Whats your favorite classic book you read in school?

[mr. tegu]

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

[Nzoner]

Originally Posted by mr. tegu

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

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

[crispystl]

Originally Posted by mr. tegu

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

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

[Frosty]

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).

[OmahaChief]

Great Expectations.

[Frazod]

Originally Posted by OmahaChief

Great Expectations.

This. We watched the movie, too.

[blaise]

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".

[Frosty]

Originally Posted by blaise

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 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.

[Frankie]

Alexandre Dumas' 'The Count of Monte Cristo.'

[Great Expectations]

Originally Posted by Frankie

Alexandre Dumas' 'The Count of Monte Cristo.'

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

[mikey23545]

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.

[RockChalk]

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.

[saphojunkie]

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.

[blaise]

Originally Posted by saphojunkie

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.

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.

[NewChief]

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.