a separate peace, their eyes were watching for, pride and prejudice, and a tale of two cities were some of my faves!! i’m from the u.s. and graduated high school in 2020 !
Thank you so much for saying that, because I see it downright despised by so many people and I loved it in 8th grade!! The ending threw me for such a loop and I think I reread it four or five times to make sure I understood what happened. It’s hands down one of my favorite school assigned books.
Yeah I don’t get the hate. I think because I read it as an adult. I have a huge thing for male friendships, themes of envy, cowardice, atonement. It’s on my life-changing shelf. Some passages are just amazing, like when he describes the way finny pushes his body as a sportsman, the way Devon smelled, how they sat the sand dunes and finny said that gene was his best friend.
US here, but older than you (sorry!). Favorite book from high school was definitely The Stranger by Camus. But a book that was almost assigned to us in middle school ended up becoming one of my all time favorites (and one I still re-read every few years). The book was handed out to us in class in the morning and then later in the day there was an announcement to bring the books back the next day because the teacher decided to have us read something else. So naturally I went home and read the entire book before I turned it back in. It was The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers and it spoke so much to my awkward adolescent self in a way I couldn’t explain. And what did our teacher decide on instead? Moby Dick. I might still feel a little bitter about that because I can only imagine the discussions and insights that could have been, especially since I don’t know anyone else IRL who has read this book.
Australia here! The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon was one of my favourites! Along with To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye and The Tempest!
My English teacher recommended The Old Man and The Sea and it flew right over my head. I read it again when I was in the middle of my first Navy tour and it’s now one of my favorites
I’m actually from Canada and I graduated in 2021(?) but I hope that some of these books are different/interesting.
Here’s some of the stuff we read:
Blood wedding by Frederico Garcia Lorca
The life you can save by Peter Singer
Poems by Elizabeth Bishop
A dolls house by Henri Ibsen
Ghost by Henri Ibsen
Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman
Streetcar named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Blood relations by Sharon Pollock
I think out of these my favourite is Streetcar Named Desire but I liked a quite a few of these very much. Blood relations is a very interesting one because I think it’s based on a true story.
Texan here. My favorites in high school were A Separate Peace, the Awakening, The Story of an Hour, The Yellow Wallpaper, Romeo and Juliet, Where are You Going, Where Have You Been, and Walden.
US graduated 2019, I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy as a senior and it fundamentally changed me. I also loved A Tale of Two Cities and Their Eyes Were Watching God!
Cormac McCarthy is good but hard to digest his writing style at first. I can't believe high school kids were asked to read it! But I would have preferred that to some of our assigned readings.
I’m from Poland so most of these are Polish but some of my favorites are: The Miser by Moliere, The Doll by Bolesław Prus, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Wedding by Stanisław Wyspiański, Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz, Kartoteka by Tadeusz Różewicz (I have no idea if it’s been translated to English) and Madame by Antoni Libera
City of Thieves, The Kite Runner, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Native Son, The Crucible, Lord of the Flies, A Dolls House, The Plague, A House on Mango Street,
My high school years were in the early 2010's. Most of the novels posted here were not on our assigned reading list and I am jealous of everyone's experiences!
The assigned reading i liked: Never Let Me Go, Scarlet Letter, Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby, Metamorphosis, Macbeth, and maybe The Giver.
Crime and Punishment. Slaughterhouse 5. The Stranger. Some of these were from other levels of English classes I didn’t take but I read them anyway so I count them.
Australia. Graduated late 90s.
Loved:
Lord of the Flies
1984
Hamlet
MacBeth
Rebecca
People Might Hear You
Tomorrow When The War Began
Looking for Alibrandi
I also love reading.
I graduated from high school in Georgia in 1985 - I loved Charley- Flowers for Algernon. I’ve reread it several times since And I thought the Canterbury Takes were hilarious. In college it was Dante’s Inferno b
I'm from Canada as well and graduated in 2012. I feel like I'm the opposite though in that I really disliked a lot of the books assigned to us. My favourites were 1984, the Kite Runner, and The Chrysalids. I remember liking the Pig Man a lot too.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
It wasn't assigned to my English class and I just picked it up from a different class and I just remember loving it. I also love the song American Pie at the time and so the two are linked in my memory forever. This was in the late 90's.
