Whats your favorite classic book you read in school?
 

Tale of Two Cities
Red Badge of Courage
To Kill a Mockingbird
Grapes of Wrath
Call of the Wild
anything Shakespeare....
Tom Sawyer
Huckleberry Finn
Moby Dick


Or anything else..........what was your fave?

the odyssey Oedipus rex

This topic brought back some old gut wrenching feelings because my pick of Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo was and still is the most emotional book I've ever read.

Here's a video to the film.

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What's your favorite set of Cliffsnotes you read in school?:hmmm:

The Hobbit.

Lord of the Flies

Where The Red Fern Grows

:thumb:

Our 6th grade teacher read this book to each of his classes year after year and each time he and a room full of students were either shedding tears or just outright bawling.

Yep. Never fails.

I never learned to read. Or write. I have a robotic device replying to this thread.

Absolutely loved reading To Kill A Mockingbird, and the movie was great as well.

JOHNNY TREMAIN

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

Candide

Of mice and men probably.
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Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

Catcher in the Rye!

phoney

I found most of the stuff we had to read to be very uninteresting. Especially ****ing Shakespeare and his stupid-ass shit.

Yep,you're definitely a NASCAR fan :D

Does Penthouse forum count? I can even remember much of it.

"I never would have believed it until it happened to me. I was a freshman at a small midwestern university hitchiking home durin g a break when a group of naked hot cheerleaders from a neighboring university stopped in their convertable mustang and picked me up for what would come to be known as the ride of my life."

I can't say that I couldn't put it down because after about 10 minutes I read enough until about an hour later then it started all over again.

Flowers for Algernon

To Kill a Mockingbird. We read it in 8th of 9th grade, and I was totally absorbed. It changed the way I read literature from that point onward really. I expected more from books than I had before.

It was most certainly not Moby Dick. :#


I was bored to tears with Shakespeare until I took a class on Shakespeare for an English class in high school my senior year (it was one of the few that fit my schedule). The guy that taught it was a Shakespeare nut and even acted and worked in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, OR. He was excellent at explaining what the language meant and what ol' Bill was going for at various points in the plays. It really made it come alive and I found I really enjoyed it.

Probably this.

Teachers with a true passion for what they teach are definitely not paid enough.

Heh. In my case, I could actually read it, I simply lacked the desire to do so.

To Kill a Mockingbird. Loved the hell out of that book. If I recall it was the only book I read cover to cover in HS. Also liked Old Man and the Sea.

Yeah. Bad English teachers in high school nearly ruined me to writing. Fortunately, I had some excellent teachers in college (actually in a community college) that really turned me around to writing.

Unfortunately, I am currently seeing the soul killing English teachers in my boys' high school.

Some of the ones mentioned here were the very books that stirred my love for reading:

Voltaire's Candide
Flowers for Algernon
On the Road
Catcher in the Rye

Catcher in the Rye was the book that did it for me. I had a cool teacher then and he suggested I read Kerouac's On the Road. It was then that I stopped reading Cliff Notes and started getting more engrossed in books.

I never had the chance to thank him.

I remember having to read Animal Farm and being excited at first. I thought it was going to be a goofy comedy.

To Kill a Mockingbird, The Outsiders, and Of Mice and Men.

The Outsiders
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

I also remember a short story by Hemingway(I think) about 2 dudes eating hot peppers.

Hustler, High Society

The Outsiders, Of Mice and Men and Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry.

Of Mice and Men got to me more than most I would say.

I was a fortunate one in high school as my English and Journalism teachers were both :thumb: In fact I was actually writing a novel in high school and my English teacher was reading and critiquing it chapter by chapter for me.

One weekend I sat down and read the 150+ pages I had so far got depressed as I thought it sucked and trashed it.When I told the teacher what I'd done he about shit(no computers then and I had no back-up) and told me something I've never forgotten,"A writer is their own worst critic,NEVER judge your own work."

That was 30+ years ago and I've yet to attempt the novel again. I keep thinking one day I'll find the time and start it again.

Where The Red fern Grows and The Outsiders were my favorite "real" books, but I read Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light In The Attic repeatedly. I remember liking some book about a mouse that rode a motorcycle too.

I remember this from grade school.. "The Mouse and the Motorcycle".. They made a movie off this as well -- I believe his name was Ralph. Made engine noises and the bike would go... Haven't thought about that in probably 20 years.

Yeah, I think it was a Beverly Cleary book.

The Outsiders

stay golden...

I ****ing love this book. Best book in the world.

Anyone else do a multitude of grade school book reports on Goosebumps books? Teachers never liked it much though.

Reading this thread makes me realize that I really didn't have to read a lot of classics in either high school or college. I think the greatest portion of them that I did read happened in my 8th grade English class (The Old Man and the Sea, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, 1984, Moby Dick, Hamlet and a couple of others that I can't come up with atm).

