Did you ever wish you could have picked out which books you were assigned to read in high school? To complement our list of books that staff hated reading in high school, we have a second list of books that staff wished they were assigned to read. We hope this generates some discussion as some people’s picks were other people’s least favorites. As always please post your comments.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee was the top pick. Is it possible that anyone could make it through high school without reading this book?
Last of the Mohicans – James Fennimore Cooper
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
The Narnia Books
Books by Nevil Shute and Pearl S. Buck
The Pearl
More Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest)
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Anything by Virginia Woolf
Charles Dickens
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
The Last Hurrah – Edwin O’Conner
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
As I said to ta, my classmates would have hated me had they really had to read The Last Hurrah, but when I finally got around to reading it in college, I loved it. The characters, and even moreso the writing style, made for a memorable look at Boston politics.
Another one I would have loved to have read – at any point during my education – was Dante’s Inferno. Ooo, and Milton’s Paradise Lost! As it is, both are still on my TBR list. (I just might have to bump them on the list…)
I gave The Inferno as a book of choice (after a very studied attempt to interest them), and I was always surprised at how many chose to read it and at the individual students who chose it. The students who chose to read The Inferno were often not particularly interested in literature, and somehow The Inferno increased their interest in literature in general.
Most of these books were books that I either required or that were on the “choice” list.
Now I must find the post on the “hated” books!