A couple books I had to read for school in highschool that I actually wound up liking a lot were The Odyssey and In the Time of the Butterflies. I got so obsessed with those books when I read them, especially the Odyssey. I liked it so much I read The Iliad after that.

I think I've liked all my required reading since sixth grade, except for Old Man and the Sea in 9th grade and Huckleberry Finn earlier this year. Huckleberry Finn, while I didn't enjoy reading it, I did enjoy discussing and thinking about it afterwards.

Some notable books I liked, though, that I still love and remember... A Midsummer Night's Dream in 7th grade, As You Like It in 8th grade, and Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade. :D I love Shakespeare.

A Lesson Before Dying, I had to read earlier this year, and I adored it. It was such an amazing, sad book. <3 I read To Kill a Mockingbird earlier this year as well, and it is now one of my favorite books ever!

The Hobbit in 7th grade... My god. I think I was the only one that liked it, though. D: I still need to read the rest of the Lord of the Rings books...

Hmm...there weren't many required readings that I enjoyed sadly. At least, enjoyed enough that I might actually read them again on my own time rather than under the pressure of pounding through sixty pages a night (really horrible for the students who have a reading disability like me X'( ). So, let's see here:

Beowulf
Macbeth
Dracula
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Hamlet

Those are the ones that spring to mind.

I recently had to read "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" by Mary Shelley and it's an awesome book - in fact, I'm writing my Romanticism paper on that book. It's funny to read the story and realize how much films have distorted our image of Frankenstein's monster :XD The book also sheds a whole different light on the monster than the films do: in the films, the monster has had a bad brain implanted, but in the book, he is essentially good - he only became a monster because he was treated as one. He says it himself - if someone would just treat him as a friend, he would become a good person again.

Originally Posted by AbsolutionBot

Hmm...there weren't many required readings that I enjoyed sadly. At least, enjoyed enough that I might actually read them again on my own time rather than under the pressure of pounding through sixty pages a night (really horrible for the students who have a reading disability like me X'( ). So, let's see here:

Beowulf
Macbeth
Dracula
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Hamlet

Those are the ones that spring to mind.

I can't believe I forgot about To Kill a Mockingbird. But then again, the first time i read it was just for fun, and the 2nd time i read it was for school.

I never had to read Beowulf, but my sister just had to at her school and got really obsessed with it so i picked it up for fun.

Heart of Darkness was my absolute favorite required reading book. :D

Followed closely by Things Fall Apart and Brave New World.

I read some decent books in college, but high school had better required reading. XP

Sophmore (high school) year, I hated my Lit teacher, but loved the books I had to read.
Then There Were None was amazing. I loved the plot, how the masterplan falls perfectly into place. The part I loved most, though, was the letter from the Mastermind to Scotland Yard (he put it in a bottle, a drift at sea). He tells everything on how he did it, and how he'll come (came) to kill himself as well. It was brilliant.
I also liked 1984 by George Orwell. The book was hard to read, but it appealed to my radical paranoia. I didn't like some of the random scenes, in the middle though. Loved the ending, Big Brother always wins.

Sadly, I haven't liked any of the books so far.
We've read The Crucible (so, it's a play, deal), Huckleberry Finn and Ethan Frome (currently on chapter 5, ugh.)
The Crucible was okay, I guess, but the list seems to be getting worse.
Hope it gets better, or I'm going to cry.

I'm surprised so many liked Lord of the Flies. You'd have to put me at gunpoint to make me read it again!

I loved Maniac McGee in 6th grade. Their Eyes Were Watching God was really good too. Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry was really powerful.
And Oedipus Rex. It's a play, but it was really interesting even read.

A Farewell to Arms was the most boring book ever though.

I usually liked the required reading books,as I'll read just about anything I can get my hands on. But my favorite by far was A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens. It was such a great story.

All Quite on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque (I cried)
Good Earth Pearl S. Buck (A very good look at Feudal China)
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald (A wonderful read about the roaring 20's)
The Scarlett Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne (A bittersweet story of a strong woman)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Tom Stoppard ( an interesting twist on a classic)
Anything by Shakespeare: except Romeo and Juliet. It is my least favorite play of his.
Les Misérables Victor Hugo (It was a required, self picked novel. Boy was it LONG)
Hmmm, I can't think of anything I enjoyed before that. Those were all from my Senior Year.

