I started enjoying The Odyssey after my class was through with it. I'm also a big fan of anything Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, loved them all! Another book that caught me off guard was Bless Me Ultima. As far as assigned summer reading...the only book that I really enjoyed was Twilight. Yes, Twilight was my senior summer reading book, score! I had to force myself to sit down and read 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird. (Don't hurt me! D: ) I'm sure if I sat down and read them now at my own leisure that I'd probably enjoy it more. Same goes for The Wizard of Earthsea. Oy vey D:

I'm usually pretty ambivalent about school books... I don't really like them, but they're not a chore to read, at least.

My favorite by far was my fifth grade summer reading: Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief. I actually just reread it maybe a month ago; I just sat down and got through it in a sitting! Despite it being from fifth grade, it's not a kiddy book, either.

There are others I've enjoyed... Lord of the Flies was pretty good, and I like Romeo and Juliet. I know there have been others, but I can't think of them at the moment, unfortunately.

One more... I never actually had to do it for school, but my brother did, and I liked it so much I ended up doing a term paper on it: The Giver. I've read other "utopia" books; 1984, Brave New World, but besides simply being far more enjoyable, The Giver actually seemed more realistic in a way. I haven't a clue how you would scientifically remove color from the world, and I don't care, but I mean that the people acted so much more like people... I don't care what the world is like; I don't believe that you can get nearly an entire population to act like robots.

In gr.10 my English class had to read The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, nobody in the class liked it but my brother and I liked it.
It was amusing reading bout this post nuclear war scenario with people that suffered formalities and the communities acting primitive-like. I can't wait to go back to the school library to read some more of John Wyndham's books :)

In 7th grade we had to read Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong. That was pretty awesome; my friend and I got hooked on McCaffrey then. Actually, overall I loved middle school reading. Dracula, Macbeth, Anthem by Ayn Rand, The Count of Monte Cristo... it was great.

The first book I remember reading that was required was Holes.
I really enjoyed Holes, and still remember quite a bit of it.
Other than that, I don't remember a lot of the books that were required for reading except for the ones in 7th/8th grade and the short stories I had to read in English for Freshman year.
The Old Man and the Sea, Hamlet, "The Sound of Thunder" (A short story), and "Through the Tunnel" (Another short story) were all books/stories that I enjoyed reading. I'm sure that I enjoyed a few more from Freshman English, which were all short stories, but I can't remember the names. At the end of the year, we were asked to read tons of short stories all at once and do tests for each one all in the time of two weeks at the VERY END of school, so my memory of them is muddled, since I had to read so many.
I also read the Illiad in 8th grade Advanced Reading class, and I did sort of enjoy it, but the style it was written made it hard for me to concentrate on it for longer than 20 minutes at a time.
If it had been written in a more modern style, I could have read it with no problem.

I actually liked reading "Heart of Darkness"my senior year of high school. and I don't really know why.

Frankly, I've liked every book I've been forced to read. I like every book. Hell, I liked Twilight. They're actually well-written, though the movie sucks arse. But all books I've read, in class, by recommendation, my own choice, etc., I've liked alot. I just get into the book. The story is real to me. I'm there with the character and I am the character. I've even gone back and read them again.

My most recent and one of my favorites is 'Don't Fence Me In'. Forgot who it's by, though. And I've read 'Shades of Grey' a few times. Not the hardest books, but they're incredibly enjoyable for me. 'Bridge to Terabithia' (I probably spelled that wrong) was also good.

Like I said, it's every book I read. My favorite series so far is the Ender Series. 'Ender's Game', 'Speaker for the Dead', 'Xenocide', and 'Children of the Mind'. The others (they're really not in the Ender's Series, though they're based with him in the first book and they happened in Ender's time) aren't as interesting to me, but that's probably because Ender is my all-time favorite character, and he's not in those that much. Those are 'Ender's Shadow', 'Shadow of the Giant', and 'Shadow Puppets'.

But that's all off-topic, because those weren't assigned. >.< I'll do that alot. In almost all of my posts I've mentioned that series. It's actually quite sad.

Ahhh!
There was a short story I read last year that was REALLY good.
The Most Dangerous Game!
I really liked that story.
A couple weeks ago, I was watching the Retro TV channel, and The Incredible Hulk came on.
The episode was exactly like the short story.
Hehe.

