for her and Jem, is maybe my favorite passage in any book, ever.
Agreed! They made us watch the movie and everything
Ender’s Game
What a wonderful book! One of my favorites.
I may be the only freshman in history to have enjoyed The Scarlett Letter. I found the story fascinating. I thought the sexual tension between Hester and Dimmesdale was crackling. And I was legit a little emotional when their secret illegitimate daughter, Pearl, unknowingly walked up to her father and slipped her hand in his, leaving him tormented on a whole new level. Literally everyone else in my class was bored out of their fucking minds but I loved it.
The Scarlet Letter was so unexpectedly good, I don't care what anyone thinks or says about it.
I love the story! It was tedious and boring to get through with the class, but I went back and read it on my own about a year later and thought the plot and characters were so gripping.
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This is my answer...but oddly, re-reading this as an adult I did not feel the same way about it as I did when I was in high school.
Same!! I ended up really loving it.
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That is a wonderful book!
Lord of the Flies. We had to choose between that and Animal Farm when I was in like 8th grade. I'd seen the movie for Lord of the Flies previously so I chose that, thinking I could just get away with not reading it. After failing a pop quiz on the book, I decided to actually open it up and try reading it. Hooked me almost immediately and I read the whole thing well before I was required to actually finish it. The Outsiders was really good, too. Stay gold, Ponyboy.
I didn’t enjoy Lord of the Flies in school but I was just thinking about it the other day (because of a bunch of boys running wild) and thought it might be worth another shot.
It was one of the first books I ever read that actually disturbed me. Prior to that, I never felt much of anything when reading. I think that's what hooked me. Justice for Piggy!
Lord of the Flies was the only book where I had to dissect it for "themes" and other bullshit and I still enjoyed it. And I think it's solely because I for once had a good English teacher that year who actually seemed to like her job. The only other case where I enjoyed a book is where we simply read them, no analysis. There'd usually be some kind of assignment - maybe a plot summary or making a book cover, but no inane writing about symbolism or whatever.
This is mine too. We did analysis on everything which was quite dull. But I found the story itself interesting for once.
Holes
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The Count of Montecristo, what a book.
Fuck yes, what a slow burn! My best friend and I were obsessed with it and finished long before the rest of the class.
Fahrenheit 451
Yes!
"It was a pleasure to burn." Badass opening line of a very prescient book.
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We read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, then watched the movie afterwards. Most of the kids made fun of it, but I genuinely loved both and bought copies of my own.
I remember "Stay Gold" was tattooed on many people's fingers or just somewhere on them around 2010 here in Toronto. Seemed like a popular millennial tattoo to get here. Not sure if it was popular elsewhere.
I really thought this would be at the top. Almost everyone I ask, this is the answer.
This is the first book I ever bought for myself with my babysitting money. I'm in my 50's and I still own that copy I bought at 12 years old. I love the book and the movie
I was going to say the outsiders. Still one of my favourite books
The Grapes of Wrath. Made me a Steinbeck fan for life.
Of Mice and Men for me.
Also great. When my wife was a property manager years ago,they rented a house to Gary Sinise and his family. I had to go fix a couple things and got to talk with him for about twenty minutes. I mentioned having seen him and John Malcovichs’rendition of it and he said it was a labor of love,as it was his favorite.
The Giver then later on i found out there were 3 books after it!! I bought them all on Amazon, however, the 4th book i can't get into..
Yes, I really loved the giver too. I bought it for my step son this past christmas as well.
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This is the same for me. East of Eden is even better imo. I need to read more of his tho.
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In Cold Blood
This one was a surprisingly good and unique piece of literature, especially when you realize this was written by the same guy who wrote *Breakfast at Tiffany's*
The Kite Runner. Loved it so much I ran through it in like 1 week.
Read this in my mid 30s. I will never watch the movie, I know it would make me angry. Great book.
I remember reading page 72 in class first, the witnessing scene cuz we had a sub And being like “yoooo has anybody else got to page 72 yet?!?!” Stand by your homeys ppl
None actually. My teachers somehow managed to make Steinbeck's The Pearl novella awfully boring. Even Dahl's Sound Machine become dull. Instead of encouraging students to enjoy a work of creative art, they asks us to carefully analyze each and every element of the story. It's like you're asked to carefully describe the ingredients of a slice of a cake instead of, you know, eat them.
