The best book your school made you read?
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This. It's weird, everyone, I mean everyone, talks about how much they hated Gatsby. They loved the Scarlet Letter, they loved Grapes of Wrath, they loved The Crucible, but Gatsby? Oh, Gatsby was awful.shrekfan246 said:
I very much enjoyed Gatsby. Definitely my favourite of my assigned reading.
Watchmen. My English class in high school did one semester in graphic novels. Yeah I already read it before I was even in High school but being made to reread it (well before the movie came out), and write a book report on it.... It was one of the few great moments I will forever remember of high school.
Other then that; for a non-graphic novel. I wish i could remember the title of the book. But, it was about a runaway kid who ends up living under a subway station. I remember most of the book... except the title. [spoiler/] the kid gets hit by a subway train.[/spoiler]
Edit: Lord of the flies and Odyssey were also great.
Other then that; for a non-graphic novel. I wish i could remember the title of the book. But, it was about a runaway kid who ends up living under a subway station. I remember most of the book... except the title. [spoiler/] the kid gets hit by a subway train.[/spoiler]
Edit: Lord of the flies and Odyssey were also great.
Either The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera for depth or Ubu the King by Alfred Jarry for being one of the funniest things ever written.
That has got to be Brave New World. I'm a science-fiction fan, anyway, and I liked this very insidious dystopian future it described, very different from a lot of dystopian portrayals. In fact, reading it, I felt like a lot of the ideas in there already came true in a very general sense or are coming true now: A society of constant distraction meant to keep the lower classes in check, slaving away (moderately) happily. Content, lazy and ignorant enough not to question the order of things. Who needs a boot stomping on people's faces constantly (1984's violent, oppressive dystopia) when you can have this way of doing things instead? You don't have party leaders or other authorities that could be toppled there anymore. The entire system, the entire society has bought into this way of doing things. Where, in 1984, there's still resistance, only to be found out and mercilessly crushed, it can't even really exist anymore in Brave New World. Perhaps Brave New World is what a 1984 could eventually lead to after the newspeak has been fully adopted, the constant resource shortages solved and everybody introduced into the doctrine. But I don't think a society like ours would even need such a violent stage (1984) inbetween to go from here (now) to there (Brave New World).
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. My English teacher hated the cirriculum and, y'know, not giving children incredibly depraved and dark reading material, with which their brains shall conjure nightmarish planes and illusions to torment them in their sleep.
But me, oh, not me. I got right into it. My favourite character was always Ellen, and while some of my classmates were becoming physically sick, I found an almost giddyish, naive voyeuristic glee out of reading this smut, like I was having the time of my life. I fucking love that book.
But me, oh, not me. I got right into it. My favourite character was always Ellen, and while some of my classmates were becoming physically sick, I found an almost giddyish, naive voyeuristic glee out of reading this smut, like I was having the time of my life. I fucking love that book.
My school almost always made us read Shakespeare plays. Now, I appreciate that he was great in his time and all that but still, sitting in class reading plays all day was just boring.
The only book I remember being told to read for an English class was Of Mice and Men. So I would say that was the best book I have read that had been given to me by the school.
The only book I remember being told to read for an English class was Of Mice and Men. So I would say that was the best book I have read that had been given to me by the school.
In terms of high school reading, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard.
I had a lot of "Great Works" classes in college (Jesuit university, honors program, inevitable), and a lotof them were good to have read. In terms of books that I really enjoyed, appreciated the symbolism and that just made me sit back for a second a say "wow," the first thing I remember is The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.
I had a lot of "Great Works" classes in college (Jesuit university, honors program, inevitable), and a lotof them were good to have read. In terms of books that I really enjoyed, appreciated the symbolism and that just made me sit back for a second a say "wow," the first thing I remember is The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.
The only book that was part of my curriculum that I grew to enjoy was Goodnight Mister Tom. I don't know what it is about the book that endeared itself to me, but I do still read it on occasion. My English teacher knew the sort of books I enjoyed however, and it was through her that I was introduced to books such as American Psycho, Fear and loathing in Las Vegas and The collector.
Easy, To Kill a Mocking Bird. I honestly think I am the only one that read the fucking book as most found Boo Radley as a villian... which what... what... WHAT!!!! you think Boo Radley is the antagonist? Are you on meth? you have to be on meth to think that. How the fuck is Boo Radley a villain?
In a history of 20th century revolutions class last year I read The Ghost of the Executed Engineer, a bibliography of sorts about the life of Peter Palchinsky during the transition from tsarism to communism in Russia through the early days of Stalin. It also explained the political situations at the time that lead to some...let's call them "questionable" decisions for some of the greatest engineering projects in Soviet Russia.
