What SHOULD you read in HS Eng?

[paintnolish]

Or, what do you wish you did read? As part of one of my lit. classes, we get to build our own, hypothetical canon of HS books. They can include classics as well as newer books. In fact, variety and options are key! They can be from all genres. Thanks for your advice!

 

[Aisling]

Anthem by Ayn Rand <---------short book, easy read, and VERY thought-provoking. Great class discussions can come from this book.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, based on Langston Hughes poem "A Dream Deferred" (read both)

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway

Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak <--------you get a lot of Russian Revolution history, as well as thought-provoking situations.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn <-----------a piece of American history, with romance, morality, deception and angst.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt <--------the writing style is unique, and his life can be inspirational. He also addresses the fact that the Irish love language, and that aspect can teach Americans a thing or two about how beautiful, fun, and clever proper language usage can be. We learn to appreciate language/vocabulary, instead of taking it for granted.

I always felt that more than 6 books would be too much for a semester.

 

[ms.yt]

My seniors read Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Macbeth and some Hemingway short stories (mostly because we're close to the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum).

 

[locolala]

I was advanced English all through HS, so the books I read were different from the ones the kids in the regular classes read.

The ones I remember were The Divine Comedy by Dante, Illiad and Odyssey by Homer (of course), Farenhiet 451 by Ray Bradbury, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth by Shakespeare, 1984 by George Orwell. Those are the only ones I can recall right now, and the majority of them were my freshman year.

 

[paintnolish]

The Old Man and the Sea- In class discussion, someone said that it was the worst book he had to read in HS!
Some of my classmates are drawing on their own abilities to recall HS. Umm...that was a long time ago for me. I am 33! A few faves stick out in my memory, but I am trying to add some more current, more appealing books. This is just hypothetical-fun and discussion.

 

[Aisling]

The Old Man and the Sea- In class discussion, someone said that it was the worst book he had to read in HS!
Some of my classmates are drawing on their own abilities to recall HS. Umm...that was a long time ago for me. I am 33! A few faves stick out in my memory, but I am trying to add some more current, more appealing books. This is just hypothetical-fun and discussion.

I added that book (novella) because it's loaded with symbolism, and it's a good "taste" of Hemmimgway. When I read that book in class, we went through the list of all the symbols before we even started reading. It made the book more interesting because there were consequently many "oh yeah!" moments while reading.

The Frank McCourt series is an excellent example of comtemporary reading. You get a great story, a writing-style that speaks to you and draws you in, it's encouraging, and his language usage is wonderful. For high school age kids, McCourt's childhood and teenage life may capture them, and in his book Teacher Man, he focuses on his experiences with high schoolers in the 50s and 60s, using their "own" language. I think current kids will love it.

 

[Sparx]

oh this is hard. hmm.

i would read:
julius caesar
romeo and juliet
a mid summer nights dream
a separate peace
catcher in the rye
looking for alaska
watership down
1984
animal farm
the perks of being a wall flower
the time travelers wife
the bell jar

can we include short stories too?
the necklace
politics and the english language
shooting an elephant
a rose for emily

and one poem i think everyone should read is:
hardrock returns to prison from the hospital for the criminally insane

 

[eowensby]

To Kill a Mockingbird

 

[jaycat]

I recommend

'Brave New World' (read in 12th grade)

'Huckleberry Finn' (wrote my AP essay on this red in 11th grade)

'Invisible Man' (By Ellison) (read in 11th grade)

'Animal Farm' (read in 9th grade)

'The Great Gatsby' (read in 11th grade)

'Dracula' (read in 10th grade)

'The Crucible' (read in 11th grade) this is a really good play with historical elements that most of my classmates seemed to enjoy.

Keats is good for poetry

I don't recommend

'The Scarlet Letter' - why? only 2 people in my class of 30 AP students liked it while we were reading it, and if you hate what you have to read you won't read it.

'Great Expectations' for anyone under 11 grade - I read it in 9th grade and hated it, I couldn't fully understand it then - plus its really long and attention spans of younger kids are short

please excuse any misspellings Its late and I cant sleep

 

[NMAmy]

Books I read in high school that I loved include:
Dracula
Frankenstein
Shakespeare - Romeo & Juliet, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night
Moby Dick
The Crucible

Books that I hated:
Siddhartha
Allegory of the Cave (part of Plato's Republic that we analyzed for weeks. Ugh)
Wuthering Heights (I was surprised by this since I'd loved Jane Eyre since I was about 12. I thought if I liked Charlotte Bronte's book, I'd like Emily's but Emily is a bit overwrought for my taste.)

