The best book your school made you read?

[risenbone]

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was my favourite book I had to read in school. It was in primary school and R.Dahl was my favourite author for a long while after. After that probably The Hobbit and Animal Farm but it was pretty close and Charlie wins mostly because there were so many other books I could read by the same author that I enjoyed and school didn't make me read.

 

[Fijiman]

I honestly can't choose. I loved most of the books I read throughout school. The only books that I didn't like I didn't like because the teacher fucked it up for me by either skipping around the book too much or making us over analyze the book to the point where I was sick of it. Of course, it would also help me choose a favorite if I could remember the titles of all of the books I had to read in school.

 

[Burst6]

In one class i could pick any book i wanted, so i picked Equal Rites. It was the greatest english class ever. A whole year of discworld.

But for books they chose for me, i liked Of Mice and Men the most.

 

[Little Woodsman]

Flowers for Algernon.
Though I had read it before we were made to read it in class, and while it is a book, it is
a novella, not a full length novel.
If you have not read this--do. Right now. Why are you still reading this post, go find the
story and read it!
Very pleased that To Kill a Mockingbird & One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest were mentioned within
the first three posts.

 

[The_Echo]

Of Mice and Men.
Though probably because it's basically the only good book school made me read.

Same here. Of Mice and Men is just fantastic. I could read it over and over.

Never cared for the likes of To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn or 1984. I just found them powerfully dull (though the second part of TKAM was considerably better than the first).

I also enjoyed Hamlet, though I thought the other Shakespeare plays I read in school to be of terrible quality (Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream). I opted to read ahead of the class, mostly because my class couldn't read aloud to save their collective lives. Honestly, it was like being in second grade.

The Great Gatsby was alright. Nothing special; I think it'd work better as a film.

I would say Dante's Inferno, but we only read a few cantos in my actual class, and I had read the whole thing before that anyway.

 

[Xdeser2]

So, most schools have banned this book, but because my english teacher was a bit of a Bamf, he got the school to un-ban Nineteen Eighty Four for that semester, and it was pretty amazing.

 

[Zeldias]

Bhanu Khapil's Humanimal, Salvador Plascencia's People of Paper, Akila Oliver's A Toast in the House of Friends, Steve Tomasula's TOC (although that's not quite reading) all off the top of my head.

 

[LordMonty]

Brave New World, it was so interesting

Same, although 1984 deserves a mention as does The Colour Purple and a Handmaiden's tale. Although depressing is another word for 'best'

 

[waj9876]

Nothing, all of the books have been the generic "This was written for schools to use." shit.

College hasn't been much better so far. They've all been about a state-wide controversial issue, and in a stance that I disagree with. And I don't know the professor well enough to know if he would fail me if I wrote anything that seemed to disagree with it.

 

[wottabout]

I really enjoyed Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Not something I would usually pick up, especially since the actual plot is so boring, but I loved the writing style. Also, one of my friends read The Count of Monte Cristo for a class and loved it so much that I decided to read it. Still only halfway through, but it's great so far. I wish I read stuff like that for class.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I hated Faulkner's Go Down, Moses. I mean, I'm okay with books I dislike if they're quick reads, and I'm okay with slow reads if I like the book otherwise, but Go Down, Moses didn't seem to be worth the time and thought I put into it. I understand why it's an important book, I just despised reading it.

Edit: Just remembered! There was a class where we read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Small Gods. That was THE BEST. My favorite play and one of my favorite books by my favorite author, both in one class. I have seen the R&G movie so many times that I barely had to look at the page when we read scenes aloud. I loved that class.

 

[lacktheknack]

My school was great for this.

To Kill A Mockingbird. Life of Pi. Macbeth. Twelve Angry Men. Hamlet. Holes. All My Sons. I LOVE ALL OF THESE BOOKS/PLAYS.

Also, while it was a really brutal read that I never want to read again, "Night" is still one of the most important books I've ever read. Thanks, school!

 

[Slenn]

"Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke.

"Inferno" by Dante.

"I, Robot." by Isaac Asimov.

 

[BytByte]

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the best because of its great jargon and adventure style vibe. Shet the Do!

 

[herbortamus]

I believe it was called something like "the apple" It was about a Utopian society in the future, but it had serious drawbacks to the societies structure

The Giver maybe? I think there was an apple on the cover. It was about a utopian society where everyone saw in black and white, and I think books were banned. My class read this in the 6th grade. Actually, all mu favorite books from grade school came from that year. We also read Number the Stars, The Hatchet, and Homecoming.

I didn't read anything great in highschool, but I can vouch for the people that loved To Kill a Mockingbird and Flowers for Algernon. I read these in adulthood and recommend them to people all the time.

 

[Jfswift]

Hmm well I thought deathwatch was pretty cool. I loved the survival aspect, always wondering what Ben would come up with next.

 

[Broderick]

Im gonna go with animal farm and 1984. These books kept me engaged in the story and the characters, and actually made me care about them. All in all, I loved these books. The Great Gatsby however....BURN!

 

[RJ 17]

Toss-up between Dracula and Count of Monte Cristo.

I like stories about revenge. :3

 

[uzo]

Brave New World, it was so interesting

100% in agreement here.

Most people like Nineteen Eighty-Four I've found, but for me Brave New World was the true horror because it was more than just possible - it's actually already happening. Being 'sad' is a sickness than can be cured with medicine, the erosion of emotional intimacy supplanted with the physical, society being a mass of slobbering bloodhounds desperate for a sniff of the 'next BIG thing'.

It's sensuality, minus the sense. It's sexual relationships, without the relationship. It's a hellish paradise.

And all manner of other wise-but-ultimately-silly-things-I-can-say.




Soma, anyone?



EDIT: Beyond BNW as my fave, I also enjoyed, going from younger to older-

The Machine Gunners
Henry V
To Kill A Mockingbird
Othello
Twelfth Night
Tess of the d'Urbevilles
Hamlet
The Tempest
Utopia
Nineteen Eighty-Four

As far as poetry went, I only really liked Thomas Hardy.

And Ogden Nash of course! Ha!

 

[Vhite]

Not much. Mostly because I never read anything. Only thing I kinda liked was Catcher in the Rye or whatever is its english name.

 

[Skeleon]

Maybe "Brave New World"? A very interesting story and a much more sutble and insidious take on dystopia than "1984" had. I also really liked "Macbeth", though.