Classical/School Must-Reads

[DixieGal]

This internet thing the young folks are talking about seems really great. Here it is, hours before dawn, and three people from the UK, Japan, and soggy soggy Alabama are discussing Milton. I'm happy with it.

[Idoine]

If you want some french books, I'd be glad to give you some of my classes titles !
By the way, I studied "1984" too !
And while in English class, "On the Road", by Kerouac...

[yekim54]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner (Read it so many times it's almost memorized!)

Only read it once, but it was spelled "Rime" in my book.

[Dr. Drib]

Inexcusable!

Wil, my good buddy (whoever you are), let me be the first to welcome you to MobileRead.

Usually, the entire mad cast of members and moderators will welcome a new member, but you slipped through the cracks and sank into the primordial slime.

So: I will be the first. Here goes: Welcome to MobileRead!


Don

[Sweetpea]

Hmmm, it's been ages, but I remember a few of the books I read (or supposed to have read...)

1984 by George Orwell, I think is a must-read, especially in this digital age.
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, I liked. Can't remember it too much though...

Animal Farm I never finished... Don't know, never really caught my attention
Lord of the Flies, same as Animal Farm, don't think I ever finished it. At least, I can't remember the end of it.
Catcher in the Rye (I believe it was spelled), same story

I never really liked poetry, not in my own language and not in English. I'd love to have a copy of an easily readable version of The Iliad and the Odyssey.

I know I must have read more, as our list had to include 10 books (and 20 in Dutch...)

[ahammer]

I remeber reading
candide by Voltaire in highschool. I remeber it been a good book. kind of like a cartoon in book form with comments about the world of it time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide

[BenG]

For Shakespeare we read Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar.
Others we read were
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Demian by Hermann Hesse
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Brave New World by Alduous Huxley
Walden Two by B.F. Skinner

[=X=]

Originally Posted by Wil

Hey there!

I'm curious as to what those here deem to be must-reads in terms of clasical books. Clasical being, mostly, what most public schools require their students to read throughout the years. I ask this question because, since I was home schooled, I never was required to read, so I feel I am quite behind! Any ideas?

Wil

Here in the US (California) we were not really required to read a predetermined set of books until 10/11/12 grades. However reading was mandatory and since grade 3 I recall writing book reports.

In 10th grade we read a lot of American literature like
John Steinbeck, "Grapes of Wrath", "Of Mice and Men"
Jack London, "The Mexican"
Ernest Hemingway - Many short stories
Edgar Allen Poe - Many short stories. (this guy is disturbing)
Many poets (but I feel asleep with my eyes open)

I chose Mythology and Shakespeare as English electives for 11th and 12th grade so I read Native American, Norse, Greek, Indian Mythology in 11th grade and Shakespeare for 12th.

Others where required to read (I did not read any of them)
Lord of the Files
Catcher and Rye
The Red Badge of Courage
The Scarlet Letter

=X=

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Totally agree. That's why I think that there's a "danger" of putting people off that kind of thing for life by making them read it in school. It's the kind of poem you have to read as an adult to truly appreciate, I think.

I think a great teacher makes all the difference - much better than relying on learned introductions or footnotes; you can interact with a teacher and ask really stupid questions.
Of course, there is the danger that some might be turned off for life; but there's also the joy of seeing something you initially loathe turn into something you treasure for the rest of your life, right in front of your disbelieving eyes.
I'm glad I did 'difficult' books at school.

[MelC]

We were in a weird academic stream at my high school - in 9th grade I remember reading Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and The Physicists (a play). grade 10 I skipped. Grade 11 was third world literature and included A House for Mr. Biswas, One Hundred Years of Solitude and some short stories by Borges. In Grade 12/OAC It was religious themed literature and satire - Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley, God's Grace by Bernard Malamud and A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. The good news is that it was a joy and a novelty to read some "classics" outside of school

Mel

[queentess]

Here are all the ones I remember reading:

The Iliad
The Odyssey
Beowulf
Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
Brave New World (Huxley)
Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)
Romeo & Juliet (Shakespeare)
Yellow Wallpaper (Gilman)
Things Fall Apart (Achebe)
...and tons of Greek/Roman mythology (ie, Medea)

EDIT: as I'm reading through the other posts, I realize how many I forgot. Red Badge of Courage, Hatchett (which I recommend - we read it in 5th grade and it still stays with me), The Lottery, To Kill a Mockingbird.... and I know I'm still missing a bunch.

[fiver]

Well I agree there are two different questions really: What we were required to read in school, and what are genuine classic? (subjective really). My experience in high school was that the best books were read in the GT and Advanced Placement classes.

