Books you had to read... that you actually found interesting?

I know that in elementary school, I read How to Eat Fried Worms, Maniac Magee, Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days, Marvin Redpost, The Chocolate Touch, and lots of others that were (mostly) quite enjoyable. We also read Number the Stars and Farewell to Manzanar, which I didn't like, and The Giver, which I found too much of a Mind Screw to comment on at the time. I think we read The Phantom Tollbooth too, because I once found a copy in the garage, but I don't remember anything from it.

As I said, we had virtually no reading in high school at all. I don't even remember any other students doing that much leisure reading, except one weird student in my art class read Helter Skelter, and the goth girls in my class who read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac comics. I read the first four Harry Potter books on my own because I got caught up in the trend before realizing said books were just doing nothing for me.

Given how little reading I did in high school, I'm surprised I'm not the kind who thinks that poor literacy is kewl.

Give The Phantom Tollbooth another chance.

There are quite a few books I was made to read in school that I still enjoy. The Giver, Centennial, The Great Train Robbery, The Scarlet Pimpernel, etc.

In elementary school I enjoyed The Giver. In high school, I disliked a lot of the books (I think to a large extent because of the way we read them - reading a couple chapters a weak and dissecting the book looking for literary devices doesn't facilitate engagement with the story), but I liked Animal Farm well enough because of the political/historical context - happily, my English teacher that year was a historian - as well as 1984 and Their Eyes Were Watching God. I loved a lot of the poetry that I read for my Advanced Placement English 12 course, and I'd never have read it otherwise. Also read Beowulf (which is itself a form of poetry) for that course and loved it.

I don't remember whether I read The Chrysalids for school or not - I think a lot of classes do in Canada, and I remember the story, but I don't remember studying it in any particular class. I re-read it a few years ago and enjoyed it massively, far more than I had on the first read, largely due to having discovered the X-Men films in the interim and being able to draw comparisons.

The Turn of the Screw is one of the best suspense books ever written and it's on the shorter side to boot.

The Death of a Salesman was really interesting. I think it's still applicable even today.

War and Peace (more then half of it ) because our teacher was nice enough to tell us to skip all the historical stuff and focus on the historical fiction stuff instead.

1984 was good, but I think Brave New World is more applicable with the way society is going. Brave New World hits a lot closer to home then 1984 did.

edited 18th Sep '14 8:12:13 AM by ObsidianFire

Henry Putter. I was peer pressure-d into it.

Not quite books, but the stories 'The Raven' and 'The Tell-tale Heart' by Edgar Allen Poe. I also enjoyed The Giver.

Basically, every book I ever "had" to read ended up being interesting, to say the least.

Last year in Year 7 (Aussie high schooler here) I had to read The Giver. This year, I'm reading A Bridge to Wiseman's Cove... which is actually a Guilty Pleasure of mine.

I liked Fahrenheit 451 a lot. I don't remember much anymore, but I do remember a conversation about pores that I found fascinating. And I also really liked the idea of a traveling community devoted to telling stories and remembering lost books.

My freshman-year English teacher in high school had us read Walter Lord's ''A Night to Remember'', a book that usually isn't part of the high school English canon, but I loved it. It's about the sinking of the Titanic, mostly made up of survivors' testimonies. I was surprised at how engaging it is, since on the surface it's just a blow-by-blow of what happened. Straight retellings of historical events are usually so dry...

edited 17th Jun '15 11:11:27 PM by vampireweekday

Surprisingly enough, I actually liked The Great Gatsby when I read it in my junior year of high school.

Also, I liked Bridge To Terabithia when I read it in 5th grade.

edited 1st Mar '15 7:27:29 PM by PrincessGwen

Bridge disappointed me because the edition we got had a blurb that misled me to believe that it was ACTUAL fantasy. Otherwise, it was alright.

Adding to all this Catch Twenty Two.

edited 2nd Mar '15 8:54:35 AM by BluBeriPi

The Giver, 1984, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Of Mice And Men (I cried), The Diary of Anne Frank, Walden

I read it having just seen the movie trailers and was under the same impression. I was furious that there was no actual fantasy world, plus that ending....

I had to read "As I lay Dying" this last semester and I liked it a lot, actually.

An Inspector Calls, by J.B. Priestley. It's one of the best plays written in the English language during the 20th century,

There was a book by this author called Neal Shusterman in my summer reading list.

It was the beginning of a trilogy.

And my reading life was never the same again.

I read it about 3 years before the movie came out, so the movie didn't spoil me.

I remember seeing the 1985 movie version in class, though. It was laughably bad.

I liked Holes, Animal Farm and The Hobbit. I hated The Simple Gift and Sophie's World.

I liked Phantom Tollbooth, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Outsiders, Great Expectations, The Iliad, and The Odyssey.

You had to read C.S Lewis? What sort of school did you go to? I went to several religious schools as a kid and I didn't get told to read any of that stuff.

I did read it for fun because funny talking beavers and treacherous fauns.

I went to a public school but it was in 2000.

I'm considerably older than you, which is probably one explanation.

Yeah maybe that could be it. I had to read it in 6th grade.

My nephew had to read it in 3rd grade.

edited 11th Mar '15 7:34:52 PM by Halberdier17

My parents read us those books as kids. They saved The Space Trilogy for when we were in high school. The various Mind Screws in those books were great.

edited 14th Mar '15 6:11:01 PM by ObsidianFire

I read Narnia in a children's lit class in college.