Best book you read in school
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I had to read The Kite Runner in AP English last year and I loved it to pieces. In a close second is Pride and Prejudice, which is absolutely the best love story ever.
The best, most meaningful would be To Kill a Mockingbird. Although the one that gave me the most enjoyment was Ender's Game.
English Class :
Animal Farm and 1984 both by Georges Orwell
French Class :
L'Etranger by Albert Camus (The Stranger in English)
Animal Farm and 1984 both by Georges Orwell
French Class :
L'Etranger by Albert Camus (The Stranger in English)
touching spirit bear and the last book in the universe were fun. on my own my favorite book was eragon or the bourne legacy. my friends loved of mice and men because of some mentally challenged guy wanted to "tend to the rabbits" or whatnot.
guess i should read it to find out.
guess i should read it to find out.
Scanning this thread, I think my english teacher was either a bit odd, not very good, or actually quite brilliant but a bit jaded and looking for something new, as we never did ANY of those supposed classics, except for what must have been absolute national curriculum requirements. No "To Kill A Mockingbird", Catcher In The Rye, 1984, Animal Farm, Watership Down, Farenheit 451, Hamlet, etc... I don't know whether I'm culturally deprived by this, or just blessed as to not have wasted a load of time reading the same old trite balls that everyone else got bored to death with at school.
We DID have Romeo & Juliet (pretty good), Macbeth (would have been good but killed by endless ... goddamn ... repetition when the dumb kid who joined our class was obviously having trouble "getting it"), and Lord of the Flies (incredibly sucktacular, I hated it by the end and ripped it to shreds in our critical assignment)... with a fair spread of alternatives tacked on. Unfortunately I can't remember most of them. That, or there was actually only the two, with time limited by the aforementioned super slow drag through Macbeth.
First up, "I am the Cheese". The less said about this the better. A cod-psychological hack job about some kid whose mother killed his dad and then committed suicide in front of him on a picnic or jumped in front of a car or something, and now he's semi catatonic in a mental hospital reliving the moment forever. Neergh.
This was balanced out in fullness by another title whose name I have never yet been able to dredge up again, which was truly excellent. It was a post-apocalyptic tale told from the first person viewpoint of a teenage girl, whose family survived the cataclysm by dint of being farmers in a small valley closed off from the surrounding fusion blasts. They survive on their own for a while, but then everyone but her decides to go off to the nearest town to see what's happening and maybe gather some necessary supplies. They don't come back... a couple of chapters are spent with the minutiae of surviving in the post-atomic age and hunting for a scrap of evidence that there's anyone else left out there, then some mysterious dude in a hazmat suit turns up... and has suspicious, sleep-talking nightmares.
Won't spoil the rest of it, and the ending is a bit abrupt and patched-together as the author actually died whilst finishing it and his family hacked it together from the remaining notes. However if anyone knows what this is, and who wrote it, PLEASE reply (and quote me in your reply so I get a notification about it)...
There was also the Silver Dagger, which was kind of thought provoking, but that might have been an independent read. Can't remember.
We DID have Romeo & Juliet (pretty good), Macbeth (would have been good but killed by endless ... goddamn ... repetition when the dumb kid who joined our class was obviously having trouble "getting it"), and Lord of the Flies (incredibly sucktacular, I hated it by the end and ripped it to shreds in our critical assignment)... with a fair spread of alternatives tacked on. Unfortunately I can't remember most of them. That, or there was actually only the two, with time limited by the aforementioned super slow drag through Macbeth.
First up, "I am the Cheese". The less said about this the better. A cod-psychological hack job about some kid whose mother killed his dad and then committed suicide in front of him on a picnic or jumped in front of a car or something, and now he's semi catatonic in a mental hospital reliving the moment forever. Neergh.
This was balanced out in fullness by another title whose name I have never yet been able to dredge up again, which was truly excellent. It was a post-apocalyptic tale told from the first person viewpoint of a teenage girl, whose family survived the cataclysm by dint of being farmers in a small valley closed off from the surrounding fusion blasts. They survive on their own for a while, but then everyone but her decides to go off to the nearest town to see what's happening and maybe gather some necessary supplies. They don't come back... a couple of chapters are spent with the minutiae of surviving in the post-atomic age and hunting for a scrap of evidence that there's anyone else left out there, then some mysterious dude in a hazmat suit turns up... and has suspicious, sleep-talking nightmares.
Won't spoil the rest of it, and the ending is a bit abrupt and patched-together as the author actually died whilst finishing it and his family hacked it together from the remaining notes. However if anyone knows what this is, and who wrote it, PLEASE reply (and quote me in your reply so I get a notification about it)...
There was also the Silver Dagger, which was kind of thought provoking, but that might have been an independent read. Can't remember.
We didn't read in classes in elementry, we only read poetery, Shakespere, & Poe in Jr. High, & in highschool, we read very very little.
Robin Hood, The Secret Garden, various works of Poe & Shakespere for classes. Blitzcat, the Harvy Boys, & anything by Ronald Dahl or Erma Bombeck for the library.
Get this, by the time I was in college, the school had absolutely no fiction books at all; nothing but references, dictionaries, biographies, "the history of's," etc.
Robin Hood, The Secret Garden, various works of Poe & Shakespere for classes. Blitzcat, the Harvy Boys, & anything by Ronald Dahl or Erma Bombeck for the library.
Get this, by the time I was in college, the school had absolutely no fiction books at all; nothing but references, dictionaries, biographies, "the history of's," etc.
For a full story, the best I thought was "To Kill a Mockingbird". Simply a classic.
However, I really enjoyed many of the short stories and poems we read in our American lit class this year by Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Eliot, and more. That was the first English class I ever really enjoyed a lot (had a good teacher).
Edit: Maus, I just remembered. I read that the end of this year to do an analytical presentation on it for my Sophomore culmination project and it was an amazingly deep and thought filled comic.
However, I really enjoyed many of the short stories and poems we read in our American lit class this year by Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Eliot, and more. That was the first English class I ever really enjoyed a lot (had a good teacher).
Edit: Maus, I just remembered. I read that the end of this year to do an analytical presentation on it for my Sophomore culmination project and it was an amazingly deep and thought filled comic.
My favourites were Animal Farm and 12 Angry Men.
Although 12 Angry Men could be read in under an hour, so I don't think it could really count as a 'proper' novel.
Although 12 Angry Men could be read in under an hour, so I don't think it could really count as a 'proper' novel.
Snow Falling on Cedars. Hands down.
It's a story about a murder trial taking place some years after the second World War. In a town where racial tension is high after the American encampment of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor, a Japanese fisherman is accused of murdering a white man. It explores the commonality we all have as people while expressing the animosity between races in a small town. Plus a good murder mystery. Can't forget that part.
It's a story about a murder trial taking place some years after the second World War. In a town where racial tension is high after the American encampment of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor, a Japanese fisherman is accused of murdering a white man. It explores the commonality we all have as people while expressing the animosity between races in a small town. Plus a good murder mystery. Can't forget that part.
