Classics Without All the Class discussion

Tom Sawyer. To Kill a Mockingbird. The outsiders. Romeo and Juliet. Fahrenheit 451. Canterbury Tales. Beowulf. Grendel. As it was in upstate NY although I think it varies from school to school

In high school I studied almost only French literature: a lot of Moliere (Le Misanthrope, Dom Juan, le Malade imaginaire, Tartuffe), Hugo (mostly poetry: Les Contemplations and les Châtiments), Maupassant (his mediocre novel une Vie and his amazing short stories), Flaubert (Madame Bovary and l'Education Sentimentale but I had to enter a prep school to study Bouvard et Pécuchet), Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal, Rimbaud's Illuminations, my favourite book La princesse de Clèves by Madame de la Fayette, absurd theater (Sartre, Ionesco) ... Weirdly enough, I never studied Rabelais. In my English class I studied the Buddha of Suburbia, a book that I hated. This year in prep school I'm studying The great Gatsby, Mansfield's the Garden Party, Alex Haley's Roots, and many in the future that I don't know yet. In French lit I'm studying unkown authors: Vivant Denon, Madame Riccoboni, etc. I'm disappointed to study few foreign books. The only ones are The sorrows of young Werther by Goethe, many from Antiquity, Kundera's essays (which doesn't even count since he is naturalized French).

Oh yeah, Travis reminds me that I studied Fahrenheit 451 in high school, too. I didn't really like it, and I'm wondering if 1984 is better? And I forgot Candide which is strange since I got it for an oral exam.

How bizarre. ..I can't remember a single title that we read in high school. ...although I know I must have done.

I was an English major in college....and then I remember readingvthe romantics (Wordsworth, Shelley), which I didn't care for. I also read women's lit and African American lit....both of which I loved. Early American lit (nonfiction) was tedious, but we got to Hawthorne who I did enjoy.

I'll admit it....for an English major, I am NOT well read.

Rhonda wrote: "How bizarre. ..I can't remember a single title that we read in high school. ...although I know I must have done.

I was an English major in college....and then I remember readingvthe romantics (Wor..."

Ok I don't feel too bad then, I can't remember what I read on my own vs what we were assigned. E.g. The Great Gatsby. I know I read Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet for school because I hated it. While I love the Bard, I hate reading his works. Way better to just watch it. I also remember reading A Tale of Two Cities my senior year and The Diary of Anne Frank my freshman year.

I only remember a few of what I read in high school, but those that I do remember were Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, The Jungle, 1984, Romeo and Juliet, and some short stories such as The Lottery. However, I remember my personal reading much better - pretty much nothing but Stephen King! :)

Rhonda wrote: "How bizarre. ..I can't remember a single title that we read in high school. ...although I know I must have done.

I was an English major in college....and then I remember readingvthe romantics (Wor..."

As an English major in college, my favorite works to read were always women's lit and African American lit as well! I still have urges to reread some Toni Morrison. ;)

High School:
Shakespeare's Hamlet & Romeo and Juliet
The Crucible
Raisin in the Sun
The Great Gatsby
Oliver Twist
The Scarlet Letter
1984
Ethan Frome
That Was Then, This Is Now
The Giver
Across Five Aprils

That's about all I can remember, but I read so much on my own it's hard to know which was for school. I was a Literature major in college and we read a lot.

High school was rather a long time ago for me (mid-70s in California) but I remember that I did NOT read any Dickens or Shakespeare. We did NOT read 1984 or Animal Farm or Brave New World. I think we read some Ray Bradbury. To Kill A Mockingbird, maybe. Most likely The Great Gatsby. Definitely recall A Separate Peace and Alice in Wonderland and some Steinbeck. For what's its worth, in HS I was considered an honors student; when I think back on what I read I see that had a pretty low bar.

