Any book you read in high school, college, or grad school that stood out to you as something special that you knew you’d always remember. I’m looking for those unexpected assigned readings that have stuck with you forever. And if you feel like it, tell me why!
Short stories/poems also accepted as long as it’s something you were once assigned to read.
by CryptographerLost357
14 Comments
*The Cay* in 4th grade.
In 8th grade, we had to memorize Ozymandius, by Percy Blythe Shelley, and I have never forgotten it. And it’s lovely and true and pretty much eternally relevant
The Westing Game (6th grade)
Fahrenheit 451 (11th grade)
Old man and the sea
Elementary school, My Side of the Mountain- Jean Craighead George. Just something about it. I still love it so much!
Leo Tolstoy “War and Peace”. There were handful of students who managed to read the whole book at school. I was among them. That book came across as something which comprises a lot of ascpects of life: war, love, society. I guess it was 10th grade.
Are the Japanese Really Inscrutable by Keiko Kimura – book review i made in college, a little insight to the the Japanese culture
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Pauli Freire – also in college a book report i did in Sociology. It’s an old book but I guess still very timely
Bless me Ultima by Rodolfo Anaya. My fifth grade teacher read it to us and it has stuck with me through the years
Flowers for Algernon
Lord of the Flies
Where the Red Fern Grows
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
High school, The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende.
Then in college I was introduced to the short stories of Flannery O’Connor and adored them; All That Rises Must Converge, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Good Country People, etc.
Going back to elementary school, a parent read my 4th grade class the first two Harry Potter books and I had never loved anything more, which said a lot because I already loved reading. I now struggle with JK Rowling but I cannot deny the effect that series had on me.
I’m trying to think of middle school. We read TKAM in 8th grade, and I liked it, but I wouldn’t classify it the same as I do the others. I don’t remember much else I read in middle school.
{{ The bean tree Barbara Kingsolver}}
In high school I read Les Miserable by victor Hugo which was translated by Charles wilbour. What a read!
“The Bet” by Anton Checkhov in 8th grade.
*Slaughterhouse-Five* by Kurt Vonnegut in college.
Elementary School – *A Wrinkle In Time*
Middle School – *The Hate U Give*
High School – *The Kite Runner*