What was the *best* book they made you read in high school?

So, I was helping my cousin with her summer reading assignments the other day, and it got me thinking:

The large majority of books I was made to read in high school, I fucking hated; The Catcher in the Rye is overrated, Dickens got payed by-the-word to write (and that's what his books read like), Mark Twain wrote better books than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and if anyone ever tries to make me read The Snows of Kilimanjaro one more fucking time, s/he will die a slow, horrible death shortly thereafter.

I'm going to go with Conrad's Heart of Darkness; I realize its a racist text, and I'm not excusing that, but when I consider the fact that english wasn't even Conrad's first language, and then realize I'd never be able to get as much subtext into anything I'll ever write as he got into a single paragraph of that book, I'm truely humbled. I've read it six times since, and would definently recommend you do the same. Honorable mentions go to: The Great Gatsby, The Stranger and anything by Shakespeare.

What about you?

::edited for clarification::

James Clavell's Shogun.

Best I was made to read? To Kill a Mockingbird. Actually, I stole my copy from the school, I liked it that much

I was a big fan of mary shelley's Frankenstein, but i also missed most of the 'classics' because i changed high schools halfway through. We should have read Moby Dick (ftw.)

Catcher in the Rye is good, Dickens is great (a lot of writers get payed [sic] by the word--it's a completely irrelevant and cliched criticism) and Snows of Kilimanjaro is a brilliant story and collection.

I might go with Gatsby myself. Maybe Moby Dick.

probably great gatsby, it was one of the few required books that i actually read the whole way through. also, 1984 and of mice and men.

Yeah, but its not as great, as say, my tenth grade english teacher made it out to be; its a good book that gets called great (read: overrated).

Maybe my poor wording made it hard to understand, so forgive me for being so blunt, but I think you're missing my point; I don't care how the actual newspaper editors who payed him or, for example, Tolstoy, or anybody else worked out the details of his/her employment; I just find Dickens too verbose and was using that detail about his life to point to that fact; I understand the historical and intellectual reasons why he's considered a great author, I just don't like it very much.

Again, not denying that, but you try moving around as much as I did growing up, and having to re-read it and do the same exercises again and again, and see how much you like it; as I tried to imply, it was the number of times I had to re-read it that got me sick of it.

Yeah, dude...but why? What about those two stuck with you?

I had to read this one book.. I never finished it though. But it was pretty good.

I forgot the name but it was about life in the poor area of Africa. And how horrible it was growing up there.

Or that's what I think it was about. Maybe I should have finished it.

One of the books I remember most enjoying was Maya Angelou's "I know why the caged bird sings".

Me Too. I read it again a few years ago.

Romeo and Juliet because I actually like the ideal of duels

That 96' movie sucked though!

Yes.
I love this book.

I also really loved Lord of the Flies.

I'm also a huge fan of Romeo and Juliet.

i'm allergic to being told what to read, so it was hard for me to enjoy any of my assigned books. the only one that i found passable was Chesapeake, for my AP history class in tenth grade. i think it was because the novel was so interminably long that i forgot that it had been assigned.

but it did have a good soundtrack

Agreed!

God, I loved a ton of the books I was assigned in high school:


Hamlet
Don Quixote
The Great Gatsby
The Chosen
Oedipus the King
Invisible Man
To Kill a Mockingbird
Of Mice and Men
Dr. Faustus


Etc.

Catcher in the Rye or The Bell Jar.

Sorry, I thought they were amazing. Really stuck with me, and got to the entire question of growing up.

"As I Lay Dying"- William Faulkner

Found it poignant that they buried Addie in her tight coffin "reversed" so there would be more room for her dress.

Marlowe? Mann?

Yeah...they didn't make me read it in school, but I *loved* Ralph Ellison at that age...still do...

Damn, you know, something occured to me as I was reading this thread: I never read Moby Dick until I was 23; I mean, I realized I hadn't read it, of course, its just that the import of that never dawned on me until just now...

Sounds like you might be talking about The Power of One. I actually think The Great Gatsby is overrated. I liked it at the time I read it, but in retrospect am not overly impressed by it. And Heart of Darkness I couldn't stand. I loved A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; I was fascinated, I think, largely by the meticulous structure of it. I loved Macbeth, moreso than Hamlet. My 9th grade English teacher made us read a couple Bradbury shorts (not that I needed a whole lot of convincing), including "A Sound of Thunder".

The Great Gatsby


the worst? The Awakening

I've never read it, have no real desire to, but Chopin had a few brilliant short stories. Story of an Hour was especially good.

Here is the full text, if anybody is interested.