Even in college as an English major, we read/watched precious little Shakespeare (perhaps only in Shakespeare class), and not a word of Dickens. I have (bad) memories of my Romantics class (Wordsworth, ugh) and American Lit (The Awakening, ugh!). I did take an entire semester of Steinbeck in college - heavenly, especially considering we were able to take a field trip to Monterey and Salinas and see some of his haunts.

Edited to add The Diary of Anne Frank, The Outsiders and Lord of the Flies after seeing some other comments. Yes, we did read those. I don't know how I forgot The Outsiders as I still consider that one of my favorite books and I recently read and discussed it with my children!

I'm also drawing a blank trying to remember what I read. Thinking back I think my educational experience might have been lacking. In grade 9 we read The Chrysalids and Romeo and Juliet. In grade 10 it was To Kill a Mockingbird and Julius Caesar. Grade 11 I think was Catcher in the Rye and Macbeth. Grade 12 was more interesting with Stone Angel, The Wars, The Glass Menagerie, Heart of Darkness, King Lear, and Hamlet

I gradutated in 2008 and the average reading level in my class, embarrassingly enough, was 4th grade (mine was not that low, I assure you). With that being said, not a lot was expected of us. I remember reading Julius Caesar, Romeo & Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, some Poe, and a variety of short stories that I cannot remember except for some stories by Flannery O'Connor.

My senior year we had a new Advanced Comp teacher who was not aware of the lack of education we were suppose to receive. She was wonderful! We read The Color Purple, The Things They Carried, and The Fountainhead for our required reading and then required us to read I think three other books on top of that. We were supposed to read more that year, but sadly, parents complained that it was too much work for their children. I had little faith in humanity at that time in my life, to say the least haha!

It's been a while since I've been in high school lol. So, naturally I cant remember too much of what I read.
I do remember a lot of Shakespeare(Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, etc), The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird. I guess all the usual stuff. I remember there being poetry, what kind and who wrote it, I don't know. I think Walt Whitman was probably thrown in there somewhere.

I have been out of high school since 1999, I remember reading:
A Tale of Two Cities
Madame Bovary
The Crucible
The Scarlet Letter
All's Quiet in the Western Front
A Seperate Peace
The Catcher in the Rye
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Romeo and Juliet
The Odyssey
The Color Purple
The Grapes of Wrath
Black Boy
Huckleberry Finn
The Great Gatsby
The Grapes of Wrath
Of Mice and Men

It's been a long time for me too. The two that stood out and that I remember well today are My Ántonia and Heart of Darkness.

I'm looking up to the others' answers and it reminds me of some books: I studied The Odyssey, just like Wendy. By the way, I'm not sure why teachers always chose the Odyssey rather than The Iliad, I personally prefered the second one. Some great characters are displayed, the military strategy is interesting, the anecdotes about famous people and the religious myths are fascinating.

Lucky me, I was on the honors track in high school so I got to read actual books. The other classes only had excerpts from a textbook. I studied (and loved, mostly) Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Heart of Darkness(not so much love for this one), 1984, The Human Stain, The Pearl, The Hobbit, The Catcher in the Rye, and Lord of the Flies.

It's been a few years since I was in highschool, and since I am portuguese, the reading plan here is very diferent. We only read portuguese literature, which includes:

Os Lusíadas, Luís de Camões
Mensagem, Fernando Pessoa
Memorial do Convento, José Saramago
Felizmente há luar, Luís de Sttau Monteiro
Os Maias, Eça de Queirós

I'm sorry, I can't remember the names of the books in English. Some of these are considered classics in portuguese literature.

I've been reading some other comments and it sparked some memories. I also had to read the Crucible, the Canterbury Tales, The Grapes of Wrath and the Iliad. I was in Honor's English so, we read a lot kore than the other English classes, probably went into a little more depth about them too.

