The reading lists in high school were always so long. We had summer reading for just about every single class (even math) and reading the books before the last week of vacation was useless… because there was always a (really hard) test on the first day. I hated reading because of it. I felt guilty reading something that wasn’t required and I ended up really just resenting those reading lists.
I tried my best to keep up with the endless book lists– especially in AP Lit and Lang– but I could never really stay on top of it. Read: I never prioritized it. And… I don’t think I really cared. Spark Notes was used to fill in the holes of what I did and didn’t read (whoops).
Now, however, I so regret not giving some of the books the chance they deserve. They were all those “classic” stories that every high schooler seemingly around the country reads. My laziness and stubbornness totally made me miss out.
While in the bookstore one night, I was spotting all these books that I should have read, but didn’t. “Oh, was supposed to read this freshman year.” “That one was a junior year book.” And so on. It was pretty embarrassing. I picked up The Catcher in the Rye, which I was supposed to read at some point and promised myself that I would put aside my teenaged baggage and actually read it.
Honestly, it made me even more upset that I hadn’t taken those reading lists so seriously. Did anyone else skim books in high school or skip them altogether? I want to make a real-world-high-school-reading-list based on everyone’s “favorites.” So let me know what your favorite book (or two) in high school!
xoxo
PS I’m really hoping that I wasn’t the only one who cut corners on the reading… I know I did actually read sometimes– I stayed up all night reading Heart of Darkness once and I know I read Beloved because you can answer every AP exam question with an example from it and I loved The Count of Monte Cristo! And Catch 22!
PPS If you’re in high school, do the reading!
Haha I definitely cut corners a bit in high school. I can't even remember what assigned books I loved, but I did read a lot of 'pleasure reading' books!
AJ | TheAJMinute
I remember reading The Great Gatsby over the summer before sophomore year and hating it! It was full words that I had to look up in my kindle dictionary! When I re-read it senior year, I wondered why I had hated it so much.
Sydney
Toodlebelle's Blog
Anthem by Ayn Rand might have been the only book I read from cover to cover my freshman year of high school. It's a short book, but so, so good!
Kathryn
Friday I Wander
I was totally a Spark Notes girl! I felt the same way when it came to reading for school. Growing up I always LOVED to read…but as soon as they started with those lists of required book — that was it. Recently I've been getting the urge to do more reading (in the little free time I have). I would love to hear everyone's suggestions!
Cristina Marie
The Great Gatsby was one of my favorites (like everyone else) but I also really loved Of Mice and Men. It was somewhat of a boring read the first time I read it but the second I fell in love!
Constance || Prep Northwest
The Stranger (especially if you've just read catcher), Bless Me Ultima, The Grapes of Wrath, absolutely Gatsby. I went through phases in high school – some years, i read absolutely everything, and others i skipped the whole list. always one extreme or the other! i definitely gained a lot from what i did read, though, especially in conjunction with ancillary-type materials (author bios and quotes, introductions, etc).
good luck with your list!
My 3 favorites were
A Separate Peace by John Knowles (I'm SUCH a sucker for boys school/coming of age books)
Great Gatsby (duh)
Anna Karenina (SO SO long, especially for summer reading, but I made myself read it when we were in Nantucket for the last two weeks of summer and I'm SO glad I did!)
I need to catch up on my classics, too!
I love Anthem, it was an amazing read but also short… Perfect for a school reading list. I also loved reading Pride and Prejudice in eighth grade!
Abby
Thepreppycoxswain.blogspot.com
I loved East of Eden! I had it for AP summer reading and just fell in love with it.
Ender's Game, Slaughterhouse Five, Crime and Punishment!
Oh, The Great Gatsby! I remember doing a very long project about it in an AP class, but not really enjoying it. I reread it again a couple summers ago before the movie came out and adored it. Other than that, I loved Jane Eyre, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Beowulf (I took a college course just to learn Old English because of Beowulf). Shakespeare's another that I skimmed in high school, but have finally learned to love.
