I was thinking about books we were forced to read in high school and was wondering if anyone else had a book they ended up loving that they would have never read if it was on a summer reading list etc.
My book was How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn.
White Fang.
Hah, we just pulled White Fang out of a little free library; my daughter loves it and I think has re-read it already.
My favorite assigned read was probably The Story of a Bad Boy. Still funny!
I think it’s traditional to hate having to read The Scarlet Letter, but I actually thought it was beautiful.
I’d say Shakespeare, but I don’t know that it qualifies as forced when both Shakespeare classes I took were elective and I specifically wanted to do them because I’d already read a bit of Shakespeare and was a big fan.
Great question. I don’t really remember being forced to readi any books I didn’t like (I don’t actually remember very well what books we read. I liked A Separate Peace.
That whole “forced to read” thing really gets in the way of any sense of personal enjoyment, but I think I liked reading Frankenstein and Dracula in a gothic literature class.
Great Expectations.
Unless I was forced to read (parts of) Moby-Dick. I have a vague feeling that I was in grade school but I can’t be sure.
Lord of the Flies. The teacher read it to us when I was in grade 6, in hindsight probably too young but then again she did explain when we were not understanding, ie Piggy’s death being the death of reason etc. Perhaps her reading it to us made some of the more intense stuff more palatable.
Then I went to junior high and had to read it for myself. Loved having it read to me, loved reading it myself.
I was supposed to read Watership Down as summer reading in high school. I didn’t. Ten years later, I read it and now it’s probably my favorite novel.
I’d say The Great Gatsby was the one I enjoyed the most.
A Tale of Two Cities for me.
Heart of Darkness. No one else in my class liked it. It was one of like two books I finished in my senior year English class.
I guess I’ve always got my head stuck in a book, so even in school I can’t remember ever feeling “forced” to read assignments. I do remember reading a few assigned stories that turned me on to authors I developed a great appreciation for, like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, Thomas Pynchon’s “Entropy” and Joseph Conrad’s “The Most Dangerous Game.” I went on to read many more works by those authors.
Not for me, but then I am not fond of any of the Dickens stories forced on me in English class. As my high school era personal reading consisted almost entirely of SF and fantasy, English class pushed me to read and appreciate authors and books outside of those two genres. The Great Gatsby and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn netted me probably the best grade in any English assignment in high school.
Crime and Punishment. It was assigned and I figured I would blow through it quickly and get back to something more interesting. It took awhile for me to admit that I was actually liking the book, but by the end I was already starting to hunt down more of his work and then other Russian authors.
Taking a World Lit course in college and being exposed to Balzac and Flaubert and Ibsen and Kafka improved my to-read pile for the rest of my life.
I actually had Frankenstein assigned twice. Well, kind of. Excerpts for an English class in high school (“Science Fiction in Literature”—thanks, Mrs Horning!), then again in a general survey course in college. It really is a good story, with a lot of discussion hooks.
Ray Bradbury’s Farheint 451 or Orwell’s Animal Farm.
At least these are the only two books that were assigned that I read through in a single day. IIRC during Junior or Senior year. Because I read The Great Gatsby and The Catcher and the Rye sophomore along with my own reading of The Lord of the Rings.
Crime and Punishment is another one as well. The Human Comedy and Catch 22 round out the list of books I can remember being assigned reading.
From high school:
A Bell for Adano, Hiroshima (John Hersey)
Demian (Herman Hesse)
Flowers for Algernon
Alas, Babylon
Lolita (I think, can’t recall if I read that on my own or not.)
If I had to pick a favorite, probably Flowers for Algernon.