What SHOULD you read in HS Eng?

[Louise-Montreal]

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

Sparx- as an English teacher I can tell you have great taste Love your choices!

 

[Planogirl]

I love some of these lists but I would not make kids read Nathaniel Hawthorne or Henry James. Mind-numbingly boring for most people and isn't part of the point to get kids to enjoy reading?

 

[LukenDC]

My partner and I were recently comparing HS reading lists. My recollection is as follows:

9th Grade
Romeo and Juliet
Jane Eyre
Lost Horizon
A Raisin in the Sun
A Christmas Carol
Various short stories

10th Grade
Julius Caesar
1984
Scarlet Letter
Old Man and the Sea
Grapes of Wrath

11th Grade
Macbeth
Huck Finn
Pride and Prejudice
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Dubliners
Mrs. Dalloway
Siddhartha

12th Grade
Antigone
Twelfth Night
A Mid-Summer Night's Dream
Invisible Man
Fathers and Sons
Heart of Darkness
Great Gatsby

If I were making a reading list for 12th grade AP English, I would include:

A Greek drama
A Shakespearean play
Glass Menagerie or Streetcar Named Desire
Pamela
Collected works of Marquis de Sade (just kidding!!)
The Italian
Sense & Sensibility
Jude the Obscure or other Thomas Hardy novel
Of Human Bondage

 

[alexandria674]

Tess of the D'Urbervilles, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, To Kill a Mockingbird, As I Lay Dying.

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

I totally forgot this book! I loved reading it and still do love it. I havn't read Tess yet but oddly enough I own a copy of it.

 

[TwinsinCA]

The Old Man and the Sea- In class discussion, someone said that it was the worst book he had to read in HS!

I agree with him!

 

[TwinsinCA]

Most of the books I had to read in High School have already been mentioned. But two I have not seen listed yet are "The Jungle" and "Of Mice and Men"

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

The Scarlet Letter was rubbish--couldn't stand that book, still don't know how it turns out and never intend to finish the book.


As I Lay Dying (Faulkner I think, but not sure): It was my final book of my Junior Year. It was an interesting book about a deceased mom told from something like 15 different points of view (including the dead mother). Something about that book captivated my attention but I'm not sure what it was. I finally was able to get an "A" on the paper though.

I enjoyed Huckleberry Finn.

I could have used more Shakespeare. I only read Romeo and Juliet. I went to 3 different high schools due to military transfers and it seems that I kept missing the boat on when stuff was read in different grades that I didn't attend those schools for those grades.

I homeschool and do lots of poetry with my children.

I do not recall poetry aside from TS Eliot and I do recall that the poems we did read from him were FASCINATING.


I would certainly encourage some upper level poetry within the English Curriculum. I always felt that it was more expressive than prose and it seemed with my classmates that it was just more cool to study.

 

[DawnM]

I had to read The Jungle for History class. I really enjoyed it.

Dawn

Most of the books I had to read in High School have already been mentioned. But two I have not seen listed yet are "The Jungle" and "Of Mice and Men"

 

[DawnM]

This is very similar to the list we used when I taught High School English. I mainly taught 9th grade though. I often requested NOT to teach 10th grade because I hate, hate, hate Julius Ceasar! Most people can't believe that an English teacher would say that, but there you have it! I tried to substitute The Taming of the Shrew when they would let me!

I often chose to use Night as my novel for one of the semesters of 9th grade. Then with NCLB Night was no longer an option for me to use.

12th grade we used Hamlet though.

Dawn

My partner and I were recently comparing HS reading lists. My recollection is as follows:

9th Grade
Romeo and Juliet
Jane Eyre
Lost Horizon
A Raisin in the Sun
A Christmas Carol
Various short stories

10th Grade
Julius Caesar
1984
Scarlet Letter
Old Man and the Sea
Grapes of Wrath

11th Grade
Macbeth
Huck Finn
Pride and Prejudice
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Dubliners
Mrs. Dalloway
Siddhartha

12th Grade
Antigone
Twelfth Night
A Mid-Summer Night's Dream
Invisible Man
Fathers and Sons
Heart of Darkness
Great Gatsby

If I were making a reading list for 12th grade AP English, I would include:

A Greek drama
A Shakespearean play
Glass Menagerie or Streetcar Named Desire
Pamela
Collected works of Marquis de Sade (just kidding!!)
The Italian
Sense & Sensibility
Jude the Obscure or other Thomas Hardy novel
Of Human Bondage

 

[nkjzmom]

I've enjoyed reading the lists! I have a question though...why does no one ever include Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series? Is it because it is a series? I wish an English teacher had introduced me to that series in high school. Also, why no Chronicles of Narnia? Is that more of a junior high series?

 

[Praying Colonel]

We had "Phase Elective English" after freshman year, so we could pick the classes we wanted and they were on a difficulty level from phase 1 to phase 5. In the classes I picked, we read

Great Expectations
Silas Marner
The Great Gatsby
The Sun Also Rises
Light in August
East of Eden
Sister Carrie
The Count of Monte Cristo
Les Miserables
Lord of the Flies
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Brave New World
Shakespearean tragedies such as King Lear, Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth
Shakespearean comedies such as Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer's Night Dream
Lots of poetry, especially from the English Romanticists like Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Keats and the Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau
Greek mythology
We even had a class on studying rock lyrics as poetry. Our teacher was a big Beatles fan, so we got into a lot of the Beatles later work from Revolver on.

