I LOVE REQUIRED READING AAH SERIOUSLY :3 An excellent excuse to buy books! And my school generally has good recommendations. Uhh... we don't have grades here, so I'm not sure what grade I was in when I got these but as a reference, Primary Four = ten years old and Secondary One = thirteen years old. ^_^

Primary Four - Charlotte's Web

I LOVED THIS ONE. MAYBE EVEN THE BEST OF ALL. Especially Wilbur! And I cried when Charlotte died. I think the part about Fern and that something-or-other guy falling in love was a bit gross and unnecessary though, but maybe I was just young back then. O_O

Primary Five - A Wrinkle in Time

THIS WAS JUST AMAZING. I liked Meg and Charles Wallace and just the entire Murray family, really. And it was a surreal yet interesting concept, 'wrinkling'. A lot of people I knew said this was boring though, but it remains one of my only few liked science fiction novels.

Secondary One - Flowers for Algernon

AAAAH ANOTHER ONE I LOVE!!! <3 We actually got a selected excerpt from this book in this anthology of short stories we did, but I loved it all the same but somehow never really got around to finding the full book. D: It was really fun to analyse too.

And now I'm in Secondary Three and we're doing Lord of the Flies. I haven't read it yet, but I wonder if I'll like it. HMMM. O_O

I enjoyed Lord of the Flies when I read it as a sophomore, I thought it was interesting the way the boys acted and decided leadership then how the arguments came up and how they fought/worked everything out.

Then I also enjoyed Atlas Shrugged when I read it my junior year. I was the first one done reading it in my class. I loved how it had a few twists in it and also how Dagny was very headstrong and knew how to run business and whatnot

My favorite required books to date have been The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (12 grade), Macbeth by William Shakespeare (11th grade, but I'd read it on my own beforehand), Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (9th grade), To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee (10th grade), and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (10th grade.

Oh, and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien in 7th grade and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in 5th, but really those shouldn't even count. :roll: I'd been a fan of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe since I was like three and I've reread The Hobbit roughly a thousand million times.

I enjoyed Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible; F Scoot Fitzgerald's Great Gasby; Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea; anything by Steinbeck; and Plato's Republic.

For my religion class we are currently reading the Torah. I am loving it right now, we are also reading it alongside a translation guide. I am learning so much from it right now, and it's making me actually read the bible opposed to just skimming over the pages like I did in Sunday school.

My absolute favorite assigned reading book was The Grapes of Wrath. Everyone complained that it was a slow read, and we had to read almost half of it over winter break, so there was a lot of dislike for it, but I found it enthralling. Aside from allowing me to truly see how an event I was so far removed from affected people, the intercollary chapters were an interesting study in the use of symbolism.

I let me friend borrow my copy once and they returned it saying they "couldn't get past the first three pages where the author was just talking about wheat"... I guess it's not for everyone, but I really enjoyed it. And I wrote the essay section of my SATs about it, and got a really good score, so I appreciate it for that too. :D

To Kill a mockingbird.
Beowulf
Hamlet
English; the lonely transvestite. (This was actually an article. So I don' know if it counts.

When I got to college I had text books but there was 2 required readings that I had to do.

Survival in Auschwitz: By Primo Levi.

Although, I admit I hate reading anything required. And I'm slow in reading them, but I have to say that these books really jumped out to me. Especially the last one. It was had vivid detail and it was so detached that you felt bad for the author.

Actually yes, I've liked the majority of required reading that I've done in secondary school.

Skellig: This was the first book that I read as a class in the academy, and I really enjoyed it. It's written by David Almond and was recently turned into a TV feature length program. I loved the plot for the book, and funnily enough, if I was choosing a book for myself I actually probably would never had read it.

The Phantom Tollbooth: This book possibly has the most bizarre plot of any book that I've ever read before. However, despite taking a while to get into the book I did really enjoy it, as did several of my friends. Sadly I can't remember the author, so if anyone would like to remind me that would be much appreciated.

Talking In Whispers: This book actually turned out to be one of my favourite books, mainly because it's plot was so controversial and went into so much detail of the injustice faced by those in Chile. I really felt like I was with them and Andre served as the perfect filter to the action. Talking In Whispers is written by James Watson and is probably one of the best books I've ever read.

To Kill A Mockingbird: This was the most recent novel that I read in school and really enjoyed. Harper Lee has done such a brilliant job on the characterisation of everyone (major and minor) in that book and creating a plot that was both hard hitting and deeply impacting on society without making it too bleak. Although there are some very emotional scenes in the novel, at the ending she brings to to a close and a happy note, not to mention the humour that is present throughout thanks to Scout.

Other than those novels I've also read several plays in school which I really enjoyed. An Inspector Calls; The Crucible; Frankenstein and The Long The Short And The Tall.

There's only one required book that I didn't like (so didn't finish it haha... if they imagine they can make me read something I don't like.. well, I'll eventually have to read it for the exam at the end of the high school, but I suppose I'll read it at some point until then ).

Anyways I'm talking about "Baltagul" ( translated "The hatchet" ) by Mihail Sadoveanu. It's simply a horrible thing to read.
It's about a shepherd, Nechifor, who is killed and then his wife Vitoria who "shamelessly" loves him like in her younger ages goes together with their son Gheorghita to find him and blabla. It's the faithful copy of Isis and Osiris's legend, just adapted to the 1920ies in my country xD.
I couldn't read more than 80 pages of this atrocity.