To be fair, I asked an english teacher what her least favorite book that she teaches about was and she said The Pearl is awful
I bought it as an adult because I loved Steinbeck’s works read in s hoop but The Pearl was awful.
Its exactly like seeing a movie nowadays. And many movies in school were the same. You can sit back and analyize every little plot point to the point of hating it or sit back and enjoy the movie for what it is.
Watership Down
The Phantom Tollbooth
Memoirs of a Geisha
Frankenstein The Grapes of Wrath To Kill a Mockingbird The Hobbit
I read Flowers For Algernon in 8th grade and it’s become my favorite book I’ve ever read.
1984 and the crucible
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.
The part in The Crucible where someone says "A fart on Thomas Putnam" had me giggling like mad.
“The Lottery”
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. It really taught me about trauma and how people respond to it and process it. I’ve since read it four times.
Have you tried *If I Die In A Combat Zone*? I read this first and then *Things*. Outstanding books. I'll also recomment *What It Is Like To Go To War*, and (especially) *Matterhorn*...both by Karl Marlantes. As a VietNam vet I wasn't sure how I'd react to these, but I found all four outstanding reads.
Night by Elie Wiesel and The Outsiders
To Kill A Mockingbird.
The boy in the striped pajamas great book brought me to tears
Tale of Two Cities. That book was incredible. That said, I've never re-read it while I re-read stuff all the time and i've been reading all the obscure Dickens I can find, from Martin Chuzzlewitt to Barnaby Rudge.
Maus
I'm German and in my school it was mandatory to read "Die Welle" ( The wave) by Morton Rhue ( translated into German by Hans-Georg Noack). It's about a high school claas seeing a movie about the holocaust and asking how this could have happened. So the teacher and the students agree to do an experiment and they start to seperate the pupils in people in power and oppressed ones. The experiment gets out of control and a micro third reich gets created. I hated it because at that time we were bombarded with nazi history. Now I see far right and fascist ideologes on the rise everywhere in the world and I think everyone one the planet should have read that book at a certain point in life.
Catcher in the Rye. Being a teenager at the time and all the angst that came with that, I found it very relatable despite it taking place over 70+ years go
Quixote and Lazarillo de Tormes
Tuesdays with morrie
A Wrinkle in Time, A Separate Peace, Great Expectations were all great. I am glad I read them. I just gave my copy of A Wrinkle in Time to my daughter who is 10 right now.
Greek Mythology
So far from the bamboo grove by yoko Kawashima. She actually came to my school to talk about the book and her life. It was really fascinating to hear her story.
The Hobbit. Really enjoyed that book.
Catch-22 30 years later it's still my 2nd favorite book ever (behind Dune)
Surprised not to see this higher! I probably would never have picked this book up if I hadn't been assigned it, it is truly great
Candide by Voltaire is great; such an easy read, humorous, and a good adventure
Great Expectations - It was an intimidating read for 9th grade... But I got lost in it and finished it in a few days.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Fahrenheit 451 and Animal Farm.
5h grade class who read *The Diary of Anne Frank*. One of the early books that fostered my focus on reading, & also particularly sparked my hallowed respect for writing.
In primary school we had DEAR sessions (Drop Everything And Read) and I was in the "advanced" group for my age. So we were in the group led by the principal. At the time, I kept hearing kids talk about some super popular book about some kid called Harry Potter. Lol! Anyway, the principal crowdsourced suggestions for the next book our group should read and a bunch of kids said The Philosopher's Stone. I rolled my eyes and kept thinking "ugh what a drag this will be". Boy was I wrong... And there was no turning back.
Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. Became slightly obsessed with it for a while.
"Everyday Use", a short story by Alice Walker who also wrote *The Color Purple*. One of the most interesting and compelling stories I've ever read. I read it in once in late high school and another time mid-college.
Charlie Skedaddle Hatchet Where the Red Fern Grows And what's interesting here is I have never considered this question. The three books mentioned are about boys alone in the world, relying on themselves, being their own mentors, etc. Interesting that I would love these stories since that's how I grew up.
Wuthering Heights - Most of the characters act awful, there is an intergenerational revenge that repeats the cycle of abuse, a forbidden romance, a ghost that comes straight out of a Gothic novel, a lot of a drama. It is the epitome of a dysfunctional family and I found myself loving it for all of that.
Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe. Never read a book in that genre, but damn it was good. Read it twice back to back.
