What are the best books you read for college or high school classes?

[BurtWorm]

My favorite books in high school: Darkness at Noon, Brave New World, Ethan Frome (for some reason, I was totally in love with that book--not when I reread it many years later), and The Worldly Philosophers.

In college: The Awakening (woke *me* up!), Middlemarch (one of the few books that actually made me weep in sorrow for the characters), Song of Solomon (holy cow! They're all by women so far!), Paradise Lost...I could go on and on and on, actually. I loved a LOT of what I read in college.

[Brucey]

1. The Great Gatsby.

[populistmom]

2. 1984

My junior year of high school. I had this hippy teacher who even let us watch the movie. Do they still let people read this in high school or has the Department of Homeland Security cracked down on it yet?

[BurtWorm]

8. I know I read that in high school

I can't remember if it was for a class. It was definitely one of my favorite books. It's time to reread it to see if it holds up.

[eleny]

3. Grapes of Wrath

[BurtWorm]

4. That was one of my favorites in college

I was living it, too. I mean I was starving, and all the scenes of food preparation had a special poignancy for me.

[ScreamingMeemie]

5. Way of the Peaceful Warrior.

Great book.

[BurtWorm]

6. What class did you read that in?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

7. A Seperate Peace in HS... All Faulkner in College

And Deconstructing Huck Finn in College as well.

[Nikia]

9. Brothers Karamazov

I also liked Le Germinal and Things Fall Apart, which I read in college. We didn't read books at my high school.

[BurtWorm]

10. Was it a Steiner school?

You didn't read books?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

11. You didn't read books in HS?????

Wow... I feel old.

[Nikia]

18. We had assigned text book readings

We didn't read novels or anything. We saw a lot of videos, though. Teachers taught at us during most of the class. We didn't have much homework. It was a poor public high school.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

20. Wow... I was afraid of that (the vids)

Now's the time to make up for it!

I want you to have read all of Twain's published work, As I Lay Dying & Of Mice and Men by Faulkner, The complete Emily Dickenson and Moby Dick by this time next week. There will be a test with 35 essay questions. :evilgrin:

That's the first week in American Literature. I'll let someone else assign the English lit.

[azrak]

39. Of Mice and Men by Faulkner??

WOW! I could have sworn Stienbeck wrote that :)

[mitchum]

12. Burt, we share so many of the same likes, but I have to disagree...

with you about "The Awakening" When I was in school, I used to resent how that trifle found its way onto so many syllabi. I had to cover it in five different classes. Grrr...

[BurtWorm]

15. I read it in a state of altered consciousness--not artificially altered

though lack of sleep and food may have had something to do with it. In any case, I fell completely in love with Edna Pontellier. I thought her predicament was horrible. And real. And I think Chopin was brave to write about it at the time she did.

[sasquatch]

13. Silas Marner, 1984, Brave New World and Farenhiet 451

[SOteric]

14. I read Middlemarch,

Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning; Hannah Arendt, Anton Schultz, Franz Kafka, The Castle and Metamorphosis; Marcel Proust A Remembrance of Things Past; Louis Fernand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan (Best in the original French); Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One...and many, many more.

I never found a reading assignment to be a burden.

[BurtWorm]

17. I felt the same way about reading assignments.

In college, anyway. In high school, I was not quite so enamored of them. Quite a few of the books I had an antipathy to in high school I fell in love with in college.

[Syrinx]

16. Fiction and Nonfiction

Fiction: Orwell duology. 1984 and Animal Farm.

History Book: "Coming Apart: An Informal History of the United States In The 1960's."

[Punkingal]

19. Mine were in college.....

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, and Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl (I was a Psych major). Both books were life-changing for me.

[VaLabor]

27. Victor Frankl!

Logotherapy, right?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

21. Several and agree about Brave New World ( Who knew!)

Walden, and the essays Civil Disobedience and Life Without Principle..I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings..Johnny Got His Gun...MainStreet.....The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are...

[BurtWorm]

22. I forgot about Main Street

but that was also one of my favorite books in high school.

PS: I was supposed to read Walden in high school, but I didn't get around to actually reading it until many years later, on my own. I love that book.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

23. Sister Carrie! The Magus! Doctor Faustus!

I'm gonna rummage through the book case! Gettin' "Good Book Hungry!"

[Bossy Monkey]

24. HS: Old Man & The Sea; U: Island by Aldous Huxley (n/t)

[BurtWorm]

25. I read Island outside of school

and, though I barely remember it--did it have something to do with psychotropic drugs?--I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[VaLabor]

26. My two absolute faves...

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

and

Light in August by William Faulkner

[scucci]

28. Red Badge of Courage

and Brave New World.

[no_hypocrisy]

29. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

Hard Times - Charles Dickens

[MaineDem]

30. "Soul on Ice"

For Freshman Sociology. Made a big impact on me, especially given the times - 1969-70.

"Mrs Mike" in HS. A not-well-known book about early Canada. I still remember it.

[jumptheshadow]

31. The Confessions of Nat Turner

Also, the Black Elk series. The professor, John Neihardt, had died but you attended taped lectures. The books were so moving that a couple of times I was moved to tears while watching the tapes.

Edit for punctuation.

[dofus]

32. Things Fall Apart

by Chinua Achebe. I read it for a college world lit class.

I wish I could make everyone here read it.

[mitchum]

34. I would help you make everyone here read "Things Fall Apart"...

it is a wonderful book (that I re-read every year)

[Kamika]

37. I read that one too

Pretty interesting book

[bikebloke]

33. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man

In high school. Everyone had trouble with that book. I started it about five times. And then it clicked and I devoured it. After all these years I've been tempted to read it again to compare its impact. But there are just so many books I haven't read that I'd like to delve into. It was probably one of the catalyts for a fierce lifetime reading habit.

[scarlet_owl]

35. Farenheit 451

I loved it and it turned me on to more of Bradbury's books.

[alfredo]

36. 100 Years of Solitude- Marquez

Death In Venice. T Mann

My term paper for Frosh English was on Hemmingway's "the Sun also rises." I drew a comparison between the main characters and the players in the bull ring. A neutered bull is put with The Bull to keep him calm before the fight. Jake was neutered during the war. Don't remember the others.

[Kamika]

38. Things fall apart and other books. Need help identifying one

In high school

Things fall apart by chinua achebe

I know why the caged bird sings by maya angelou

a really funny book by some french guy in the 18th century about a guy that has tons of adventures he gets drafted into the army, he goes to south america etc etc etc it ends with him and his friend with the fake nose settling down in turkey i think growing stuff.

im very sad i cant remember the book but it was great fun and at the time very satirical of the ruling classes

I think the book starts with an "S" im not sure though

[SPICYHOT]

40. The name of the rose

and don quijote de la mancha, pretty funny

[LeftPeopleFinishFirst]

41. In The Time of The Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

Short, easy book, but good.

[Raenelle]

42. Non-fiction, Burke's Revolution in France

n/t

[jus_the_facts]

43. The Good Earth~Pearl Buck.....

....excellent read!! :)