RoR: Forum

The novels I can remember reading as high school assignments, none of which I enjoyed or would read again, are:

10th
A Separate Peace
The Red Badge of Courage
Catcher in the Rye

11th
In Cold Blood
The Grapes of Wrath

12th
David Copperfield (I read the Cliff's Notes instead)
Gulliver's Travels
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Post 1

Saturday, March 13, 2010 - 7:15am

I really don't remember what we were assigned in high school, with the exception of something by Willa Cather, I think, which was full of boring descriptions of physical objects; Moby Dick, which I found really boring, and Wuthering Heights.

Wuthering Heights was assigned in my senior English class, which we were not required to take. Part way through the book, I dropped the class so that I wouldn't have to finish it.

(BTW, I read Catcher in the Rye years after high school, and I thought it was quite good.)

Post 2

Saturday, March 13, 2010 - 8:01am

That reminds me, we were assigned Tess of the D'Urberville's, but instead I read the Cliff's notes and rented the movie. It and David Copperfield were simply too boring to read.

I found Catcher in the Rye easy to read, and read it in one sitting rather than at the slower assigned pace. But I found it silly. I had already come out by the time I read the book, and here the kid was all upset about the hypocrisy of adults and a dirty word scribbled on a wall?

I read Moby Dick on my own initiative in college. It was a slog but I am glad I read it and it had some brilliant touches like the chapter On the Whiteness of the Whale.

Is Catcher the type of book you would reread for pleasure, Laure? Any book I have ever liked I have probably read at least three times at this point.

Post 3

Saturday, March 13, 2010 - 5:05pm

I created my own English class in high school and so read what I felt like reading. I did take a few months of the standard class and don't recall anything about it.

I have read Catcher a few times. It's a crumby, lousy goddamn book, but I enjoy it.

Post 4

Sunday, March 14, 2010 - 8:24am

I'm including plays as well as novels.

9th
The Brothers Karamazov
Moby Dick
Doctor Zhivago
Our Town

10th
Johnny Got His Gun    by   Dalton Trumbo
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest   Ken Kesey
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

11th
The Grapes of Wrath
The Jungle Upton Sinclair
The Red Pony
Old Man and the Sea
Ethan Frome
The Red Badge of Courage
The Bear        William Faulkner
We the Living
Great Expectations

12th
Hamlet
Macbeth
Antigone
King Lear
The Oedipus Cycle
The Clouds by Aristophanes
As I Lay Dying    William Faulkner
A Tale of Two Cities

I thought my literature instruction was OK. Pretty heavy on naturalism. I don't think I'd read any of these again except for We the Living, but I got all of the Shakespeare again in college and then some.

Jim

(Edited by James Heaps-Nelson on 3/14, 8:32am)

Post 5

Sunday, March 14, 2010 - 1:30pm

Not a one. Perhaps ARI's efforts to get teachers to assign Rand is counterproductive.

Post 6

Sunday, March 21, 2010 - 10:45pm

Moby Dick was okay but the real story is the true story behind the novel. Captain Pollard was a hell a a man.
Last of the Mohicans was pretty cool. Muse muse muse Don't know just read the text cause it was full of history.
Pretty much a pulp fiction addict though. Robert E. Howard, Poe. Kipling Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Edgar Rice Burrows. Anne McCaffrey. Kurt Vonnegut, Bullfinch Shakespeare King Lear was funny. Authors and parables are lots like Artists and their implications hidden in their paintings. Had the pleasure of learning about a portrait of Bonnie Prince Charley. Is neat cause it is painted to only be a portrait in a reflection unique to a certain curve on a 'cup'?
Got kind a busy reading more mundane stuff like blueprints and shop manuals or aggie stuff like how ta keep bees and animal husbandry. Not earth shattering but still useful knowledge.
Lots of material to reread as one accumulates life experiences many times their is more to the story than ones first reading. Still haven't read lots of material I would not have minded reading in High school.
whooo hooo eclectic observations, ah well . just grateful for the exposure.

Post 7

Monday, March 22, 2010 - 6:32am

Speaking of Last of the Mohicans - all of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales are worth reading, and more - his The Spy and The Pilot [about John Paul Jones] are also quite the read... even his political tracts are of note - Fennimore Cooper was actually a very good writer...
(Edited by robert malcom on 3/22, 6:34am)

Post 8

Monday, March 22, 2010 - 6:32pm

It would be interesting if the six people who have so far indicated they actually liked at least one of the books they were assigned in high school enough to reread it would name the novels they have liked. I had to laugh after the fact when we were told that we were assigned A Separate Peace in the tenth grade "because kids like it." I suppose that was in comparison to root canal.

Harley, are you saying that you were assigned Anne McCaffrey in High School? After trying Decision at Doona and some of the Dragon books, Dinosaur Planet was the only book of hers I managed to finish, it was pretty good.

Post 9

Thursday, March 25, 2010 - 10:08am

Well, this is hilarious. Once again it seems like the creators of South Park must be reading this website. Their latest episode (March 24, 2010) is a parody of Catcher in the Rye and its place in our culture. Watch the full episode for free, here.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 3/25, 10:10am)

Post 10

Saturday, March 27, 2010 - 7:47am

I'm amazed by the fact that Jim and Ted can remember in such detail their literature reading lists from high school. I loved to read fiction and stories of any kind as a kid, until I got to the assigned works in h.s. and college. Then it was a combination of naturalism, poor teaching (and lack of 'hierarchy'?) that repelled me from reading.

It took me years to fully find that hunger and love for fiction again...and to discover -actual- great literature.