A Separate Peace! Amazing. It's about two teenage boys in boarding school:
"Set at a boys’ boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world. A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowles’s crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic."
Catcher in the Rye was my absolute favorite read in HS, starting my love for Salinger. Followed closely by Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Of Mice and Men.
The Great Gatsby! Definitely. I also really liked 1984 and Animal Farm…because I'm a dork 😛
daughterofasonofasailor.blogspot.com
I've never been into the classics (they can be over rated and pretentious). That being said, I always read the assigned books in high school. I'm horrible at bluffing and figured things like Sparknotes, while they could be helpful in certain aspects of Shakespeare, were not adequate substitutions.
"To Kill a Mockingbird" was one of my favourites, but I got to read "Still Alice" as a choice book in grade 12, and I highly recommend it. And "Speak" was a book I read in jr. high, but it's still one of my favourites. I credit my grade 8 teacher and Laurie Halse Anderson for the beginning of my love affair with books.
-Katherine
http://scallopedandbows.blogspot.ca
I love to read too, but spark notes got me through those dreaded reading lists. I've taken to actually reading most of the books though as they sit on my bookshelf. The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Loved it then. Love it now. I've reread this book at least 3 times since high school. I also really liked I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. The usual: Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Wuthering Heights
I went to two high schools, so I missed a lot of the classics since my first school had a more alternative list, and the other one a more traditional list, but I loved Catch-22, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Hamlet, Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince..but it loses a lot in English).
I look forward to seeing the list you come up with because I've been trying to read more high school classics too!
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest in 10th grade. Honestly changed my perspective on the world forever.
Also The Grapes of Wrath really solidified my love for classical American literature.
In my alt lit classes, I loved 1984, The Virgin Suicides, and Everything Is Illuminated.
I loved the Great Gatsby obviously! Of Mice of Men and & 1984 were also favorites. I have to admit though I was not a fan of The Catcher in the Rye. Oh but I do also love anything by Jane Austen.
http://www.thepostcardjournals.blogspot.com
A Separate Peace and The Count of Monte Cristo were my absolute favorite books in high school! But you should also definitely read A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. It's an incredible story and I remember plowing through that book in one of my classes because I could not put it down!
xx MER
http://www.friendswithdistance.com
We didn't have summer reading lists way back when, but we were involved in the summer reading program at the library growing up. As a result, I love reading. What I hated was any type of English class – I didn't want to dissect what I read, I didn't want to have to finish books I didn't like, and I certainly didn't want to write papers about them!
I read the books but stll used Spark notes because I really hated stopping to take notes. I also remember I had a habit of reading books for fun under my desk in most classes, especially history and German where I didn't really have to pay attention. I wonder what the teachers thought… No one ever said a word.
We are reading The Things They Carried in my AP Lang class right now, and it is wonderful!
And I wasn't keen on working hard either. So while I may have tested into higher level English classes that read the books mentioned, I took the middle level classes and got the easy A or B without much effort. As such I missed out on reading some "classics" as well. But I feel that books, like art, is subjective when it comes to what's "good". Who get's to decide that? Now you got me on a roll…..
In some ways I'm not that disappointed that I read about half the books in high school and used Spark Notes for the rest because I think I appreciated the ones I did read more than I would have if I'd been more overwhelmed reading them all. I even took a semester off of doing readings during college and just read for fun to rekindle my love of reading – hello Sophie Kinsella! – and my grades went up that term. It IS a pain re-reading the things you pretended to have already read, but I appreciate some of them more in my twenties than I ever could have in high school.
Elie Wiesel's Night and Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. Two of the most influential books I've ever read.
A lot of my all time favorite books came out of what I had to read for AP Lit. We had to read at least two books a month and I usually only had time for one so I totally get the cutting corners aspect. Some of my favorites are The Color Purple and Crime and Punishment.
I went to a not-so-great high school, so we didn't have a lot of assigned readings. What I read on my own and enjoyed: A Picture of Dorian Gray, Candide, the Stranger, and (all time favorite) To Kill a Mockingbird.