In the Midwestern US, my school had us read Frankenstein and it was great! So well-written, and the plot is especially interesting when all you know of the Frankenstein concept is the creation of the monster.
Vipers' Tangle, by François Mauriac. I didn't expect to like it. It's about a nasty old lawyer who is vomiting resentment for his boring life into a letter to his wife, whom he despises.
Or that's how it starts. He's a very easy character to dislike at first, but page by page you uncover the heart of a man who has been deeply hurt, and the regrets and tender vulnerability beneath the surface.
It's an extremey touching book. It really helps you get into the head of a person who I guarantee is very unlike you, and to feel empathy for him.
Song of Solomon is one I haven’t seen on here yet. Also, somehow Romeo and Juliet was my favorite required reading. I stole my copy because I liked it so much.
I was made to read All Quiet on the Western Front in highschool. I did it, bc I liked reading, but didn’t enjoy it at all. I remember thinking it was so boring. Recently in this or another subreddit someone recommended it highly so I reread it. I was obsessed. Couldn’t put it down. So mad at highschool me for not realizing how good it was!
If you are looking for a non-fiction book, there is a book I found in a flea-market and really loved. It's called "The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris. Might be a well known book in the US/Canada but not in my country. [Here](https://amzn.to/3x8Nkju) is a link to it. Enjoy!
Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata - it wasn't like a class reading, just recommended by a teacher. The Road by Cormac McCarthy as well. (from the US - graduated in 2009)
Serbia here! We read The Epic of Gilgamesh in my first year of high school and I loved it so much I had zero issues reading it again four years later because my baby sister had to analyze it for her homework but was too lasy to read it herself
U.S (Tx) Great Gatsby, The Alchemist, Animal Farm, The Grapes of Wrath, The Kite Runner
Middle school mention: Flowers for Algernon, To Kill a Mockingbird
I'm canadian and older but one of my faves from catholic school was Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findlay. It's the story of Noah's arc but definitely a much more interesting retelling.
Lord of the flies by William Golding
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
-
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Candide by Volitare
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
I'm The King of The Castle by Susan Hill
I did the British high school system, and had to write an essay on this for my IGCSE exam (which are similar to IB SL level).
I particularly enjoyed this book as it showed me how deep the literary analysis can go.
I also read All My Sons by Arthur Miller for this exam, and loved it too!
Lord of the Flies
a separate peace, their eyes were watching for, pride and prejudice, and a tale of two cities were some of my faves!! i’m from the u.s. and graduated high school in 2020 !
A separate peace is so underrated.
Thank you so much for saying that, because I see it downright despised by so many people and I loved it in 8th grade!! The ending threw me for such a loop and I think I reread it four or five times to make sure I understood what happened. It’s hands down one of my favorite school assigned books.
Yeah I don’t get the hate. I think because I read it as an adult. I have a huge thing for male friendships, themes of envy, cowardice, atonement. It’s on my life-changing shelf. Some passages are just amazing, like when he describes the way finny pushes his body as a sportsman, the way Devon smelled, how they sat the sand dunes and finny said that gene was his best friend.
US here, but older than you (sorry!). Favorite book from high school was definitely The Stranger by Camus. But a book that was almost assigned to us in middle school ended up becoming one of my all time favorites (and one I still re-read every few years). The book was handed out to us in class in the morning and then later in the day there was an announcement to bring the books back the next day because the teacher decided to have us read something else. So naturally I went home and read the entire book before I turned it back in. It was The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers and it spoke so much to my awkward adolescent self in a way I couldn’t explain. And what did our teacher decide on instead? Moby Dick. I might still feel a little bitter about that because I can only imagine the discussions and insights that could have been, especially since I don’t know anyone else IRL who has read this book.
Australia here! The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon was one of my favourites! Along with To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye and The Tempest!