Jim, what strikes me about your list is that little attempt was made to teach the books in any order...hierarchical order would be from simpler or easier to read in junior high school to more sophisticated or complex junior or senior year in high school. For example, The Old Man and the Sea, boring and slow-moving and not much happening as it is, is a middle school level of story and complexity, while The Brothers Karamazov is not. I've forgotten The Red Badge of Courage, but it and The Red Pony are usually earlier as well. Not after Moby Dick.

Also, only an idiot would assign four Shakespeare plays in one year. You start with a simpler one like Julius Caesar, maybe in middle school, and then a year or two later you get to one or two on your list. Also, only an idiot would assign all the 'heavy' and dark tragedies, and not include any of Willy's lighter, more romantic, more comic, more fun works like "As You Like It", "Love's Labor Lost", etc.

Plays in which everyone dies..or people go insane or are suicidal and moping..are not likely to be appealing to teenagers.

"Here, let's give them things to read which will turn them off on literature for life."

And it's too heavily modern writers from the 20th century. Talk about provincialism and tunnel vision!!! From the Greeks with all their brilliance and with all their power, I see very little -- an omission of Greek mythology and "The Odyssey" in favor of tragedies. ...And what happened to poetry? [Maybe you just didn't include it in what you remember.]

And, parenthetically, what kind of illiterate teachers-college-graduate curriculum designers would include James Joyce and omit Homer?

Yikes!

Ted, similarly from your list it seems to be mostly what I would have classified at ages 15 through 17 as "depressing shit".

(Edited by Philip Coates on 3/27, 7:56am)

(Edited by Philip Coates on 3/27, 7:58am)

Post 11

Saturday, March 27, 2010 - 7:56am

Phil: "Plays in which everyone dies..or people go insane or are suicidal and moping..are not likely to be appealing to teenagers."

You underestimate the goth kids...

"Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrell." -Bart Simpson

Post 12

Saturday, March 27, 2010 - 8:02am

Yeah, but Joe it's literature like this which -turns- healthy, happy, upbeat kids into Goth kids.

And vampires. :-)

Post 13

Saturday, March 27, 2010 - 8:22am

Hmm...chicken or egg? (Or bat and egg?)

Post 14

Saturday, March 27, 2010 - 11:49am

That's easy.

It's the egg of bad literature which turns them into being chicken about reality.

(I know that's a fowl pun but please forgive me, as I was just winging it.)

Post 15

Saturday, March 27, 2010 - 3:02pm

:)

I mean,
>8)
(Edited by Joe Maurone on 3/27, 3:03pm)

Post 16

Sunday, March 28, 2010 - 12:04am

Phil,

In 9th grade I remember having choices of books to read and I chose Moby Dick,The Brothers Karamazov and Doctor Zhivago. I don't remember the circumstances, other possible choices etc.

You're right about the naturalism and tragedy. Rand was a major antidote for the naturalist curriculum. I think a lot of the curriculum turned me toward math and science. I read Freeman Dyson's Infinite in All Directions and a book on modern physics called The Second Creation and all of this was much more exciting than literature to me at the time.

Jim

Post 17

Sunday, March 28, 2010 - 8:01am

> I think a lot of the curriculum turned me toward math and science. [Jim]

Likewise I turned to math and science and then computers and science fiction in literature to the exclusion of much else. I would have become one of those whose only exposure to fiction is sci-fi and pulp and light mysteries or thrillers (plus Rand). And whose only exposure to painting or sculpture is poster art like Maxfield Parrish or Bougereau?? or who think that Donatello is a karate-kickingninja turtle.

What saved my soul, what saved me from abandoning the arts and the humanities, from turning my back on literature, plays, poetry for the rest of my life, and has provided me with a universe of enjoyment and inspiration?

Probably that I had a good, quasi-semi-demi-literate childhood with: a) Engaging stories that kindled a love for fiction - like 'the little engine who could', 'the emperor's new clothes', like fairy tales - Anderson, Grimm, etc., greek and norse myths in particular!, children's vrsns of the classics + Walt Disney versions of some of these, along with Robin Hood, Peter Pan, etc. b) Some elementary and middle school tchrs who, for example, gave us some cool patriotic and heroic poetry...Tall tales, like Paul Bunyan, etc. And that I had a certain extreme skepticism with regard to being led by the hand by my teachers. On almost aeverything. "I'm taking you to this wonderful water fountain of culture over there." "Prove it."

So by the time I got out of high school and college I had some 'throwback' sense teachers and professors had misrepresented what was out there, had avoided what was excellent, classic.

> I read Freeman Dyson's Infinite in All Directions and a book on modern physics called The Second Creation and all of this was much more exciting than literature to me at the time.

For me, the science excitement came from "Microbe Hunters", fomr a good middle school general science textbook (they don't exist any more). and from the Disney animated physics and science cartoons like "our mr. sun". And the Disney natural world and wildlife series like 'the painted desert'.

(Edited by Philip Coates on 3/28, 8:02am)

Post 18

Sunday, March 28, 2010 - 9:25am

My reading upbringing was rather eclectic - reading Sandburg's six volume Lincoln at age 10 and enjoying the Freddy the Pig books alongside it, so by high school, most of the assigned ones had been read or treated for the craft of writing, not the sense of life [hated "As I Lay Dying" but thought the first person present a very intriguing idea] - and as such not really remember much of what was assigned in any particular year other than a Thomas Hardy book [not Tess] and War and Peace [second read] in the eleventh grade [and never cared for Catcher as thought it stupid]...

Post 19

Sunday, March 28, 2010 - 8:46pm