High schools seems to have a lot of the same books, as I also read and enjoyed (in no particular order) To Kill A Mockingbird, Brave New world, 1984, Of Mice and Men, A Separate Peace, Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, a few Shakespeare plays, parts of the Bible, Catcher in the Rye, A Clockwork Orange, and a short story called The Lottery. I'm sure there was more but those are the ones I remember off the top of my head.
High schools seems to have a lot of the same books, as I also read and enjoyed (in no particular order) To Kill A Mockingbird, Brave New world, 1984, Of Mice and Men, A Separate Peace, Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, a few Shakespeare plays, parts of the Bible, Catcher in the Rye, A Clockwork Orange, and a short story called The Lottery. I'm sure there was more but those are the ones I remember off the top of my head.
I remember reading and enjoying books like "Farenheit 451", "Animal Farm", and "To Kill a Mockingbird"... which all had a message of some sort, come to think of it...
A Wizard of Earthsea, or Dracula, can't really decide. I started reading Dracula when the Coppola film debuted in theaters and had it finished well before it arrived on video so the book was fresh in my head still while I watched the film. Fortunately, this did not turn me into a book snob so I was easily able to appreciate the movie as a standalone as well as for what it got right. In contrast, the only movie treatment Earthsea got was a manga and a Sci Fi flick with Shawn Ashmore. Such a tragedy.
See, I had a post typed up, but I randomly hit the fifth page button at the bottom. And I found my post from nearly two years ago.
I'd forgotten The Killer Angels, but most every book I was going to post is... already said here, even The Golden Goblet which is a pretty obscure book I read a longer time ago.
It's weird.
Also thread necro.
TheYellowCellPhone said:
I'd forgotten The Killer Angels, but most every book I was going to post is... already said here, even The Golden Goblet which is a pretty obscure book I read a longer time ago.
It's weird.
Also thread necro.
I liked almost everything I read in high school, save for a bunch of shite like Catcher in the Rye that made up the curriculum for a sophomore English course called 'Lit. of the Individual.' In junior year, my English and history courses were taught as some experimental 'American studies' course with two teachers and the books we read in that have all remained favorites. The top choice from that would be Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, a book that was not only a gut-wrenchingly gripping read, but was also one of the first naturalist/realist/quasi-documentary novels that I ever read, an interest that would later lead me to explore other works by not only Sinclair (who wrote dozens of other books that no one ever talks about), but others like Emile Zola, John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, and many others. For whatever reason, I've always enjoyed those kinds of novels and continue to seek out contemporary books written in that fashion. Another top choice would be Philip Roth's American Pastoral, which was assigned as summer reading before my senior year. That book was one of the first to get me interested in what could be loosely termed 'literary writing' (i.e. what Stephen King terms as books about 'extraordinary people in ordinary situations' as opposed to his own books about 'ordinary people in extraordinary situations') and has had me hooked ever since.
In elementary and middle school we had a program where we could choose from a list of hundreds of books, each book had a point value assigned to it depending on length and difficulty. We'd take a test to prove that we read it (although in hind sight it would be easy to pass that test just from reading sparknotes on it, but that wasn't very big then), get the points if we passed and we had to have X points by the end of the semester. That sparked my interest in Stephen King from reading those books but I'm not going to count those.
The 2 best books I had to read without having a choice is a tie between 1984 and Don Quixote (which I never actually finished).
1984 was a great story and to my high school mind had brand new fresh ideas and made me more questionable of government, this was in the middle of the Bush administration where everyone hated the guy so it was very easy to adopt some of those ideas. Still it was a good book for what it was.
Don Quixote was just really damn funny and well written. I'm actually kind of shocked that I was reading a comedy book for a school literature class, let alone a college one but there it was. I never finished it because my laziness meant I wasn't going to finish it in time so I just looked at the cliff notes of it. I don't remember much of the 2nd half so maybe one day I'll read it from cover to cover.
I don't read much any more, what between video games and my addiction to the internet (which I still don't know how to kick). At least games can have good stories sometimes.
The 2 best books I had to read without having a choice is a tie between 1984 and Don Quixote (which I never actually finished).
1984 was a great story and to my high school mind had brand new fresh ideas and made me more questionable of government, this was in the middle of the Bush administration where everyone hated the guy so it was very easy to adopt some of those ideas. Still it was a good book for what it was.
Don Quixote was just really damn funny and well written. I'm actually kind of shocked that I was reading a comedy book for a school literature class, let alone a college one but there it was. I never finished it because my laziness meant I wasn't going to finish it in time so I just looked at the cliff notes of it. I don't remember much of the 2nd half so maybe one day I'll read it from cover to cover.
I don't read much any more, what between video games and my addiction to the internet (which I still don't know how to kick). At least games can have good stories sometimes.
Really? I heard those books were very dense and slow paced and hard to chew through? Is that the case? Do I need to have modern day translations of it like you see in Shakespeare's works?Khinjarsi said:
Iago is one hell of a villain isn't he?Sixcess said:
He deserves to be up in the best of his medium
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