I was in a Summer reading program at the local library my 6th grade year and read The Godfather and gave an oral report on it.At first the librarian didn't believe I'd read it and then she was like :eek:

Great Expectations.

I'll add the Great Gatsby. That was a great book to read.

We didn't read Moby Dick in high school, like some of you. I'm surprised teachers would even make kids read it, just because you have to get like 300 pages into it before it really gets going. I love the book but I would think most high schoolers would be bored by it.

I remember we were assigned a boom called, "Bless the Beasts and Children" and "Ordinary People". Both were depressing. I didn't even finish "Ordinary People".

Flowers for Algernon and Catcher in the Rye were definitely two of my favorites.

Alexandre Dumas' 'The Count of Monte Cristo.'

Almost forgot Fahrenheit 451...

Edit: Man, my memory is going to hell...it's getting hard to remember some of the stuff I read way back then, but it's slowly trickling back...

Siddhartha

Oops, another one just bubbled up:

Death Be Not Proud

not the John Donne poem, but a book written by a father about his teenage son's battle against a brain tumor, which he ultimately loses. It will absolutely rip your heart out.

A Lesson Before Dying was one of the few that I actually read cover to cover in HS. Enjoyed a few others as well. I remember like the Good Earth for some reason.

And that Mozart guy was a hack. WHERE'S THE DISTORTION??

I didn't "have to" read Moby Dick. We had to pick a classic to do a report on and I picked Moby Dick as a challenge. Not sure what I was thinking there.

It must run in the family, though, because last year my son picked Dante's Divine Comedy in a similar situation. :doh!:

I want to discount Shakespeare, just because they were plays and never meant to be "read."

In terms of novels, my favorite was Where the Red Fern Grows (*SNIFF*) or To Kill A Mockingbird. These are the books I feel like just about everyone read.

However, in college, reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man blew my freaking mind.

That is one of my favorites, but read it a couple of years after HS.

Tom Sawyer was a great book, we read it as a class in middle school.

Of Mice and Men is another fantastic one, but I think To Kill a Mockingbird was the best.

I also remember Rabit Hill, it started terribly slow, but the second half was great.

Les Miserables, For Whom the Bell Tolls

I think I first read it on my own in like 6th grade, but we read it in high school as well: Watership Down. I love that damned book.

I don't know about that, plays are read all the time. It's different than seeing one but it's still a good way to enjoy a play.

Slaughterhouse-Five
The Trial
Huckleberry Finn
To Kill A Mockingbird
Julius Caesar
The Lottery
Little Toy Dog
Catch-22
Stranger In A Strange Land
Lord Of The Rings
The Shining
Animal Farm
Childhood's End
The Sirens Of Titan
The Birds/Lysistrata
Antigone
No Exit
Waiting For Godet
The Bald Soprano
Our Town
Spoon River Anthology
Cat's Cradle
Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas/Fear & Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72
Beyond The Fringe

That's all I can recall off the top...high school years been a few minutes ago for me. With some research, I'm sure I could add more...

This. We watched the movie, too.

If that counts as a classic, then it would jump to the top of my list, too. I first read it at about the same age and have read it several other times since.

Johnny Got His Gun
Slaughterhouse Five
The Jungle

Also Huis Clos(No Exit), a play in French Class. Our French teacher was great, because she was more concerned with us talking about ideas and culture than the language itself which was the only reason I passed those classes. Mon francais est tres mal.

Our drama department put on The Bald Soprano this year. That's a ****ed up play.

Finally someone else :thumb:

I played the male lead role. It was SOOOOO hard not to laugh out loud at the dialogue near the very end of the play...

God bless Ionesco.

Loved "Grapes of Wrath."

Also liked "The Call of the Wild."

Three books that changed the way I think about the world were 1984, My side of the Mountain, & Walden.

"In Cold Blood" comes to mind since it was so close geographically and was a fairly current event.

A customer ended up taking me out to the house when I started selling in Garden City.

This is what I was thinking of, but I typed Rabit Hill, it has been too long ago.

I wasn't nor am an avid reader but that book was unforgettably horrifying. It's also an important read so you can relate to Metallica's "One." :rockon:

1. Of Mice and Men
2. Red Badge of Courage
3. To Kill a Mockingbird

I HATED the book Shane-it bored the hell out of me and I took an "F" that quarter in 8th grade and got kicked off the basketball team

The Giver

Welcome to the Monkey House

I dunno if it qualifies as a classic. But I remember reading "Where the Red Fern Grows" as a kid and crying like a baby.

That was the first that came to mind, but I wasn't sure if it was considered a "classic"

The Xanth series by Piers anthony in 7th and 8th grade.

I just looked it up, I guess I should say the first 8 or 9 books, I remember crewel lye as the last title, and don't think I got through it. I think I was starting to outgrow it....

It is when your 3rd grade teacher reads it out loud to the class and she has southern accent.

Not sure if it's a classic but i read Jubilee in college and it still amazes me to this day.

I loved the older R.L. Stein books. As in older I guess I mean young adult.