One thing that always surprises me when I see people here mention their school reading lists is that most are made up almost entirely of classic novels and poetry.
I suppose it’s a bit different for the Americans and English when the Western Canon includes a lot of your best works, but in my experience (Australia), the curriculum included more Australian texts (eg. The Rip by Robert Drewe, The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham) or less obvious picks (eg. I’m Not Scared by Niccolò Ammaniti, Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard).
I would say I only read 5 classics in high school (and they were 2 novellas and 3 plays, no full length novels), whereas people here seemed to have huge lists of 20-25.
Curious how standard or non-standard my experience was
Edit: fwiw I don’t know how typical this was for Australians either
by M1SSION101