I'm sure we all had required reading in school. I always felt removed from my schoolmates in that I usually liked what was offered. So, I'm curious to see what other books people were forced to read and then enjoyed. Here are a few off the top of my head

6th Grade: Freak the Mighty. Loved that book from the first page. Probably read it a dozen times, easily. I liked the sequel too, but it wasn't the same without some of the other characters. The movie adaptation still remains one of my favorites as well.

Then there was a book called Canyons by Gary Paulsen I had to read. See, the required read was Hatchet, but about 8 of us had already read it, so the teacher had us read Canyons and report back to the class on it. We all hated it. It was such a godawful book. When we gave our final presentation on it, when asked "What was your favorite part?", we each unfailingly answered, "The end. Because it was over."

Sophmore Year: Lord of the Flies. It was tough for me to understand all the allegories, but I enjoyed the plot. I reread it recently and got all the symbolism. Plus, I used to do a hilariously accurate recreation of Piggy's death scene from the 195X-version of the movie XD

Junior Year: The Scarlet Letter. I liked the plot, hated the prose. I reread it again for an American Lit class and, while the reading was easier and I garnered more of the subtext, Hawthorne is still a windy-bastard.

College: Whitman. Never liked what I read of him before (except O Captain, My Captain, but I love Dead Poets Society, so), but the teacher managed to bring me around. Beowulf -- loved it. And a side note ... we were talking about Guy Fawkes day, so I leant the teacher V For Vendetta and he freaked out about it, couldn't stop praising the movie xD I love Mr. Taylor. He rules.

I enjoyed much of our required reading in high school. I think my favorite of all was Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Also, strangely enough, The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier was one I thoroughly enjoyed. Lord of the Flies, A Separate Peace, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Hamlet...I could list tons of required reading I enjoyed! But I've always enjoyed classic literature too. I read a lot of that in high school for my own enjoyment and not an assignment.

Lord of the Flies, definitely.

I also loved Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. That was the only book I put a lot of effort into during high school senior year.

I was also big on all the Shakespeare and most of the short stories (Most Dangerous Game= <33333333). Aside from the classics, though, English was a real struggle for me. Poetry has never been a favorite topic, and most of the books we read were those disgusting PC books that were all "OMG. WE POOR BLACK/HISPANIC PEOPLE. WHITES ARE EEEVIL." Those books just piss me off to no end... and my school area was real into them. Dx

The only time I really enjoyed reading for a class was when I didn't have to read it to do decently on the tests concerning it. This only really happened in my junior year of highschool. We read alot, but I especially liked One Flew over The Coocoo's Nest.
I've enjoyed reading some political theory stuff, and Philosophical work in collage, but its something I need to be in the mood for.

Quite a bit, mainly Hiroshima, Alls Quiet on the Western Front, Gilgamesh.

College helped to build up my book collection as well.

I enjoy reading in general, but I have a feeling that I would've enjoyed the books a lot more if they weren't required. Being required just sort of ruined them a bit for me, ya know?

But I still adore Pride and Prejudice, Pygmalion, To Kill a Mockingbird, Much Ado About Nothing, anything Poe, and everything else I can't remember right now. ^^;

To Kill a Mockingbird.

i loved this book and bought it years later when i saw it in a secondhand shop, the same printing too, with a bright orange cover.

I didn't enjoy much of the books I had to read at school.
Probably because four of them where written by Ed Franck, a dutch writer who's style I realy didn't enjoy for one bit.
Books I did like where:
The Perfum of Partick Süskind, a wonderful book.
De ruimte van Sokolov (Space of Sokolov) by Leon de Winter. I don't think that book ever got translated.

Hmm...books part of school reading that I really liked were:

The Westing Game
The Hobbit
Dicey's Song
A Ring of Endless Light
Pride and Prejudice.

I'm rather surprised that so many people liked Lord of the Flies...I found that book confusing and disturbing. When we took the test for it in class, people were lucky to get 70s...and it was an honors class too..

I had only two - To Kill a Mockingbird (8th grade) and The Scarlet Pimpernel (9th grade).

I read Lord of the Flies my sophmore year. It was interesting. I liked Farenhiet 451 which I read my freshie year and The Crucible, which I just got done reading.

Dante's Divine Comedy.