I always had such a hard time following the summer reading lists. I read all the time so I didn't feel like I needed to read what my school told me. My favorite high school books would have to be Grapes of Wrath, Heart of Darkness, Great Gatsby, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and In Cold Blood
I was just thinking about this the other day, wondering what great book experiences I missed out on by cutting corners. Some of my favorites from high school are One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Grapes of Wrath, The Things They Carried, and East of Eden.
I went to T Prep, and the last book everyone who takes AP Lit reads is "The Magus" by John Fowles. My teacher said she's never had a student not like it, and it's one of those books where eventually you stop reading the five chapters a day like you're supposed to and just race to the end because you can't wait to finish it any longer! It's my go-to book for recommendations, the book I'd take on a deserted island with me, and my absolute fave 🙂
I didn't cut corners reading… I cut corners in math. This book created one of many love affairs with J.D. Salinger's writings. It's such an honest book. I love that you read it.
the great gatsby! xo
Oh My GOD I hated Heart of Darkness, that was an assigned reading for my AP English class too. And The Awakening (ugh). Oh and Lord of the Flies, no thank you.
However. I had read To Kill A Mockingbird years before we were required to read it, so I lived and died to discuss it in class. I remember falling asleep trying to read The Great Gatsby for my senior lit. class which is so funny now. I really enjoy reading it. I wasn't able to take Contemporary Lit. which is where most of the awesome assigned reading happened.
I LOVED Moby Dick…and felt like I was the only person in my AP English class who did! Other favorites: Huck Finn, the Odyssey, Wuthering Heights, all the Shakespeare we read (Macbeth, Hamlet, and especially Julius Caesar)… I did NOT like Catcher in the Rye.
I read the Count of Monte Cristo in French and LOVE it!!!
The one summer reading book I didn't actually finish was Walden by Thoreau.
I wish I had more time to read now – just like my students, I have to pack it in during the summer and Christmas/spring breaks.
My only favorite book from high school is The Grapes of Wrath (it was funny b/c everyone else in my class hated it). I loved it so much that I read East of Eden on my own three times.
Oh, and Pride and Prejudice was basically EVERYONE's all time favorite at my all-girls' prep school. 🙂
To Kill a Mockingbird is excellent. I read it again recently because I did not truly read it in high school, I just skimmed it. I think I must be the only person in the world that got really bogged down in the Great Gatsby and had to force myself to finish it. Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet are great but I had to supplement with sparks notes. I would read a chapter in the book and then read the sparks notes from that chapter. Little Women and Gone With the Wind are also among my favs. Thanks for this blog topic, makes me want to read the ones I did not and re read the ones I loved.
I feel the same way! I love reading always feel so frustrated when I look back at all of the books I slacked on that I could've loved. One book I remember liking that surprised me was Crime and Punishment. I also loved Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby, Waiting for Godot, and Anna Karenina. It's on my 100 in 1001 list to re-read a book from AP English! I'd love to see if I still enjoy the books I enjoyed in high school.
I totally used sparknotes for just about everything, to the point where I can easily remember what books I actually did read! The Great Gatsby was always my favorite, and probably always will be. And for my senior English paper, I read Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma. So anything Jane Austen is a good direction. And the only other one I really remember reading was In the Time Of Butterflies, which is more historical fiction. I thought I would hate it, but it was incredibly interesting.
I think everyone cut corners where they could in high school! I read more of my 'for pleasure' things than I did my assigned things. Because of that, I found out I love Hemmingway, Ayn Rand, and Fitzgerald. Any of those authors would be good to feature on a reading list people care about 🙂
-Amanda | The Polished Hippie
I am definitely guilty of not finishing a book, but I definitely recommend The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Bean Trees! Such great books!