I can't recall which I have read for myself and which for school, but some if the ones I do remember reading for school are:

To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee
Great Expectations, Dickens
The Kite Runner, Hosseini
1984, Orwell
Huck Finn, Twain
Tom Sawyer, Twain
The Once and Future King, White
Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck
Tortilla Flat, Steinbeck
The Crucible, Miller
All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy
Heart of Darkness, Conrad
Beowulf
and a lot of Shakespeare

When it came to poetry we focused of Metaphysical poets and the Romantics, Blake being my personal favorite!

I can remember reading The Merchant Of Venice, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, Crabbe by William Bell, Catcher in the Rye, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glace Bay Miners Museum by Sheldon Currie...
That's all I can remember.

Alex wrote: "Rebeca wrote: "It's been a few years since I was in highschool, and since I am portuguese, the reading plan here is very diferent.

Hi Rebeca, one of the reasons I started this thread was to get in..."

Hi Alex, I have those two books on my to-read list, also! Can't imagine how the translations turned out to be, because Pessoa and Saramago are very unique writers.

I can remember reading The Scarlet Letter, To Kill A Mockingbird, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men, Our Town, Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, and Deathwatch in high school. There were probably a few more though.

Shakespeare was a must. They actually let us choose our own literature some of the time, given that it is in the bounds of the list they provide us. Austen, Shelley, Steinbeck, and Dickens are a few of the many options given to us.

I went to high school in Ecuador. I don't remember all of the titles, but some of them were: Pedro Páramo (Juan Rulfo), La familia de Pascual Duarte (Camilo José Cela), Doll House (Ibsen), The Mother (Ibsen?), El Otoño del Patriarca (Gabriel García Márquez).
In my English class I remember reading Beowulf, Macbeth, and The Canterbury Tales.

Angie- pleased to meet another Toni Morrisson fan. Which of her novels did you read? "Beloved" and "The Bluest Eye" are among my top ten fav novels.

Graduated 2007... I remember

Romeo and juliet
Of mice and men
Animal farm
To kill a mocking bird
Lord of the flies
Yellow raft on Blue water
Native Son
Hamlet
Grapes of Wrath
Beowulf
The Odyssey

I graduated in 2008 but I was in AP English for 2 years ...
Of Mice and Men
To Kill a Mockingbird
Hamlet
Beowulf
Romeo and Juliet
The Odyssey
The Things They Carried
Poisonwood Bible ( LOVED IT )
The Great Gatsby
In Cold Blood ( ALSO LOVED IT )
Heart of Darkness
Night
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Wuthering Heights
Metamorphosis
Tess of D Ubervilles ( Enjoyed it )
Crime and Punishment ( LOVED IT )
A lot of Faulkner

Wow I never realized how much I read in those classes.... Sorry if this list is too long!

Like a lot of you, it's hard for me to remember what I read in high school that was required or on my own; same for college. If dd read:
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
To Kill a Mockingbird
Hamlet
Beowulf
Grendel
Animal Farm
Brave New World
The Great Gatsby
Romeo and Juliet
V by Thomas Pynchon
The Scarlet Letter
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Crucible
Macbeth
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility

And more I can't remember. (Not that I can remember many of these either)

I graduated in 2002 and I can only remember just a few we read (or that I most likely just read the spark notes for):
The Great Gatsby
To Kill a Mockingbird
House of Seven Gables
Lord of the Flies
1984
All the Kings Men
Native Son
A Raisin in the Sun
J.B.
Beowulf
The Hobbit
The Divine Comedy (Dante's Inferno)
The Odyssey/The Iliad
I also remember reading some ancient greek plays such as Antigone and Oedipus the King and Shakespeare

I did graduate from High school in 1993. I read the Gallic wars of Julius caesar, Vergil , Cicero , Plato and Socrates.

I moved around a lot when I was in high school. I actually attended three different high schools in three different states in four years so my memory is sketchy. I actually remember my middle school reading a little better.

I remember reading, The Great Gatsby, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Giver, Great Expectations, Beowulf, The Canterberry Tales and A Separate Peace (which I really liked).

Sorry, I spelled Canterbury wrong.