I know that sounds uber cheesy, but for some reason I fell in love with this book. I have an old almost owrn out copy that I pull out at least once a year to re-read.

I also loved when we read Edgar Allen Poe cuz he's one of my all-time favorites. (plus i love all the Poe based Vincent Price movies)

I really liked Tolstoy Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment (think I misspelled author's name!) I think it's more because of the great discussions we had in AP English about it, like how his dreams of an oasis could have had other meanings like fortelling the future or overseeing his situation, and all the interesting connections which I can't remember now.. :lol:

I bought it re-read later, but never did.

Lord of the Flies was definitally great. Probably the only required reading I had that I liked that I hadn't already read.

Uhh.. as for books I like while in uni...

A Friend of the Earth by TC Boyle. About a seemingly post-apocalyptic world ravaged by extreme weather and mass extinction of animals. Based around a former-radical environmentalist. Excellent, excellent book. All of Boyle's books are good. Sort of satire, some are very funny. Read for a lit class.

A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Another post-apocalyptic world where birth rates are in the dumps and women are broken up into different classes of people and there's a world wide war going on. I read this in a woman's studies class. Also an excellent read.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Not a post-apocalyptic world for once, but a world radically different than ours. Still earth. Sort of futuristic. There are cyber ninjas, pirates and sword fights. OH MY. There is a lot of history and pre-history involved as well, some parts are so highly intelligent that your head will EXPLODE if you're not careful. I've read it again three times since. Read for the same lit class as AFOTE.

Red Stick Men by Tim Parish. Tim is hilarious. He teaches at my alma mater. Read in the same lit class as previously mentioned. This is a collection of short stories. There's a lot of homoerotic undertones, racial stereotyping gone awry... Good read. Besides, Tim is a Spinal Tap fan. He came in to speak to my class when we read it and we (him, my professor and a couple other students and I) spent the entire time quoting the movie while the rest of the class was furiously searching through the book for the reference.

To Kill a Mockingbird (as if that hasn't already been said) and Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. We haven't been reading many interesting books this year... mostly crappy poetry and stuff. There was this one short story I liked, though--The Youngest Doll. I think the author was Rosario Ferre or something like that. It was kind of strange, but I enjoyed it.

"My Ántonia" by Willa Cather.
I should buy it and re read it, in fact.
I read it in 11th grade American Literature.
I had been a reader of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series when I was in grade school, so I already liked that type of book

Originally Posted by Seika Arai

I read Lord of the Flies my sophmore year. It was interesting. I liked Farenhiet 451 which I read my freshie year and The Crucible, which I just got done reading.

I had forgotten about those two - The Crucible and Fahrenheit 451, that is. I agree! They were both excellent!

And My Antonia - I actually read that about a year or so ago. It was pretty good. :)

I've kind of compiled a list of common required readings and am trying to go back and read the stuff on there that I never had. It's nice, too, that so many of the classics are available online to read, though it can be difficult staring at a screen that long.

I'm going to reading (hopefully) Lord of the Flies later on this year. I'm hoping I enjoy it (I've seen bits of the movie and have a general idea on what it is about)

I like most of the Shakespeare we read (save for Romeo and Juliet). I especially liked Midsummer Nights Dream. We are currently reading Hamlet and I like it so far.

I liked The Sun Also Rises by Hemmingway but most of the people I talked to didn't like it, preferring The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald.

I liked all of the short stories we read save for some in a particular book (Multicultural so and so).

So far in school, none of them. I haven't even read them most of the time (doesn't really do you much good to be honest, x) the same as loosing the books isn't the best thing to do DX<

I haven't had to read it yet, but I'll have to read it next year again, I've already read it and it's been mentioned before, but It's To kill a mockingbird x3

In my college English class we had to read "Girl, Interrupted". I liked it a lot, so much that I recommended it to a friend of mine who's taking psychology. xD

I never really liked any of the books I had to read in high school or jr. high. Though I really don't remember them, so I must not have liked them.

i really liked "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Beowulf" when we had to read them senior year of HS. "1984" and "Lord of the Flies" were all right but i wasn't too keen on the later because some parts were so.. disturbing.

oh i really liked "The Canterbury Tales" ! it was fun to read (though we didn't read it all)

I agree with generally liking stuff I was required to read. Here are the favorites + ones I hated with a passion:

I generally liked all the Shakespeare, just because stuff from Shakespeare is so often parodied or quoted or referenced, that once you read one of his more popular works you start to get so many more jokes. Othello was probably my favorite.

