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

oh, i think i do.

Damn you...

1984 and The Godfather. Still two of my favorite books.

EDIT: forgot to mention Farenheit 451

What school taught The Godfather? Not that I object. It should be taught. It is actually on my list of books that should be taught in colleges, but in high school?

I hated it at the time, but I liked how the heart of darkness was used for apocalypse now, and everytime I see that movie I think about being forced to read that book in high school.

Godfather was at my school. The entire english dept was the only liberal bastion of the school, and the principal was in the green party so he had no objections to anything by Puzo, Clavell, Heller, Beckett, Pirandello etc.

I read that as a kid, but not for school. Hell of a book. The sequels aren't terrible.

It wasn't a part of the curriculum. Our class didn't like any of the books we had already read so far that year, so our teacher picked out a book he knew we would all like. Not a single kid in the class complained and it was the only book everyone read all of.

The girl I liked in my class got exactly double my mark on the christmas exam.

With that taken care of:
I liked Shakespeare's plays mostly Hamlet and Macbeth. I think the history of macbeth is interesting, how Shakespeare changed the history to suit the noblity of his time. And how the play is cursed.

I don't remember if I had to read it or it was read to me in school but a day no pigs would die

Other than textbooks for non lit classes I had no assigned reading in high school. The reading I did was always negotiated between me and the aging hippies who taught all the classes in the open school program I was in. What kind of fascist regime are you youngin's subjected to?

Books that I read during high school that I really remember enjoying included Clavell's Shogun & King Rat, Tolkein's Hobbit & Lord of the Rings, The Grapes of Wrath, most of Shakespeare's plays & Capote's In Cold Blood.

Another thing they encouraged in the program I was in was too ignore arbitrary rules.

I hate you for making me try to even remember that far back.

looking at my bookshelf, the books that I still own from high school reading assignments.

Notes from Underground
Slaughterhouse-Five
Beowulf
'The Canterbury Tales
Hamlet
The Tempest
Picture of Dorian Grey
Great Expectations
Leaves of Grass
and Dune. (and I don't know if I can count that one. it was for a project where we could choose any book adapted into a movie to compare how certain elements were handled in the two)

of those...probably Slaughterhouse-Five or Notes from Underground

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The graphic novel?

Well, I love you for trying...

"Masque of The Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe, I really related to Prince Prospero and the different themed rooms thing.

I'm not surprised.

I enjoyed Grendel a lot. I liked seeing the story of Beowulf from the perspective of the "monster" Grendel. I also enjoyed The Crucible. I guess those would be my two favorites from high school. I still think The Outsiders and The Hobbit were the coolest books I was ever assigned to read, but those were both from elementary school.

Wow, you seam to get to read nice books in school.

I remember, I liked:
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade

Great Title, isn't it.

Short: Marat/Sade

The Marquis de Sade was one cool guy.

The little world of Don Camillo.

To Kill a Mockingbird and A Seperate Peace.

I also really liked this book by Thomas Hardy and I can't ever remember the name of the fucking thing.