Also Diary of Anne Frank and Lord of the Flies

I think it's a bit different for me than some of you others, as I'm Hungarian. Our reading list consisted of loads of Hungarian classics (some may be available in tanslations to other languages, but I don't know for sure which ones), and some pieces from international classic literature. I also used to take a literature specialization, and I don't really remember which readings were the spec readings, and which ones were the basic ones. We've had readings from lots of authors from all around the world, and we didn't have too many English works as compulsory readings.
What I remember:
-the Holy Bible (not like we had to read the whole Bible, just parts)
-as a kid: Erich Kästner books, The Little Prince
-Shakespeare dramas
-classic Greek dramas (Antigone, Oedipus for example) and The Iliad and The Odyssey
-lots of Russian literature (Crime and Punishment, Anegin, Chekhov short stories and Uncle Vanya, The Death of Ivan Ilyich)
-The Wild Duck from Ibsen
-Kafka's The Metamorphosis
-Thomas Mann's Mario and the Magician
-Decameron
-Moliere plays
-parts of Dante's Divine Comedy
-Candide from Voltaire, and excerpts from Rousseu's Work
-E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Golden Pot
-Goethe's Faust and The Sorrows of Yong Werther

I left high school in 1990 and remember reading To Kill A Mockingbird, Macbeth, Animal Farm and Cider with Rosie

1st Year (generic American english class): Romeo & Juliet, Of Mice and Men, The Giver, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, etc.

2nd Year (World Literature): Zenzele, The Good Earth, Animal Farm, In Time of the Butterflies, The Kite Runner (I don't remember if I read this for school or for pleasure...)

3rd Year (American Lit): The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Huckleberry Finn, Little Women, Grapes of Wrath

4th Year (British Lit): Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, Hamlet, Canterbury Tale, Brave New World, The Handmaid's Tale, Beowulf, Lord of the Flies

Alex wrote: "Dorottya wrote: "I think it's a bit different for me than some of you others, as I'm Hungarian. Our reading list consisted of loads of Hungarian classics (some may be available in translations to o..."
I don't want to make you dizzy by quoting Alex who quotes Dorottya, but I agree, you had a great list of books! I wish I read Dante of Kafka at school! I'm also surprised that you studied Le petit prince: this is wonderful, but I didn't know it was that famous in others countries. Also, I found it great that you read Boccacio's Decameron. In France we study a rewriting of this work by a French author, Marguerite de Navarre, and her book is entiltled the Heptameron (as there are 70 short stories and not 100).

I read the basics of course and a few others. What I read was : Lord of the Flies, Great Gatsby, Mice and Men, Romeo and Juliet, Hunger Games, Summer of my German Solider, Fahrenheit 451, Last Babylon, Kite Runner and a few others ...

I went to a Christian high school, so a lot of "classics" were not permitted because of "questionable" language or scenarios. We had one family get Mark Twain banned because it said the "n" word (I didn't read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn until just a couple years ago).
We read:
Animal Farm (jr. high)
Much Ado About Nothing (a favorite - and go figure, it WAS allowed...)
The Chosen
The Great Gatsby
Diary of Anne Frank
The Yearling
Oliver Twist
Romeo & Juliet
Cyrano De Bergerac

There were probably others too, but I don't remember all (it was a while ago).

I wish I could believe it has changed, but from what I see here, very little has. Mine?
Hard Times Dickens
Kipps HG Wells
Julius Caesar Sorry, forget author (some Elizabethan chap with a frilly necktie)
Anthology early twentieth Century Poets (Rupert Brook et al)
Animal Farm Orwell
Dissertation upon Roast Pig Charles Lamb
Paradise Lost Milton
The Pardoners Tale (I think) Chaucer.

That was across 'O' and 'A' Level. There may have been others, but they escape me.

We didn't read much at my high school, the ones I remember are:
-Monster (my high school could have been considered "inner city" so I think we were supposed to relate to this)
-The Crucible
-The Great Gatsby
-Wuthering Heights

We read a few misc. short stories, but this is basically all I remember!