Instaed of the book above, I found the required books (if read) fairly good :3. Like "Ion", by Liviu Rebreanu, describing again, the life of a greedy peasant, Ion who sacrifices his love for the bigger love of having properties.

"Enigma Otiliei" ("Otilia's Secret") by George Calinescu, who follows the teenager Otilia through the eyes of a boy in love with her, and lol, she has a lot of secrets xD.

Or "Mara" by Ioan Slavici, a widow gypsy with two kids who tries to help them as much as she can until they'll start their journey in life, it ends up pretty bad for both the kids, despite the mom's tries lol.

Oh, but the one I most enjoyed it's "Cartea nuntii" ("The Book of the Wedding") by George Calinescu. Classic love story, but it's simply so uplifting and cute and all :3. And with interesting characters, one of them actually commits suicide because he couldn't find love. So yeah, cool :D.

Copy-pasting from a thread I made that was exactly the same as this. I didn't see this thread before making it, oops.

So far, in my class, we've read The Kite Runner, Purple Hibiscus, and The Alchemist.

I really liked The Kite Runner. I didn't really have any knowledge of Afghanistan before reading it, so it gave me a bit of an idea about what's going on there. (It also helped that we were learning about Afghanistan at the same time in World Cultures, so they kind of tied into each other.) I've heard people say that The Kite Runner was very depressing, but I didn't think so: the ending implied that there was still hope. I think it was more bittersweet than depressing.

I didn't particularly care for Purple Hibiscus. Kambili was, in my opinion, a really annoying main character. She had no personality whatsoever. (I know that was the point, but still...It's not exactly very interesting to read.) I think that, if it was about her brother, it would have been much better.

I absolutely loved The Alchemist. The writing style was kind of odd, but it was a really sweet story. This book had an almost artistic quality to me.

I liked...

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
April Morning by Howard Fast
The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck.

Hated most of the other stuff they made us read tho.

I really got into Great Expectations. I moved and never finished it though.
Other than that I can't think of any required reading I've had over the years.
I think I'm too focused on my current school work to remember past school work. xP

I've always loved to read. When I was in Middle School I had, like, 440 AR points. XD

Some books I remember liking were:
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies - I finished it before the class was even halfway through
Their Eyes Were Watching God - I don't really remember this one, but I think I liked it
The Outsiders
1984 - Now, I know I read this, but I don't remember if we had to or I just picked it up
Secret Life of Bees

the books i liked in high school were

-to kill a mocking bird
-animal farm
-the odyssey
-Iilad
-beowulf.

i also read an interesting book while i was in college it is called "the color of water"

i remember a few books i read back in the day i would have to say the hatchet was a good read wed read a chapter each day was a very interesting read then i beleive there was a mytilogical book huge one written by somone named homer i beleive he was the storytell of these mytsh actual come to think of it the book was called homer but it had some pretty kick butt parts in it

To Kill a Mockingbird was my favorite required reading book, but one that I also really loved was Fifth Business by Robertson Davies...

Unfortunately there are only a few non-textbook books that I've been required to read, that I can remember. Lord of the flies and What's eating Gilbert Grape.

Personally I think they're both ok books. But Lord of the flies is a bit better even if they are both from two different classes of genres.

To Kill a Mockingbird of course I saw it's already been said but that's just because it's a really good book.
Ender's Game positively loved it
Lord of the Flies at the time I read it (7th grade) it freaked me out but I still loved it
Their Eyes were watching God that was a pretty good one

One book I couldn't stand though was Great Expectations had to read it in 9th grade, I may have liked it but at the time I was against it just because I had to read it ><

I guess I've been pretty lucky when it comes to required reading; all of the books I've been given (as of yet) have been ones I've found interesting, the only downside being the fact that you were rushed through them and had to do book reports (well, actually, my teacher this year is awesome and hates book reports as much as the nest person and as such we do more creative writing/interesting essays).

In chronological order;

Bridge to Terebithia - Katherine Paterson
This one I enjoyed, and I'm glad I didn't get around to reading it before the beginning of term (I was about to pick it up before school began) because that would have made it ten times more difficult to read, seeing as I'd already know the entire story from memory from reading it so recently. :roll:

The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
I adore this book, but I was a little annoyed by the pace at which we had to read it. I'd already read it the last Christmas, you see, so the 'two chapters a night' (the chapters are rather lengthy, until you get to the end that is) got extremely tiresome. Plus we had to practically re-read each chapter to do the report. :gonk:

Holes - Louis Sachar
This one wasn't really my type of book, but the plot was interesting and I managed to read it without too much fuss.

A Rose For the ANZAC Boys - Jackie French
Admittedly I'm not one for war stories but this one was good. It was well researched, yet not too heavy on the information and not, as result, bland (as I usually find war stories).

I liked all my required reading I think, or I forgot the bad ones. There were the Shakespeares... Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The merchant of Venice, Hamlet. I LOVED Joan of Arc (the play). Shame on me, I can't remember the author. I did To Kill a Mockingbird, The Pigman (actually I didn't like that much I think), The Kraken Wakes, Animal Farm and others that I can't remember the titles for. We had to read some New Zealand Authors too, Patricia Grace who wrote Potiki... I was inspired by that book. Witi Ihimaera, most famous for Whale Rider, but he hadn't got round to that when I was at High School. He had written some fantastic short stories compiled in a book called "Pounamu Pounamu". At teachers college I had to read Susan Cooper's "Seeker" series, awesome but a bit freaky. (Terrible movies)
As a teacher I read out loud to my children while they eat their lunches. Right now they are listening to "The Halfmen of O"... another NZ book. We have wonderful books here!