More contemporary books that I'd include:
The Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
I'd actually like to see a joint study of Jane Eyre and The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
I agree with other suggestions for Angela's Ashes

 

[alexandria674]

My Wish list
Some of Shakepeare's works and sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer's Night Dream, Taming of the Shrew or King Lear
One of the Bronte's works
Anything by Hemingway EXCEPT OLD MAN IN THE SEA. I liked the book, but every English class I was in had that book and I got so sick of fish. Maybe it should only be read for the Freshman class and that is it, the other English classes for Sophmore, Jr. and Seniors should have a different Hemingway book such as Farewell to Arms or something
The Joy Luck clucb or the Kitchen God's Wife (I read the J.L.C when I was a Sophmore and Kitchen God when I was a bit older but I wished we read it in High School)
Some Tennyson and Byron (I call him the original Edward Cullen)
Some Tennessee Williams, like Streetcare named Desire or The Yellow Rose
I wish we had read Dickens so I would add in Great Expectations
Maybe Pride and Predjudice
I did like Guy Du Maupassant's the Necklace, maybe it would be an interesting short story to teach.
I agree that Frank Mc.Court's book "Angela's Ashes" should be there, it is one of my favorite books
Burro Genius by Victor Villasenor
Like Water for Chocolate (Awesome book)

 

[shortbun]

Lots of great books here.

I'll add Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. We read them in 9th grade and I was really jazzed by them. Our teacher clearly loved them which made it more enjoyable.

 

[agnes!]

Some of these lists almost make me cry, I don't think my DD has read ANY of them, with *maybe* the exception of the Odyssey in Latin class -
no Nathaniel Hawthorne,
NO Mark Twain,
no Ayn Rand,
no Emily Bronte,
no Charlotte either,
NOT To Kill a Mockingbird,
no Ray Bradbury,
NO Dickens,
no Frank McCourt,
no Moby Dick...
I think she has to take an AP English Lit class to read some of these. She usually just gets to read *really* depressing contemporary stuff.

agnes!
PS - She has read some of it on her own like Wuthering Heights.

 

[Kath2003]

I read:
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Twelfth Night
- The Crucible
- The Woman In White
I really enjoyed TKAM and The Crucible and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Twelfth Night was just okay. The Woman in White was DIRE.

 

[BeachGirlFLA]

The Old Man and the Sea- In class discussion, someone said that it was the worst book he had to read in HS!
Some of my classmates are drawing on their own abilities to recall HS. Umm...that was a long time ago for me. I am 33! A few faves stick out in my memory, but I am trying to add some more current, more appealing books. This is just hypothetical-fun and discussion.

I had to read this one in 6th grade (actually, the summer before 6th grade.) The ones I remember the best are In Country, Othello, The Great Gatsby, Jayne Eyre, The Sargasso Sea (Jayne Eyre from the point of view of the insane wife), Grapes of Wrath, Madame Bovary, The Awakening, Portrait of a Lady, and O Pioneers.

 

[Took]

My list:

Beowulf (preferably the Norton critical edition, so you can get the surrounding material)

Canterbury Tales (at least, the Prologue, the Miller's Tale and the Wife of Bath's Tale)

Shakespeare (as much and as often!)

Anything by Jane Austen
Bronte novels--Jane Eyre and/or Wuthering Heights
Dickens--maybe Bleak House or David Copperfield
Dracula (so much better than the movies)
Frankenstein (ditto)
Rhys' The Wide Sargasso Sea


short stories by Poe
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (or anything else by him, really)
Toni Morrison--The Bluest Eye, Sula or Beloved
Twain's Huck Finn
Melville's Moby Dick
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
Bradbury's Farenheit 451
Wharton's Ethan Frome
Miller's The Cruicible


The Iliad and The Odyssey
Antigone and/or Oedipus

Poetry--haven't listed any shorter poems but there's lots to choose from

and then, maybe, some contemporary stuff

 

[scottishduffy]

My school had a horrible English program. The only things we read were Pilgrims Progress, Beowulf, and The Scarlet letter.

Short stories (or other things we read) included Sinenrs in the Hands of an Angry, Gift of the Magi, and Fall of the House of Usher

I have enjoyed reading: I know why the caged bird sings
Night
Picture of Dorian Gray
Fahrenheit 451
Lord of the Flies
1981
Lolita (Gotta have some controversial books)
Huck Finn
The Secret Garden

 

[ahutton]

I loved Brighton Rock, The Importance of Being Ernest.

Hated For Whom the Bell Tolls.

 

[PatsMom]

I hated anything to do with Shakespeare. Oddly DD loves reading him!

More poetry would be great - not enough attention was paid to poetry in my DD's classes. Contemporary American poets like Frost, Sandburg, Dickinson were barely mentioned.

No Jack London - I've never cared for him either.

I understand that classes analyzing a book can be important but what I would really love to see is a class where students can pick their own books to read - all people have different interests and to say "we will now read Bleak House by Dickens" is bound to have some loving it and some hating it. I would much prefer a class that says "Dickens is an important author. Pick one of his books and read it." I know its probably not possible in the real world but it might keep more kids interested. David Copperfield is a great Dickens book but I hated Bleak House!

 

[Liberty Belle]

Tess of the D'Urbervilles, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Lesson Before Dying.

That doesn't really seem very balanced, but they're all books I love.