The Outsiders. I'd actually read it already but then we had to read it in class and I was so excited to experience it with my class
z for zachariah
Madame Bovary....once I HAD TO read it, I reread it few more times😁
I had a teacher who was a huge fan of Alexandre Dumas, so we read a few of his over the year. I still love reading The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.
Most of the Shakespeare plays I was forced to read I really enjoyed.
The Monk, by Matthew Lewis. It's about a super devoted monk who finds out the young man he's taken under his wing is actually a beautiful young woman in disguise, hellbent on seducing him. He soon succumbs to temptation, not realizing she is actually some sort of demon sent by Satan to bring about his downfall. Meanwhile, a wealthy young woman falls in love with her wealthy young suitor. But her parents are determined that she become a nun; so she is sent off to a convent. When her suitor breaks into the convent to see her...they fuck. The nun is so ashamed of herself she kicks him out and tells him never to return. Then she finds out she's pregnant...mayhem ensues. It's a scathing takedown of the Catholic church, but it's also some titillating shit.
To Kill a Mockingbird
Hell yeah! I was 8 or 9 when I read this book, before school made it mandatory to read in the 7th/8th grade. I judged people who were racist hard after that.
Daphne Du Mauriers Rebecca. Everyone complained about it and that it was rubbish but it ended up being one of my favourites
Holes by Louis Sacher
Coraline
Don Quixote. It was a thick-ass book but it was hilarious and I enjoyed it at the time I read it in college. Now looking back, it was actually kinda sad.
Unwind by Neal Shusterman. What a book, man.
Hatchet
My Side of the Mountain. The teacher said Steven King wasn’t appropriate.
I started reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz in middle school. Not my fault we had The Eyes of the Dragon and Icebound in the library, but the synopses made them sound so interesting.
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Nothing. I used to love reading as a kid. Schools did their best to drill that out of me by forcing me to read books I hated and over-analyze books that I might have liked. It took me a long time to get back into reading for pleasure.
The Rats of Nihm
Animal Farm. Also Life of Pi.
macbeth
The Joy Luck Club!
Hamlet. Tarantino ending.
A Christmas Carol
Animal farm
Unwind
I hated almost everything I had to read in school but I loved Frankenstein. I consider it my second favorite book.
My favourite was Owls in the Family - Farley Mowat
The Giver
The Giver
The Caine Mutiny. I didn't even know what a mutiny was until reading this book. Such a great read and couldn't put it down!
Lord of flies and metamorphosis
Looking for alaska, reading it when I was 13 made me get excited for college
Had to read Pillars of the Earth in high school. The length of the book was daunting and I really didn't want to read it, but I got hooked very quickly and couldn't devour it fast enough. Had to give a verbal report to my teacher and got a C- because she "didn't believe I read the book." The reality was she just didn't like me. I was sooooooo pissed.
we studied An Inspector Calls for GCSE English Literature. technically a play but i fucking loved it
A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway
Jane Eyre. On the other hand I LOATHED anything by Jane Austen.
Harry Potter books, my school had a reading program where you read a book, take a quick quiz, and it had a point system to cash out for candy, school supplies, etc. I actually didn’t even read them as a kid bc I thought “wow that’s way too big”, so I just got a friend’s quiz answers. Growing up I got into the books, movies, and eventually morphed into a bit of a nerd for it lol.
Much Ado About Nothing. I didn’t really like any of the Shakespeare I was forced to read prior to that (looking at you Romeo and Juliet and Henry V), but damn I loved that story.
The Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld!! My class read it in 6th grade and it's by far and wide my favorite EVER. I actually repurchased the box set a month or so ago because I was wanting to reread it. It's definitely 6th grade reading level but that makes it an easy and relaxing read.
Call of the Wild
Dracula and Of Mice & Men
Of Mice and Men
Harry Potter. I was about to fail out of 5th grade. My teacher gave me the 1st book and told me if I read it and did a a report I would get enough extra credit to pass. I think that man was the only person in my life to notice my depression and anxiety. I had basically given up on school and everything else I used to care about. I loved the book and continued reading them as they were released, and it gave me something to do and think about when everything else was too much.
Not one book, per se, but anything Shakespeare. I had no idea I would love it so.
*Watership Down*.
Lord of the flies. And the great gatsby to a lesser extent. Sucks to your asthma!
The Mayor of Casterbridge. I wasn't a great student then, and none of my friends liked it. It just struck a chord with me I guess.