A Lesson Before Dying was one of those books that just really got to me. It was about racism, but actually succeeded in making a point rather than being stereotypical and racist itself, which I find a lot of stuff that's trying to make a difference ends up degenerating to (ever seen an episode of The Proud Family?)

Picture of Dorian Gray is another one that's referenced a lot. I just also plain loved it. Well written and the story was so... just wow. Magic AND human society.

Animal Farm was just good... it's been a long time since I've read some of these so I have to go off of just plain remembering that I enjoyed them.

The Hours I just re-read resently. I think the funniest part is it's inspired and based and features the book Mrs. Dalloway, and in my oppinion surpassed it in everyway. Better written, better story, better ideas, better humanity. I am a person who loves classic literature, and who shys away from most modern stuff, but this book was just so fantastic, that reading Mrs. Dalloway I was very disappointed.

Frankenstien became one of my favorite books as well, and I also re-read it recently. If you are able to seperate common cultural references from the real story, then you are drawn into a world of pure terror and wonderful gothic literature. I have fallen in love with Victor Frankenstien everytime I read it, and love going into debates about who the real monster is.

Other books I enjoyed but won't get into since this post is already really long: The Talented Mr Ripley, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Wuthering Heights

Books I hated: There's really only one, and I complained about it for weeks and have decided when I grow up I will not let my children go to a school in which it is taught. I am refering to The Catcher in the Rye. To begin, it needlessly has swearing every other word (which some people don't mind, but when you are a person who doesn't swear on a regular basis, it really gets to you the way a movie with lots of swearing does). There are contradiction with the main character, but instead of being sutile and grey, they are black and white and obvious. There's no reading further into this book, it's something a grade six could read and figure out, but the language makes it only sutable for high schoolers. Lastly, the author himself thinks its crap and wishes people knew him for his other brilliant work, like his short stories (which I have read a few of and I have to say, it surprised me that such awesome work came from the same author)

Wow this post is getting long, but this is a great subject. Thanks for making it. XD

I might be one of the few that actually did, but I loved Julius Caesar. I have always been a bit of a Shakespeare junkie, even when young. One of my most prized possessions is actually a ninety year old copy of Macbeth. I have read that book so many times that I ended up sealing the book away because I was afraid I'd ruin the antique...

I couldn't stand Great Expectations or To Kill a Mockingbird, but the Great Gatsby and Fahrenheit 451 were both excellent books. Especially Fahrenheit. I loved that book. Just all the philosophy in it... *grins* I actually bought that book and added it to my permenant collection.

So far in college I haven't gotten any really good books so to say, but some of the short stories that my English Professor has us read are pretty darn good. *shrugs*

Oh, my goodness~ I remembered being so disturbed after reading Lord of the Flies in my sophomore year of high school XD; TT______TT;;; But I still loved it a lot! XD

Another one I really liked was Kindred by Octavia Butler. I'm not a fan of science fiction at all, so I was surprised when I actually liked this book. This isn't really a science fiction book (as in alien invasion or things like that). The only science fiction part about it is time travel, I think. I really enjoyed this book a lot *3*

I thought Scarlet Letter and The Crucible were really good, too.

Honestly, I probably would've liked Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations if I didn't hate my AP English teacher so much then hahah... They were HER favorite books, but she was such a bitch that everything she liked, I automatically hated XD;;; I probably should pick this up sometimes in the future hahah...

Guh, FinalBlackMage, I COMPLETELY agree with you with Catcher in the Rye. I don't get how it's so... "classic" and by the end of the book, I just wanted to burn it x_____x; I hate it so much that I no longer remember what that book was about XD;

It's been almost 10 years since I was in HS but the books I remember liking are:

To Kill a Mockingbird
Of Mice and Men - (this one made me cry)
1984
The Pigman
Animal Farm


I remember not liking Lord of the Flies and I think I had to read Catcher in the Rye but I don't remember it at all so I guess I dind't like it at all.


A recent class college I took on science fiction focused on sci fi written by women and the two I really liked were - Tea From an Empty Cup and Parable of the Sower