Hunter
Prep on a Budget
I'm currently in high school and our class just finished "reading" crime and punishment. An by reading, I mean sparknoting the whole thing (I too am guilty of this). However, next year I'll be in AP english which means that I should probably read more than I do now…
anyways, I'm glad to know that I'm not the only sparknoter
xoxo
Hannah
http://www.thetwirlteam.blogspot.com
I am currently reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte in Swedish Lang & Lit, a not so typical love story yet very romantic!
I selectively did the reading! I distinctly remember only skimming books like The Good Earth, Great Expectations, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. The ones I really liked we're A Separate Peace (if you like A Catcher in the Rye, you'll like this), Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice, and Tom Sawyer. I also remember literally not being able to put down Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – sooo creepy and good!!
I was obsessed with To Kill a Mockingbird!
I never read the required books in high school (spark notes definitely got me through english class in high school). But now I would love to go back and actually read the classics, I know I would appreciate them more now anyways.
-Alex
http://www.monstermisa.blogspot.com/
I used SparkNotes to write an essay on Wuthering Heights back in AP Lit. A few years later, I watched the 2009 Masterpiece Classics movie version with Tom Hardy and sobbed my eyes out. I then read it in two days and sobbed even more. It's now one of my favorite books. It is also one of the strangest relationships I've ever had with a novel.
I'm in high school right now and definitely don't do all my assigned reading. Reading what you said about missing out makes me look at it a little differently. Thanks 🙂
To Kill A Mockingbird and Jane Eyre were my absolute favorites! I think I read both of them freshman year. Love in the Time of Cholera I had to read for my AP English class senior year and fell in love with Gabriel Garcia Marquez!
Lord of the Flies!
Loved Wuthering Heights! And Their Eyes Were Watching God..
I'm taking it back to 8th grade – THE GIVER! I almost bought it a few days ago when I remembered they were making it into a movie. Definitely have to re-read! I also loved To Kill a Mockingbird (also 8th grade, but still my favorite book), Lord of the Flies, The House on Mango Street, and One Flew Over the Cookoos Nest!
Pink Champagne Problems
It was my high school reading that really got me to appreciate good literature. Yes, I skimmed most of the books, but the ones that I actually sat down and tried to understand really changed my whole perspective on reading. I loved Catcher in the Rye and the Great Gatsby, but I also really enjoyed The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and The Beautiful and Damned by Fitzgerald.
One of the most challenging books I read was senior year- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I struggled through every. single. page. There were times I read a paragraph 4 times and still didn't know what I had just read, but the discussion in class was so intriguing that I kept trying just to maybe understand a little bit of it. Another tough one was Dante's Inferno, but it's a book that is still referenced frequently so I'm glad I made an effort to read and understand it.
I still have a list of the best novels that my senior AP english teacher gave us the first day of class that I occasionally look to when I don't know what to read next. I still find them somewhat challenging to read and I'm not analytical enough to really get the full effect of many of the books, but I enjoy being able to say that I've at least attempted reading and am familiar with the ideas of such great authors (both because it's important and because I'm a bit too proud).
Enjoy the classics!
-Sarah
http://www.PurduePrep.Blogspot.com
I'm currently in high school and my favorite books I've read are Animal Farm and The Count of Monte Cristo. I love Animal Farm because satires are kind of my favorite type of book and The Count of Monte Cristo was fantastic because it kept me thinking and trying to figure out what would happen next!
– Sarah
Chem & Cardigans
I absolutely loved The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird. So well-written and just great stories.
I also read Jane Eyre for a freshman college class, and that was great too.
I didn't cut corners in high school, but I did in college because so much of it was re-reading what I'd already read in high school. I definitely wish I hadn't cut corners because I missed out on some great stories. In high school, I loved Of Mice and Men and The Great Gatsby.
Johnny Got HIs Gun, and The Tao of Pooh!!!