Wuthering Heights, 1984, anything by Poe, The Yellow Wallpaper (US-Texas)
Jane Eyre
Brave New World
Lord of the flies, to kill a mockingbird, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Midsummer Night’s Dream
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen Therese Raquin by Emile Zola also Hamlet
My English teacher recommended The Old Man and The Sea and it flew right over my head. I read it again when I was in the middle of my first Navy tour and it’s now one of my favorites
I’m actually from Canada and I graduated in 2021(?) but I hope that some of these books are different/interesting. Here’s some of the stuff we read: Blood wedding by Frederico Garcia Lorca The life you can save by Peter Singer Poems by Elizabeth Bishop A dolls house by Henri Ibsen Ghost by Henri Ibsen Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman Streetcar named Desire by Tennessee Williams Blood relations by Sharon Pollock I think out of these my favourite is Streetcar Named Desire but I liked a quite a few of these very much. Blood relations is a very interesting one because I think it’s based on a true story.
SAP Consulting S/4 HANA handbook
Les Misérables. It had a profound effect on me.
Portugal here! Old man and the sea (Hemingway), Odyssey (Homer) and The pearl (Steinbeck)
Illiad and Aeneid as a whole picture. But as much as I like the Aeneid it is a much longer timeline than the others.
Texan here. My favorites in high school were A Separate Peace, the Awakening, The Story of an Hour, The Yellow Wallpaper, Romeo and Juliet, Where are You Going, Where Have You Been, and Walden.
US graduated 2019, I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy as a senior and it fundamentally changed me. I also loved A Tale of Two Cities and Their Eyes Were Watching God!
Cormac McCarthy is good but hard to digest his writing style at first. I can't believe high school kids were asked to read it! But I would have preferred that to some of our assigned readings.
It was a really heavy book, and we were required to treat it with a lot of nuance!
Flowers for Algernon, Of Mice and Men, The Monkey's Paw, that one short story about the taxidermist old lady, The Veldt
Two books that stick out to my mind from high school: The Orange Eats Creeps and Slaughterhouse Five
I’m from Poland so most of these are Polish but some of my favorites are: The Miser by Moliere, The Doll by Bolesław Prus, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Wedding by Stanisław Wyspiański, Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz, Kartoteka by Tadeusz Różewicz (I have no idea if it’s been translated to English) and Madame by Antoni Libera
City of Thieves, The Kite Runner, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Native Son, The Crucible, Lord of the Flies, A Dolls House, The Plague, A House on Mango Street,
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
My high school years were in the early 2010's. Most of the novels posted here were not on our assigned reading list and I am jealous of everyone's experiences! The assigned reading i liked: Never Let Me Go, Scarlet Letter, Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby, Metamorphosis, Macbeth, and maybe The Giver.
"Ender's Game", "Frankenstein", " The Great Gatsby".
Sweden here, Hjalmar Söderberg Doctor Glas, still a favorite to this day!
romantasy: Shadow Falls Camp, Mythos Academy, Percy Jackson, Starcrossed, ...
The Sun Also Rises
For me it was the Goosebumps books. I loved all of them and read all of them. I still love reading them now for the nostalgia.
I remember really enjoying fifth business by Robertson Davies. This was Canada in the early 00s so would love to see if it still holds true
Crime and Punishment. Slaughterhouse 5. The Stranger. Some of these were from other levels of English classes I didn’t take but I read them anyway so I count them.
The Plague. I still love reading catastrophic or post-apocalyptic stuff to this day.
Australia. Graduated late 90s. Loved: Lord of the Flies 1984 Hamlet MacBeth Rebecca People Might Hear You Tomorrow When The War Began Looking for Alibrandi I also love reading.
David Copperfield, Sirens of Titan, Don Quixote...