Books I read for school (that I remember)

Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre
Native Son by Richard Wright
Othello, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest by William Shakespeare
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
Madame Bovay by Gustave Flaubert
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sea Wolf by Jack London
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Light in August by William Faulkner
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

I recommend most of these books as pretty safe bets although I personally never really cared for Tom Sawyer. I read it again recently after many years and, while mildly enjoyable, I think Twain wrote much better books than that. My favorite of his was Recollections of Joan of Arc. Faulkner, Joyce are a bit tough and I'm not sure I ever got much pleasure out of them although I like Joyce better than Faulkner. Gatsby is a bit of a bore although it does have some nice use of language. I always found Tolstoy incredibly readable and Ilyich is pretty short.

For a more adventurous read, definitely go with Jack London.

Hope this helps.

Michael

[wayspooled]

Welcome!

Let me just say - whoever has been homeschooling you has apparently done a fine job of getting you to think about learning "about learning" itself. You came here asked that question. That's a big dern deal.. So good on somebody!

I didn't get much from some of the required reading and if you're not going to discuss them, then 1984 and Animal Farm and Catcher in the Rye and others of that ilk are of less value I think.

This is what I'd recommend along with others suggestions.

The Declaration of Independence
Homer's The Odyssey and The Illiad
Poems of Milton
Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe
Marcus Aurelius The Meditations
Albert Camus The Stranger
Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Books (1 & 2)
Bulfinch's Mythology (3 vols/ages)
Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle
John Locke's Essays, particularly about Education
Francis Bacon - Essays Civil and Moral
Travels of Marco Polo
The Bhagavad-Gita
New Testament of the Bible (Mathew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts at least)
The Koran
Buddhist Writings (I don't remember what exactly I read)
Shakespeare's Richard III & Henry VI and as least 1 of the comedies
King Arthur and His Knights (pick a version, I've read the original Mallory but I don't recommend it to start, also enjoyed John Steinbeck's and Roger Green's versions as an adult and Howard Pyle's and Henry Frith's as a child.
John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest
Machiavelli's The Prince
Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary
William Golding's Lord of the Flies.
Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea
Aldous Huxley's Brave New world
Dorothy Sayer's essay The Lost Tools of Learning

And after those, I'll follow through with
Animal Farm
George Orwell's 1984
Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park
William Manchester's The Glory and The Dream
David McCullough's John Adams
David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest

And if you want an interesting little book about how
things work, read Eliayahu Goldratt's book The Goal
which is a novel approach to learning about
cause and effect.

[jgray]

Actually, in school, I was never required to read such classics as "1984" or "Brave New World". I did read them on my own when I was in junior high school, because one of my older brothers had left over copies from when they were required to read them. I enjoyed them both.

I was an avid reader early on. In both junior high and high school, I managed to read every book of interest to me in the school libraries. I also frequently took the bus to the main library in downtown Baltimore. Also, my father had a partial set of classic literature for our use.

I read many of the Mark Twain classics, some Dickens, some Shakespeare, lots of Jules Verne, all the Sherlock Holmes stories, lots of Isaac Asimov (non fiction and SF), quite a bit of Edgar Allen Poe, some Jack London, too many to remember. I also read large quantities of non fiction, as I was interested in science, technology, most everything.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I think a great teacher makes all the difference - much better than relying on learned introductions or footnotes; you can interact with a teacher and ask really stupid questions.
Of course, there is the danger that some might be turned off for life; but there's also the joy of seeing something you initially loathe turn into something you treasure for the rest of your life, right in front of your disbelieving eyes.
I'm glad I did 'difficult' books at school.

Here we like to joke that children like to read until they've finished (our variety of) High School... I know it has been changed (a lot) these 20 years, but back then, you had to read 20 books for Dutch, and 10 for each foreign language you took (of which one was mandatory, so you had to read at least 30 books). I choose English as my foreign langauge, and the selection of English books was rather wide. The most important part was that you read those books and understood what they were about.

For Dutch though, you had to read 5 from that period, 5 from that, etc. (ranging from 1600 till now, and those older "books" were in Middle Dutch verse form mostly). And those had to be from the "literature list". All of them horribly dull with quadruple meanings, very difficult language often, and then make a book report on each and every one of them. And all in two years (the last two years which were actually 1 1/2 years, as the exams would be in May). And at the end of those two years, you'd do your exam, which had an oral part for Dutch where the teacher would saw you through with questions about books you completely forgotten about...

Originally Posted by jgray

Actually, in school, I was never required to read such classics as "1984" or "Brave New World". I did read them on my own when I was in junior high school, because one of my older brothers had left over copies from when they were required to read them. I enjoyed them both.

Not for English, but for Dutch we had to...

There were some books I really liked, though, from the Dutch literature list:

Max Havelaar by Multatuli (wikisource)
Erik, or the Little Insect Book by Godfried Bomans
Little John, by Frederik van Eeden
The Forbidden Realm by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff
The destruction of Hyperion by Hugo Raes (a Flemish author).