The best book your school made you read?

[Arif_Sohaib]

In school, Kidnapped by R.L. Stevenson. Great adventure book with several hits of English\Scottish politics at the time.
In university, Assembly Language for Intel Processors by Kip Irvine. A technical book that is written well enough that anyone that takes the time to read it will quickly understand MASM.
Also, Problem Solving and Program Design in C++ by D.S. Malik. Same reason but only basic C++.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Considering having to read things in school usually makes me hate them (although I have reread a few things and enjoyed them now), I did really love A View From The Bridge. The books we were given had Death of a Salesman in them as well, so I read that in class when we were supposed to be reading AVFtB, I quite liked that too.

 

[capper42]

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.

Wait, most schools have banned 1984? Where? Why?

 

[Asmundr]

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.

Wait, most schools have banned 1984? Where? Why?

From what I saw on a paper presented to my class by our humanities a way back. It had 1984 being banned in some school due to "sexual content" and I think political overtones or some such.

Yeah, its dumb. But then again we lie in a society that's out of touch and trying to shelter folks who really shouldn't be sheltered. 1984 is high school reading material so banning to for "sexual content", something most high school students already know about in some capacity, is absurd.

Edit: After some searching around the internet 1984 is banned due to "sexual content", being "pro-communist", or both.

 

[Cowabungaa]

I always got to pick my own book so that was never an issue for me.

The only ones the schools I went to made me read were actual school books. From those I'd say...my psychology book. Or maybe the one on website usability.

 

[Tilted_Logic]

The only 'book' I ever recall liking at the time of reading was actually a collection of poems/myths from ancient Greek/Europe.

Back in highschool, I was always reading a book of my own, and during english I'd be juggling 2 or 3 at a time. Most of the ones we read I paid no mind to, but that book of poems... It was the focus of the class for about 2 weeks, and we were only assigned to read about 6 poems total.
I read the whole book - which if I recall was fairly large - like it was nothing, and absolutely loved every story.
I wish for the life of me I could recall the name of it...

 

[NoBlueFood]

My favorite book was one of about 12 choices for a summer reading project. Its Asterios Polyp - a graphic novel (not sure if that counts) but I've reread it a few times and each time I do I notice something that I didn't before in either the artwork or how everything is portrayed. Some parts are better than others, but it's a fairly quick read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A few books that were also pretty good were The Poisonwood Bible, and Bel Canto was also pretty good as well.

 

[capper42]

From what I saw on a paper presented to my class by our humanities a way back. It had 1984 being banned in some school due to "sexual content" and I think political overtones or some such.

Yeah, its dumb. But then again we lie in a society that's out of touch and trying to shelter folks who really shouldn't be sheltered. 1984 is high school reading material so banning to for "sexual content", something most high school students already know about in some capacity, is absurd.

Edit: After some searching around the internet 1984 is banned due to "sexual content", being "pro-communist", or both.

From Wikipedia

Nineteen Eighty-Four is on Spacious Planet's list of "21 most surprising banned books" for having being banned in Soviet Union and very nearly banned in the UK and the US. According to deletecensorship.org, it has also "been challenged numerous times on the grounds that it contains communist and sexual content", though only one such challenge is documented: in Jackson County, Florida, in 1981. The challengers claimed it was "pro-communist and contains explicit sexual matter".

I understand why it was banned in the Soviet Union, because the book is quite clearly against a Stalinist society, but I don't understand how anyone could see the book as pro-communist.

Both that, and the supposed explicit sexual matter just sound like excuses to me. Still, it apparently was never banned in the US or UK.

Great book either way.

 

[APLovecraft]

Jane eyre. I've read it 12 times and each time there's summat different cheers ms dawson.

 

[Humble Grapefruit]

I really liked Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mocking Bird, and Boy's Life; Boy's Life was probably my favorite out of the three, though. I always hated it when we were assigned a reading that I thought was really good and all of my other (and generally lazy/stupid) classmates would think it was boring.

 

[The Diabolical Biz]

Hmm. I can't remember a lot. Well I'll do a list of different types of lit:

Novels

- Heart of Darkness
- The Great Gatsby
- Frankenstein (but I'd read it before)

Poems

- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
- The Waste Land (although I kinda chose that one to do an essay on along with HoD)
- One or two Thomas Hardy poems (I didn't really like him so it was hard to like his poems, but one or two (mainly the ones that weren't moping about his wife) were beautiful)
- Some bits of Paradise Lost

Plays

- Othello
- The White Devil (flawed but entertaining)
- Some bits of Marlowe's Faust

 

[AngloDoom]

Slaughterhouse 5.

Holy moley, that's a good book. To this day I don't know a single person who's heard of the book outside of those in the class and the people they recommended it to.

 

[VeryOddGamer]

Well, it didn't make me read it, I chose it myself from the school library, but 1984.

I probably don't even have to explain why.

 

[Patrick Buck]

None, really. Oh, I read "I am David" at school, because I read every other book in the bookcase in year 4. I read a lot.

Now I come to think of it, why was that book there? It was a book about the haulocaust, and I was 9 when I read it. I remember really enjoing it, but I bet I didn't understand any of it, not really. :/

 

[GartarkMusik]

The book that got me into sci-fi was introduced me thanks to my English class in high school.

Ender's Game

I loved my English class, there are so many great books that our teacher had us read but Ender's Game wins. For fun, here are a few other gems:

The Adventure of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (it was terribly awkward in class though due to the profuse use of "******" in the book)
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tomorrow when the war began

Nearly every English teacher I've had hated Ender's Game and thought that OSC was a hack, even though I loved the book, so props to your English teacher for assigning that book!

OT: I'd have to say The Great Gatsby wins this one. It would have bee To Kill a Mockingbird, but I read it a few months before school on a recommendation from my Grandpa, so I can't really count it.

 

[AT God]

Can't decide between these two; Fahrenheit 451 and Animal Farm

Both are very important works of literature and should be read by everyone.

My favorite however was And Then There Were None; also good but not as good as the two above

And To Kill a Mockingbird, also good.

 

[PunkRex]

Hamlet, it made me laugh... which I don't think was its intention.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

Macbeth.

Edit: Forgot no one word posts allowed got to make a sentence, so um yeah Macbeth, honorable mentions Hamlet.

 

[Falseprophet]

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.

Yeah, I agree. I recommend Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, where he talks about how we're taught to fear Nineteen Eighty-Four, but should really fear Brave New World. It's a 25-year-old book and even more relevant today than when it was published.

Also, Lord of the Flies.

And a novel I had to read in university for a World War II history seminar: Captain Corelli's Mandolin. I've heard the movie is crap (never seen it), but the book was fantastic.