High school reading

[NeomegaCloud]

The Great Gatsby is not all that bad...I'm reading it now in English.

I had to read The Scarlett Letter early this year and that was horrible. I could barely even finish reading it (one of the few that did) and still did bad on the test because I could not stand to read it.

I'm reading The Rainmaker by John Grisham for AP AM Government and it is a very good book

I am also having to read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy for a 4 year english research paper. How much better can it get than that?! Great books make a really really easy research paper.

pretty much all other books that I have read in high school have been extremely boring and really hard for me to finish...

[Stone]

Really, if you guys like 'The Great Gatsby', go for 'This Side of Paradise' next. Drunkenness, longing, it's a great book.

Also - 'Invisible Man', 'Invisible Man', 'Invisible Man'.

(NOT 'The Invisible Man', 'Invisible Man' is by Ralph Ellison)

[Rick]

The most enlightening books I ever read in school were 1984 (not required for some reason but I felt the need to read it anyway, glad I did) and Lord of the Flies. Most dissapointing books were easily the Great Gatsby and especially Farenheit 451. Oddly enough, as bad as the book was, somehow Farenheit 451 the movie was worse, I couldn't even sit through it.

Julius Caesar was the best play I read next to Death of a Salesman. Worst one had to be Romeo and Juliet. Never liked it, never will.

[Sqoon]

Oddly enough, as bad as the book was, somehow Farenheit 451 the movie was worse, I couldn't even sit through it.

The one directed by Truffaut?

[Melf]

I preferred Romeo & Juliet over Julius Caesar. JC was a bit too political in nature for my tastes. R&J was your tragic love story, with a senseless feud and plenty of teenage angst. Good stuff.

My favorite Shakespearian play has to be Othello. Iago is the ultimate badass and one of the few that actually gets away with his crime (he's bansished but considering the body count in most of Shakespeare's tragedies...).

Of all the books I read in high school, my favorites were in the 8th grade. We read The Outsiders, And Then There Were None, and Island of the Blue Dolphins. I used to stay in class AFTER school to have more time to read (my mom picked us up late).

When I taught high school, I used to assign books from a list of about 75 titles. That way, there was something for everyone. The only required reading for the whole class was a play by Shakespeare and a single novel. All the other readings were supplemental. The kids seemed to prefer it that way.

[Tones]

This year (9th grade), I've read:

Woe is I (grammar book, terrible)
Mythology (to prepare for another book, I took 11 sheets of paper of notes)
Brave New World
1984
The Odyssey
Lord of the Flies
Night
Twelfth Night
To Kill a Mockingbird

So... 9 books this year? Except for the first two, I've liked almost them all. Our class has spent a lot of time extracting the meaning of them all, and it really makes the books more interesting when all of the figurative language is extracted.

It's amazing how similar the government is in 1984 to Russia under Stalin's rule. Althought I thought it lost a lot of its appeal whenever Winston was sent to the Ministry of Love (whoops, spoiler).

I also liked Brave New World, and I think it ties in with 1984 quite well. Although the government rule was slightly different, they still had the same prospect in mind.

Lord of the Flies was excellent, and very, very, corrupt. It definitely shows how civilization is only a mask to the most basic principles of life: Food, water, and power.

I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird, a nice novel with gothic elements that shows how different the mindset of people of the time could be.

Night was alright: a very short, to the point novelle that described the horrors of the Nazi camps. It's nice to get a different perspective of the occurances, since stories about Nazism are oftentimes told by onlookers.

The Odyssey was quite good, not a favorite of mine, but not terrible. I usually prefer more realistic fictions, though.

Twelfth Night was a really good play by Shakespeare, and it shows how our language has dwindled down a bit since the Elizabethan times. I had to do a project because of this book, where I got together with a few classmates and recorded a scene (act 2, scene 3) on tape. It actually didn't turn out too bad, given that we did all of the recording the day before it was due.

[Rick]

AH! Complete forgot about And Then There Were None. Biggest turn-around a book ever made for me, the beginning bored me to tears but by the end of it I was blown away. Great stuff.

The one directed by Truffaut?

Honestly didn't know there was more than one. It was the one where the fires were handled really tepidly. They just threw the books in a barbecue grill instead of bringing the houses down, it took away a lot of the intensity.

[sggg]

Originally posted by Melf
When I taught high school, I used to assign books from a list of about 75 titles. That way, there was something for everyone. The only required reading for the whole class was a play by Shakespeare and a single novel. All the other readings were supplemental. The kids seemed to prefer it that way.

Seems like an excellent plan to me! I wish you were my HS teacher.



Of course, judging by your profile, you're only 2 years older than me. So that might have been strange.....

[Regus]

The best books I read in High School were Anthem and 1984. I love the whole concept of the distopian future. I've always wanted to read Brave New World, but I never got around to it, hell, it's sitting on my shelf right now.

Inherit the Wind was pretty good, and I mildly enjoyed MacBeth, Othello and the Merchant of Venice.

I had to read Anne Rule's "A Stranger Beside Me" for Phsycology. It was all about Ted Bundy, it was somewhat interesting, but not interesting enough to finish it.

Beowulf was cool, as were some of the Cantaberry Tales (I spelled that wrong didn't I? Forgive me Chaucer.)

I also read Game Over by David Sheff for High School, and man did that book suck. It was so damn dry and lifeless.

The books I was supposed to read, but didn't: The Great Gatsby, Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry, and last but not least, a Man for All Seasons.

The funny thing about Gatsby was that when I asked a friend who had finished it what it was all about, he told me, and I quote "It's about some guy who shits on a golden toliet". And as intrigued as I was, even that wasn't enough to get me to read it.

[Rick]

That's probably the best synopsis of the Great Gatsby I've ever heard.