I typically enjoy the books we are assigned to read. I definetly did not like Henry the Fifth, whcih was my sophomore summer reading assingment. It did not go over that well because I had a huge trouble understanding what it was about.

But Lord of the Flies was a great book! And several of my classmates found it dull and stupid. I really liked it, and how it demonstrated a need for society.

I also liked Brave New World. That book probabaly isn't quite suitable for children, but it's a very good one and i'd recomend it to anybody who is mature enough to handle some of the very out there ideas in the book.

While I do not typically enjoy Shakespere, I really did like reading: The Taming of the Shrew it's a very funny story, even if it isn't very respectful to women.

Gulliver's Travels is another example of a book I thourougly enjoyed while my classmates despised. I thought that the entire story was incredible, and I loved the imagination that the author had. Even if I didn't understand all the words in it, I still understood the story, and it really was a work of art.

Those are just a few examples of books that I really liked while my classmates despised them, but I assure you, there are several others.

Oh, I forgot about Lord of the Flies.
It was pretty good, but it wasn't my favorite.

I'd like to add Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary.
It's a history of the world through Islamic eyes. What's really nice is that the author manages to write about everything with dignity, while keeping things light-hearted enough to crack jokes. I've only just finished chapter two, but I've laughed aloud multiple times already.

I quite liked some of the books and plays I had to study for Alevel Lit. I liked 'The Great Gatsby' only after I properly understood it after a few lessons. I also sort of liked 'Death of a Salesman' although it was a little depressing. Of course Shakespeare is always fun to read!

the bridge to terabithia, was ok for me. But it was the first book to make me cry. And the first time I actually wanted to read ahead. At the time I wasn't very enthused about reading. But now I am. One I did enjoy was Where the lillies bloom. It was touching, and paid more attention to it than most.

I want to read To Kill a Mockingbird again. That was a great book.

At one of the high school's I went to we read Epipus Rex (which I THOROUGHLY hater) and Medea, which is one of the most nuts things I've read. If you don't know, its about Jason's (of Jason and the Argonauts) wife, Medea, who goes crazy for certain reasons, then kills her children, a king, the king's daughtor, and flies off into the sunset in a charion pulled by DRAGONS.

Well, there aren't too many, since for four years going from 7th grade to 10th grade I had quite possibly the worst, most useless English teachers in the entire world. Once in 11th, and now in 12th, I am finally getting the English teachers most kids dream of (well, the kids like me who love English and didn't give up on it). It's difficult for me to remember all of them, but I'll take a crack at it and see what happens, eh?

Back in either 7th or 8th, we had to read The Count of Monte Cristo which is a wonderful book that I tore through. It's still one of my favorites, despite the lack of teaching from the woman who assigned it. It's really the only one that stands out as one I really enjoyed, from that time period.

To Kill A Mockingbird was good as well. The teacher wasn't terrible and we had some really great discussions about it, if I remember right.

As a Junior I discovered the joys of AP Composition/Language and a fantastic teacher. I, unlike pretty much everyone I know, enjoyed The Scarlet Letter. I read books like that for fun (weird, right?) so the writing wasn't difficult for me to read and I really enjoyed the story and all of those wacky hidden meanings. Another book from that class was Of Mice and Men, which I ended up writing a critical analysis on that got an A+. Also, as an added bonus, we read The Joy Luck Club at the end of the semester. Probably the most enjoyable "forced" book I've ever read.

It's too early to see if I'll enjoy what we're going to read in my AP Lit class, but we'll see. We're beginning Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but my hopes are not high- despite the teacher being another amazing person.

In high school it was Catcher in the Rye (not very original I know but nonetheless true) and in college it was The Joys of Motherhood.

6th grade: The Witch of Blackbird Pond and The Most Dangerous Game
7th grade: The Outsiders and A Christmas Carol
8th grade: Holes and The Hobbit
9th grade: Romeo and Juliet and Treasure Island
10th grade: Julies Caesar and Tom Sawyer
11th grade: The Pit and the Pendulum, The Black Cat, The Raven, Annabelle Lee, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mocking Bird, and Of Mice and Men.
12th grade: Macbeth, Pygmalion, The Canterbury Tales, and The Once and Future King.