 

[paintnolish]

Thanks for all of the suggestions so far! Some I'd forgotten about, while other's I've yet to read. Of course, To Kill a Mockingbird will be on it. That is the one book I vividly remember reading, since I loved it! I am thinking of including Night (or Maus, a graphic novel) and The Book Thief. We were talking about how many HS students don't have time for leaisure reading and the only reading they do is for class. As teachers (in a magical world without NCLB), it would be nice to offer them a broader range of genres and more appealing choices. Most of the reading they do is not about people they can relate to, are written in times they can't relate to, and by old British guys! Many of the stories are dpressing, too! A perfect example is The Scarlett Letter...adultery? HS? Zzz!
Faulkner- No, you're mom's not a fish. Ugg! I can see it generating good discussion and speculation, though.
Twain- How about something other than the usual? Although, I do like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
Tennnessee Williams- I would like to include one of his plays. Interesting, thought provoking, and short! What more could you ask for?
Thanks and keep them coming! I love those well read Disers!

 

[BeachGirlFLA]

.
Twain- How about something other than the usual? Although, I do like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

There's always The Prince And The Pauper and we read some of his short stories in Junior High. A lot of the books that people are listing as High School books were books that I had to read sometime between 6th and 8th grade (Silas Marner, To Kill A Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and The Old Man And The Sea are the ones that come to mind immediately.) I'm not quite sure why we read them so early, since I think some people would get a lot more out of a few of these in High School than in Junior High.

 

[N.Bailey]

I would definitely add, To Kill a Mockingbird. It's one of the best book/movie transfers in history.

 

[daughter_of_amid_chaos]

I'd actually like to see a joint study of Jane Eyre and The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

My Freshman year of college I did a joint study of Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen and Bridget Jone's Diary by Helen Fielding. It made me love Pride & Prejudice even more.

 

[golfgal]

This is very similar to the list we used when I taught High School English. I mainly taught 9th grade though. I often requested NOT to teach 10th grade because I hate, hate, hate Julius Ceasar! Most people can't believe that an English teacher would say that, but there you have it! I tried to substitute The Taming of the Shrew when they would let me!

I often chose to use Night as my novel for one of the semesters of 9th grade. Then with NCLB Night was no longer an option for me to use.

12th grade we used Hamlet though.

Dawn

Night has been DS17's favorite book EVER. Too bad they don't let you teach it. DS is a quite kid, never says anything in class kind of kid and he led his grade in discussion points for Night.

I love My Antonia when I was in high school. No one has mentioned that yet.

 

[LuvCuteBoys]

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!

Nothing ruined my love of reading like high school English. John Steinbeck was boring enough as it is, but having to analyze the reason why Lenny killed the mouse did not make it more enjoyable in any way.

Analyzing books takes away from the enjoyment of reading. Most adults don't read literature so they can analyze why the author started every chapter with the word "it" (or something equally stupid). Elementary school taught us to love books (I can still tell you the names of every Beverly Cleary character) and high school taught us that reading isn't supposed to be done for pleasure and that if we can't identify the foreshadowing in Chapter Two, then we aren't very smart.

Ugh. Just a little mini vent there

Here are some of my choices:

The Crucible
Gone with the Wind
The Secret Life of Bees
The Hobbit (yes, I read it in fourth grade... but reading it again in high school would have been really cool. And that's the kind of writing assignment I would have enjoyed... what did you get out of this book now that you didn't understand when you were 9)
The Reader
Watchmen (just cause it has pictures doesn't make it bad!!)
Less than Zero
Lord of the Flies
Animal Farm (or 1984, but now that 1984 was 25 years ago, AF might be a better choice)
Fahrenheit 451

Something by Shakespeare... ONCE in high school. Not every freaking year. (My choice would be MacBeth).

And I didn't particularly care for this one, but if you must analyze Wicked might be a good choice (but not necessarily age appropriate, I guess).

Books I HATED (with or without the incessant analyzing):
The Great Gatsby
Silas Marner
The Grapes of Wrath
Of Mice and Men
Canterbury Tales
Our Town
Silas Marner

 

[clh2]

My DD, who is going into 10th grade - and for honors English, had to read 2 books this summer, out of a list of about 10 books.

One of her selections was: The Color of Water. Which she really enjoyed.

From what I understand about the book list, it included both fiction and non-fiction, but all dealt with racial issues.

 

[Tinker'n'Fun]

My DD's school is so different from your lists, this is her summer reading list:

English I:

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
The Girl With the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck (HONORS ONLY)

In class reading: Romeo and Juliet and Great Expectations

English II:

Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom
City of Light by Lauren Belfer
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (HONORS ONLY)
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

In class: To Kill a Mockingbird, Julius Caesar, Night, and A Midsummers Night Dream, The Odyssey and Iliad

English III:

Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (HONORS ONLY)

In class: Gone with the Wind, The Great Gatsby, and The Glass Menagerie

English IV:

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (HONORS ONLY)

DD is taking college English, so I am not what the teacher will include in class and she did NOT do summer reading as the college professor did not require it.

And each student each year was required to pick an additional book to read and discuss with the class.

On to DS's list (he is just a Freshman this year, so I am not sure above freshman what in class reading is required.

English I

St. Ignatius of Loyola: In God's Service by Peggy Skylar
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
The Hounds of Baskerville by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

In class reading: Romeo and Juliet and To Kill a Mockingbird

 

[LuvCuteBoys]

City of Light by Lauren Belfer

That's about Buffalo!! Are you in WNY?