Catcher in the Rye was one of the few books I read in high school. I loved it. Othello was another book I read in high school and really liked. Honestly those were probably the only two books I read while in school. I did read a lot just not the assigned books. Then I went on to be a literature major in college go figure 🙂
Krystal
My favorite book we had to read in AP Lit was A Prayer for Owen Meany… I highly recommend!! Don't bother with the Scarlet Letter though 😉
I never had a summer reading list for any of my subjects in high school! A couple of years ago I did decide that I needed to read more classics – my favourite so far was Gone With the Wind – although it took me a couple of weeks to get through it because of it's sheer length but it was incredible! I love reading classics, I like how current the themes still are despite how long ago they were written 🙂
Belle // thelifeandtimesofbelleh.blogspot.com
My favorite book of all time was a school reading book. "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving. Still gives me goosebumps every time I read it.
I can complete relate to this! I am in a full schedule of AP classes and I'm drowning in reading assignments. It makes reading so dreadful! My favorite books I've had to read (that I actually read most of – doesn't always happen!) were 1984, The Great Gatbsy, and Great Expectations. Loved them all!
littlemissfloridaprep.blogspot.com
I did the same thing and I totally regret it!! I did read Tale of Two Cities and Les Mis in one of the AP English classes I took and absolutely loved both. Definitely going to add the one I was supposed to read, but didn't to my list of To Reads!
Jane Eyre!
Purple Hibiscus, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, The Crucible, The Grapes of Wrath, & Of Mice and Men
My all-time favorites were Anthem, The Alchemist, and The Count of Monte Cristo.
My AP Lit teacher also had us read Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. Even though it isn't a "classic," it's still a fun read!
Their Eyes Were Watching God is still a personal favorite!
I loved reading, but also skipped a lot of corners. Jumping schools from Freshman year to Sophomore year didn't help much either. I loved loved reading Rebecca, and oddly enough the Odyssey.
A Separate Peace, To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby are some of my favorites!
The Great Gatsby, Macbeth, and Madame Bovary 🙂
The Great Gatsby, Macbeth, and Madame Bovary 🙂
One of my favorites was Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and of course The Great Gatsby but Invisible Man is probably one that most people haven't read before.
Night!
My favorites (and the only ones I actually read) from High School were The Great Gatsby and 1984. The other ones I remember reading (and by reading, I mean reading sparknotes) were Johnny Got His Gun, Of Mice & Men, The Jungle, Atlas Shrugged and Hiroshima.
A Tale of Two Cities is still one of my favorite books along with The Three Musketeers and Huckleberry Finn!
I can definitely relate! I never read every book that my teacher asked us to read. The funny part is that I wrote an essay on my AP English test over a book I never read AND I got the highest score in the school on the test. I just wrote about what I overheard people saying in class. Also, spark notes were life savers in high school!
I love the idea of a reading list (I'm always looking for more books)! I've always loved reading and I still never read all the books required in high school.
One summer I was so enamored with a single book on the list that I read it three times (!!) and completely skipped everything else. Oops! BUT, I would certainly recommended you add The Chosen by Chaim Potok to your list. Its a great story about friendship and family expectations and definitely reading at least once (although I realize not everyone reads books multiple times in a row like me… haha).
You should check out "Rory Gilmore's Reading List." http://bookreviews.me.uk/rory-gilmore-reading-challenge/
All the books that Rory mentioned on Gilmore Girls!
You should check out "Rory Gilmore's Reading List." http://bookreviews.me.uk/rory-gilmore-reading-challenge/
All the books that Rory mentioned on Gilmore Girls!
You should check out "Rory Gilmore's Reading List." http://bookreviews.me.uk/rory-gilmore-reading-challenge/
All the books that Rory mentioned on Gilmore Girls!
I know. I should read most of the classics because I had done a few things: King Arthur, Robin Hood, Oliver Twist, The Jungle Book, The Little Prince, The Great Gatsby, The Outsiders, Moby Dick, Treasure Island, The Princess and the Goblin, Peter Pan, Anne of Green Gables, A Christmas Carol, The Nutcracker by E.T.A. Hoffman, Little Women, and Romeo & Juliet. Where should I read next? It will be Alice in Wonderland.
I got my academic reading list at home on top of my bookshelf downstairs in the hallway.