If you liked All Quiet on the Western Front, you should read Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel, which, in my opinion, is actually a better book.

Books I was assigned to read in high school and liked included Flowers for Algernon, and Slow Walk in a Sad Rain, and Cannery Row (the book that introduced me to John Steinbeck, whom I love).

In college, most of the stuff I've read has been nursing textbooks, but I took a history class this semester, and was assigned to read a book called The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, which is just what the title says -- the crusades examined through Arabic primary sources, rather than European ones. The author is/was primarily a novelist rather than a historian, and it's quite readable.

Walkyrje- I read Flowers for Algernon as a short story for school. Then I went and bought the novel shortly after- it's one of my favorite books. <3

We just finished Fahreheit 451 for English, and I thought it was really good. It was really well written, with some really awesome metaphors and a great message.

I rather liked Fahrenheit 451, but then, I've liked a fair amount of Bradbury's stuff. Have you read his Martian Chronicles? It's sort of a strange view of Mars, given what we know about the planet today, but when they were written, we didn't know nearly as much.

I haven't read anything else by him as of yet, but once I put a dent in the pile of books I'm reading right now, I want to.

the required reading that i liked was in high school, "Lord of the Flies" was a definite since i had to read it so many times. " Night" by Elie Wiesel was another one cause it was interesting way to understand the Holocaust Besides those two books the other books that were required i don't remember them so clearly tried to block the memoires of high school away :P

DarkAngel21- Oh my god, I completely forgot about Night. Thanks for reminding me. That was one of the better Holocaust books I've read... and also one of the most profound. The scene in which the young boy who looks like an angel is hanged for some petty thing and ends up hanging there for thirty mintues being strangled to death because his weight isn't strong enough to just break his neck is one of the most haunting scenes I've ever read. I cried and cried. I still get goosebumps and feel cold when I so much as think of it.

*adds Night to her list of very good required reading*

If you liked Night, you should check out Art Spiegleman's Maus, which is a graphic novel recounting his father's experience with the holocaust. Spiegleman won the Pulitzer prize for it.

When I was in grade school, it was the True Adventures of Charlotte Doyle.
I still pull that out and read it sometimes when I have a bit of free time.

Ooh, I definitely loved reading Gulliver's Travels when it was required in my AP English Literature class. I had always tried to read it before and it just didn't hold my attention until I was required to read it. Then the reading was astonishingly fast and lovely. Also, I got more of Swift's humor after that, although reading the Modest Proposal helped in reading Gulliver's Travels.
Oh! That reminds me: Best moment ever - When the substitute teacher walks in and the whole class is writing an essay on Swift's Modest Proposal (And it's written on the board), and he glances at the board and then says "Oi, that's making me hungry."

Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I had to read it a few weeks ago for a class project. The book sounded boring (and my group already hated the plot line) but I finished the book very fast because I found it so interesting. Here's a little summary, if anyone is interested:

What is faith? What is friendship? What is fiction? Life of Pi explores these questions in the tale of a devoutly religious Indian boy nicknamed Pi who becomes stranded on a lifeboat with an unrestrained 450-pound Bengal tiger as his only companion. Pi draws upon his knowledge of wild animal training—his father was a zookeeper back in India—to establish an uneasy peace between himself and the tiger, which he sees as his only possibility for survival.

I don't remember any other ones.

Holes, To Kill a Mockingbird, Brave New World, The Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451. All really great books, each in their own way! I really love reading but I was surprised to find that I enjoyed these novels so much.

Just the other day I remembered reading Flowers for Algernon. That was a really great book, I need to find it and read it again some time.

I also read Nothing But the Truth by Avi. It was such an ironic book and how such a small issue can turn into something crazy and messed up. I still remember the last paragraph, but typing it would give away the ending.

My school set reads were horrible and i hated then all and that is saying because i love to read

Well there was this one book....I don't remember the name. Something about the moon? That was long ago in 5th grade. Ahahahaha.

And oh yeah- The Outsiders! I loved that book for some reason! Though I'm sure everyone was really bored of having to read it.

I love to read, but a lot of the books my school's assigned reading is just ugh! But I have liked:

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakaeur (Don't know if I spelled that right :lol: )
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway