Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was Assigned To Read In School

/ Lisa R. Howeler

|| Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. ||

This week’s theme is: Books I Was Assigned to Read in School (These can be books you loved or hated. Or just tolerated. Bonus points if you give us a tiny review of your thoughts!)

While I was looking up books to jog my memory on some of the books I read (I remembered many of them but was trying to get the list to ten), I found a post by a teacher on a forum lamenting the fact that students no longer want to read novels and are pretty much only interested in getting the grade, not learning. They don’t want to take the time to read the novels and learn from them and that is heartbreaking to me. Sure, some of these books were torture for me to push through, but the lessons in them were important and if a teacher hadn’t said to me, “You’re reading this or you won’t pass this class,” then I might have avoided them. That would have been a shame.

I’m glad I’ve exposed my kids to some classic books, even if they’ve whined quite a bit about it. Anyhow, I’ll step off my soapbox now and just list those books I was assigned in school.

  • Hiroshima by John Hersey – about the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, Japan to end World War II. For a AP English course. Horrific, nauseating, and horrifyingly eye-opening for me.
  • The Awakening by Kate Chopin for AP English. Hated it but may suffer through it one day again to see if I hated it as much as I think I did. I probably will.
  • 1984  by George Orwell  – for AP English. Scared the living daylights out of me. Scares me more even now as I watch it unfold around me.
  • Lord of the Flies by William Golding. For 9th or 10th grade English. Disturbed me. Disturbed me worse when I read it two years ago with my son for his high school English.
  • To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I read this in sixth or seventh grade and then was assigned it in eighth grade and when the teacher found out I’d already read it she was surprised. I couldn’t get into it until my mom started to read it to me in her Southern accent. It became my favorite book. Read it again with my son two years ago for English. It impacted me even more the second time. So much so that I sobbed through half of it. It’s still my favorite book.
  • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck – I don’t remember a ton about this book except it was sad and I didn’t like it.
  • A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickins. I don’t think we actually read this entire book. What we did read was okay for me but when I tried it again for eleventh grade English with my son we both ended up avoiding it and switched gears.
  • Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. I’m not sure this counts as a book because it is a play but I had to read it and with the help of translation by my teacher, I ended up liking it quite a bit. I also liked Taming of the Shrew.
  • Silas Marner by George Elliot. My son and I read this for his English class so I am going to count it for school, even though it wasn’t my school. I ended up like it much more than I thought I would.
  • The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill. This is another one I didn’t have to read but was assigned reading for my daughter for her history curriculum last year. We both really enjoyed and – yet again – I cried through part of it.

Have you ever read any of these?

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27 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was Assigned To Read In School”

  1. Pingback: Sunday Bookends: Changing leaves, more mysteries (yes again), and my parents’ cats – Boondock Ramblings

  2. We have quite a few assigned books in common. Except that I read 1984 and Lord of the Flies under the recommendation of my dad instead of school. I think besides being an older book from an award winning author, there is a requirement to be horrified or that it make us cry. I have mixed emotions on this.

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  3. Romeo and Juliet is the only one I remember being assigned to read though I’m familiar with most of the others. The last two are the only ones that are new to me. I don’t think a book that’ll make me cry is a good idea. Once I get started it’s hard to stop.

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  5. I love To Kill a Mockingbird. It probably is one of the best books of all time. Which is why my little guy’s middle name is Atticus – just such a solid, good man of a character. And I am sure you all know that Dill from that book is likely based on Truman Capote, which is interesting with the talk about In Cold Blood.

    Great list!!

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  7. I think I could get to 10 because I took so many lit classes in high school and college. I have read 1984, Of Mice and Men, Silas Marner, and A Tale of Two Cities. I adored To Kill a Mockingbird. My oldest granddaughter just read it for her English class. Have you read Go Set a Watchman? I’d love your take on it.

    https://marshainthemiddle.com/

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  10. I’d like to reread A Tale of Two Cities. I loved the story but I know I’d appreciate it more today. I read 1984 a few years ago and it was absolutely terrifying. I agree that To Kill a Mockingbird is an amazing book.

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  12. I’m not sure I could get my list to 10 either; I only remember a handful of them but sadly I don’t remember really loving any of them except perhaps Flowers for Algernon and yet I can’t for the life of me remember what it was about!

    I was an avid reader all my life so trying to keep straight the ones I was assigned and the ones I read “for fun” isn’t easy. Especially since I remember having a textbook where we would read snippets or entire chapters from books and if I enjoyed the snippet enough I would then (occasionally!) seek out the book to read in its entirety. I think that’s what happened with The Giver and perhaps even with the Adventures of Huck Finn. Each summer we were given a huge list of books and had to pick 2 to read over the summer– I remember picking The Scarlett Letter and The Old Man and Sea. I only picked the Old Man since it was the shortest book on the list by far but gosh I really hated that book so much! LOL. I remember reading Silas Mariner and To Kill a Mockingbird but have no idea if that was in middle school or high school. Weirdly I don’t remember reading anything but textbooks in college.

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  13. I remember so vividly being required to read “1984”, “A Brave New World” and “Animal Farm”. They opened my eyes. My late husband had to read “In Cold Blood” and he said it was a hard book to get through.

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  15. Well, my school years (even college) were long ago, but I do remember some of the books I read back then and they were all classics, I read even more that I hadn’t already read from my son’s AP English summer reading list when he was in high school. My next comment is going to sound unbelievable to those of us who are readers: my husband recently read an article written by a college professor who said that a huge majority of incoming freshmen in his class had NEVER read a book in its entirety before! WHAT??? What kind of education is that? And how do you make it into college never having read a single book before?

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  18. I read Hiroshima on my own in high school, and it began changing the way I thought about the Bomb — but in college my history class was assigned to debate the merits of dropping it, and when I got into the research and realized the Japanese were already willing to surrender, I was horrified.

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