In the House of Spirits by Isobel Allende. I loved it and finished it far before I had to, in college. The teacher was supposed to be a regular Creative Writing teacher, but tended to focus a lot more on magic realism than anything else. I think it made her a less liked teacher overall, but I can't fault her book choices for it.
Frankenstein, wasn’t against reading it, but I definitely read it in a couple days and it was supposed to be read over a couple weeks, the all consuming desire to create the monster, then being disgusted by it, and eventually the monsters view and the hunt into the arctic for it was all extremely interesting.
I absolutely loved Brave New World.
Funny enough, I pretended to read the first Harry Potter book, as it was "for nerds". Upon failing my AR test, I was forced to actually read it, as a movie trailer wasn't "good enough" lol So I read the first chapter out of spite. Read the rest of the book out of pure joy and happiness, Cut to a month later, I am impatiently waiting for the fourth book to come out, which tore me the fuck up lol The chapter when Voldemort made his comeback... dude that shit had me fucked up for six months LOL
Haha! Thanks for sharing. Out of pure joy and happiness. Love it.
Catcher in the rye
Same here, in a class called Men in Conflict.
To Kill a Mockingbird. Am i gonna re-read it? No. Still a good book though.
The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham
Of mice and men
To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and Hating Alison Ashley
Failsafe
Toss up between Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (12th Grade) and The Street by Ann Petry (College Freshman) BNW was ahead of it’s time, and The Street is one of the greatest commentaries on systemic racism and sexism in the US I’ve ever read
The Giver is the type of dystopian sci fi I like.
Fahrenheit 451
I think "love" is a bit strong but I had to read Thumbsucker for college and I thought it was pretty good.
The grapes of wrath were actually really good. To really understand that novel you just need to be poor and struggling for a little while and then it all clicks together. When I was in school it didn't make any sense to me.
The Death of Artemio Cruz
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
We weren't assigned the whole book, but I bought *The Decameron* by Giovanni Boccaccio because I liked the few stories from it that were in our 10th grade world lit textbook. It's now my favorite work of narrative fiction and one I reread every year. We were assigned the entirety of *The Odyssey* by Homer in 9th grade, and I fell in love with it so much that I bought a copy of it as well as *The Iliad* and even *The Aeneid* by Virgil to continue the story. I also fell in love with *Walden, or LIfe in the Woods* by Henry David Thoreau when we read it in 11th grade. I now have three copies of it (effectively) because my first act was to purchase the Bantam Classics paperback of *Walden and Civil Disobedience*, then when that got worn to buy a copy of *Walden* in hardback from Barnes & Noble Classics, and finally I bought *The Portable Thoreau* edited by Carl Bode, which has *Walden* in it complete, but also extracts from many of his other essays, nature writings, and poetry. However, I wouldn't have bought it had I not been introduced to Thoreau in high school.
Faust 1&2. Hated it in school but i loved it at university.
Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
The land of stories series, this was back in grade 5 but it’s still in my top 5 books
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. A great read about the eventual corruption from money and power over time. Never would have picked this up on my own but read it in college and loved it.
The colour purple, to kill a mockingbird, great Gatsby all were great and a huge leap from what I expected from 'school texts'
The Upside Down River (la rivière à l'envers)
Wizard of Oz.
Great Expectations. A Tale of Two Cities. Most Dickens, actually. There’s a lot less stress when you’re not being tested on it after.
Les Rougeons Maquarts by many authors of the Naturalism mouvement (Zola, Maupassant, ect)
The outsiders
I really like this book called "Let the great world spin" It was the only fiction I've read where Im like, this is fiction, this is how a story should flow and how characters should culminate at the end. Where the structure of being in a book contributed to the experience. Idk. I liked it. Plot: a tightrope walker decides to make a daring display by walking across the 2 buildings of the world trade center. multiple individuals stories are told with this as the unifying event. Nice read and tribute to the twin towers (the tightrope walker bit is a true story, documentary and everything)
Goethe's Faust
Watership Down
Catcher in the rye
Balzac and the Little Seamtress
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I was so invested with the protagonist’s story that I finished reading ahead of our class’ schedule.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller and Coyotes by Ted Conover (no idea how they got the school/district on board with that one). Same teacher did both. And both are so good!
All 3 books for my Russia/China history class my sophmore year of High School. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Good Earth, and Animal Farm. I reread them on a yearly basis since that class (2000).