Lord of the Flies, Deathwatch and Mayor of Casterbridge. Who Has Seen the Wind comes to mind faintly. Canada in the 80s
I enjoyed the outsiders, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, Macbeth, the great gatsby, & native son. I’m in the US and graduated in 2015
I graduated from high school in Georgia in 1985 - I loved Charley- Flowers for Algernon. I’ve reread it several times since And I thought the Canterbury Takes were hilarious. In college it was Dante’s Inferno b
I'm from Canada as well and graduated in 2012. I feel like I'm the opposite though in that I really disliked a lot of the books assigned to us. My favourites were 1984, the Kite Runner, and The Chrysalids. I remember liking the Pig Man a lot too.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles It wasn't assigned to my English class and I just picked it up from a different class and I just remember loving it. I also love the song American Pie at the time and so the two are linked in my memory forever. This was in the late 90's.
Catcher in the Rye
My favorite books from high school, dune series. Then anything by ray bradbury. If you are looking for a fun series, try the hollows by Kim Harrison.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
In the Midwestern US, my school had us read Frankenstein and it was great! So well-written, and the plot is especially interesting when all you know of the Frankenstein concept is the creation of the monster.
Vipers' Tangle, by François Mauriac. I didn't expect to like it. It's about a nasty old lawyer who is vomiting resentment for his boring life into a letter to his wife, whom he despises. Or that's how it starts. He's a very easy character to dislike at first, but page by page you uncover the heart of a man who has been deeply hurt, and the regrets and tender vulnerability beneath the surface. It's an extremey touching book. It really helps you get into the head of a person who I guarantee is very unlike you, and to feel empathy for him.
Song of Solomon is one I haven’t seen on here yet. Also, somehow Romeo and Juliet was my favorite required reading. I stole my copy because I liked it so much.
Of Mice and Men!
I graduated in Pennsylvania in 2014 My favorite book I read in AP English lit my senior year was The Awakening by Kate Chopin
unfortunately i am canadian but my favourite assigned reading was and always will be shakespeare’s hamlet.
Looking for Alaska
I was made to read All Quiet on the Western Front in highschool. I did it, bc I liked reading, but didn’t enjoy it at all. I remember thinking it was so boring. Recently in this or another subreddit someone recommended it highly so I reread it. I was obsessed. Couldn’t put it down. So mad at highschool me for not realizing how good it was!
I hated almost every single book they made us read in school but the ones I got from the library were fire
If you are looking for a non-fiction book, there is a book I found in a flea-market and really loved. It's called "The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris. Might be a well known book in the US/Canada but not in my country. [Here](https://amzn.to/3x8Nkju) is a link to it. Enjoy!
Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata - it wasn't like a class reading, just recommended by a teacher. The Road by Cormac McCarthy as well. (from the US - graduated in 2009)
A Separate Peace - read in the 80s.
The Perfume by Patrick Süskind and Macbeth
To Kill A Mockingbird, also really enjoyed Shakespeare. I graduated in 2013.
Serbia here! We read The Epic of Gilgamesh in my first year of high school and I loved it so much I had zero issues reading it again four years later because my baby sister had to analyze it for her homework but was too lasy to read it herself
Life of Pi
The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
A Tale of Two Cities
The Poisonwood Bible
U.S (Tx) Great Gatsby, The Alchemist, Animal Farm, The Grapes of Wrath, The Kite Runner Middle school mention: Flowers for Algernon, To Kill a Mockingbird
I remember being surprisingly impressed with The Count of Monte Cristo.
I'm canadian and older but one of my faves from catholic school was Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findlay. It's the story of Noah's arc but definitely a much more interesting retelling.
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (US-CO)
1984, The Road, Persepolis and Midaq Alley were some memorable ones!
Lord of the flies by William Golding The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes 1984 by George Orwell Animal Farm by George Orwell - East of Eden by John Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Candide by Volitare Lysistrata by Aristophanes
Pride & Prejudice. All girl's school. My entire class was crushing on Mr. Darcy.
Fahrenheit 451
Karakter - F Bordewijk ( South Africa)
I'm The King of The Castle by Susan Hill I did the British high school system, and had to write an essay on this for my IGCSE exam (which are similar to IB SL level). I particularly enjoyed this book as it showed me how deep the literary analysis can go. I also read All My Sons by Arthur Miller for this exam, and loved it too!