I loved reading all of these books, stories, and Poems a lot in school!

Omg omg omg omg! :insane:

Freak the Mighty is so sad, but awesome. :XP

Never heard of Canyons. :shock:

Lord of the Flies is a classic; it's wonderful~

Never heard of the Scarlet Letter. :sweat:

As for me, our school read much easier books. :(

Like the Bridge to Terabithia (sp) and Lily's Crossing....

I never read in my school but my cousin read in her collage 3 books the snow goose my cousin Rachel and The doll house she gave them to me and I loved them specially My Cousin Rachel .

Originally Posted by Oapa

Omg omg omg omg! :insane:

Freak the Mighty is so sad, but awesome. :XP

Never heard of Canyons. :shock:

Lord of the Flies is a classic; it's wonderful~

Never heard of the Scarlet Letter. :sweat:

As for me, our school read much easier books. :(

Like the Bridge to Terabithia (sp) and Lily's Crossing....

OMG , I love Bridge to Terabithia never read the book but loved the movie :shock:

Well..there was The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Hatchet, Equality, Flowers for Algernon, Odyssey and other I really liked was..um..trying to remember the name.. D:
..oh! Of Mice and Men. I was acutally quite pleased with the required reading, and these books and stories are some of the best to me. :3 I used to read quite a lot, and was always the top in my class, or near it, till about 7th grade. omg -off topic- ~I remember how we got stuck on the roof for a day for 200 point club -or something like that- ..na..maybe it was 500? XD Well, I don't remember exactly, but about 12-15 or so of us were up there, on the school's roof, for reaching a very high level in AR, out of the entire school. This took place in Texas~ Anywho! Those were some wonderful books. :3

Lets see how much of my required reading from High School I can remember
A Separate Peace - Hated it :angry:
Siddhartha - Hated it :angry:
The Great Gatsby - Hated it :angry:
Beowulf - Hated it :angry:
Frankenstein - Hated it :angry:
Two Ambrose Bierce short stories - loved them
Walden - Loved it :)
Civil Disobedience - Loved it :)
Percy Bysshe Shelley poems - Loved it :)
William Wordsworth poems - Loved it :)
William Blake poems - Hated it :angry:
300 graphic novel - Hated it :angry:
Tuesdays With Morrie - Hated it :angry:
Cyrano de Bergerac - Loved it :)
Romeo and Juliet - Hated it :angry:
King Arthur tales - Hated it :angry:
The Canterbury Tales - Hated it :angry:
The Odyssey - Hated it :angry:
Hamlet - Hated it :angry:
Edgar Allen Poe stories/poems - Loved it :)
The Glass Menagerie - Okay :|
Ethan Frome - Hated it :angry:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Loved it :)
Raisins in the Sun - Loved it :)

That's all I can remember O_o I love reading but hate most of the "classics"

hmm, I liked some books but others I hated.

I loved Brave New World, and 1984. I read them in my sphmore or junior year. I don't really remember. But in my senoir year we read a lot. I hated Wothering Hights, it is a soap opera in book form. But Frankenstien was ok, and the rest were ok. We did a lot of short stories, but I really liked one called The Yellow Wallpaper. I haven't had english in college yet so, we'll see.

Last year I had to read 'To Kill a Mocking Bird' which I totally loved. I don't remember it too well because I didn't read all of it, but I know what happened and I love the childishness, and innocent curiosity of the whole book.

Right now I'm reading 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'. At first I didn't like it, but now that I'm more then halfway done with it I like it a lot. One of the characters is all sarcastic, but at the same time pure, which is totally amazing. Its really weird though because Uncle Tom, who is a slave, is very sensitive and simple, and so caring. I totally love him. Its sad to hear all the sad accounts of the slaves though. Like when kids get taken from their parents... But thats a whole other subject.

I have to say though so far all the books I have to read have been pretty good. I'm excited for the next one. :)

I've liked a lot of required reading. In Grade 9 Language Arts class I loved "Speak". In grade 10 Basic English I liked "The Giver". Grade 11 English I loved "Lord of the Flies" and in Grade 12 English I absolutely adored "Catcher in the Rye"! Now in University I'm lookin' at a bunch of smelly books that look annoyingly dry, like Inferno, but hey, that's what I thought about some of the others! :)