This is a very interesting topic, kudos to Alex! It's really amazing to see how the books vary in all the different countries.
I'm Italian and I went to a particular kind of high school (called Liceo) where the curriculum is centred around literature and classics, so we had to study history of Italian literature and had to read a lot of Italian authors and also some Greek tragedies and Latin texts (sometimes only excerpts). These are the ones I remember reading (excluding the ones we only read excerpts of):
Dante's Divina Commedia (almost all of it)
Some of Boccaccio's Decameron
Manzoni The betrothed
Palomar, The cloven viscount and The nonexistent knight by Italo Calvino
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The leopard
Pirandello's The late Mattia Pascal
Leonardo Sciascia's The day of the owl
Brecht's Life of Galileo
Ugo Foscolo The last letters of Jacopo Ortis
Carlo Emilio Gadda Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via merulana (I don't even know if there's a translation of this)
Medea (both the one by Euripides and the one by Seneca. We also read Medea by Christa Wolf cause our teacher was a interested in feminist studies)
Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy
Our literature teacher was also very fond of french literature so we read
Voltaire's Candide,
Diderot's The nun and Jacques the fatalist.
Beckett's Waiting for Godot
We also had to read the first volume of the Recherche by Proust (which at 17 years old was pure torture).
Like Dorottya we didn't have English works as compulsory reading, our English teacher only made us study a history of English literature textbook, some parts of Hamlet and Macbeth and only two actual novels: Animal Farm and Mrs Dalloway. This is probably why I've been reading mainly English classics ever since. I had to make up for it =D

Fascinating that 'Waiting for Godot' should be in your list! In such distinguished company too. It just doesn't seem to fit somehow!

Why not? Isn't Beckett "distinguished"? =D anyway, we went to see the play with my class so that's probably why we had to read it.

Since high school was in the 60's for me, I don't remember a lot, but I do recall Romeo and Juliet, Anne Frank, Ethan Crime, and oddly, Shane...the western story that was made into the movie. Also Incredible Journey about the dogs and cat that found their way home. Those were about a jillion books ago.

That was supposed to be Ethan Frome

I actually remember a good chunk of them 10 years later.

The Outsiders
Animal Farm
Romeo and Juliet
The Hobbit
Jane Eyre
A Separate Peace
Lord of the Flies
Great Expectations
A Tale of Two Cities
Hiroshima
The Good Earth
Hamlet
Macbeth
Glass Menagerie
Scarlet Letter
Return of the Native
The Crucible
Great Gatsby
To Kill a Mockingbird
I also remember there being some more Shakespeare and a lot of Poe's work

This is odd. Outside of the Shakespeare, I don't really remember what else was assigned. I wonder why this is? Am I blocking traumatic memories?

This is what I do remember.....

Romeo and Juliet
Julius Caesar
Hamlet
Macbeth

The Old Man and the Sea
A Separate Peace
1984
Animal Farm
Great Expectations

Laura wrote: "Like a lot of you, it's hard for me to remember what I read in high school that was required or on my own; same for college. If dd read:
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
To Kill a Mockingbird
Hamlet
Be..."

I thought I was the odd ball out for having read "The Witch of Backbird Pond." Yay for someone else reading it. It still remains to this day one of my all time favorite books.

The only other book I "had" to read was "Bless Me Ultima." Another beautiful book.
Most of the time we were left to choose our own books. When pushed to look into Shakespear, I read "Taming of the Shrew."

Tracy wrote: "Laura wrote: "Like a lot of you, it's hard for me to remember what I read in high school that was required or on my own; same for college. If dd read:
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
To Kill a Mocking..."

Oh I remember The Witch of Blackbird Pond too. Great book. Also A Separate Peace and Black Boy. I am remembering a lot more now that people are mentioning them by name. I think a lot of ours short stories out of textbooks also.