Books I've Read for School
Submitted by AJDaGreat on Sat, 11/22/2003 - 12:55
Tags:
- Books I Loved Reading
- Animal Farm - George Orwell (Hilarious and chilling communism allegory.)
- Beowulf - anonymous (A time capsule of the past. Very interesting story.)
- Candide - Voltaire (Hilarious social satire; Voltaire seems to cover all the bases of people to make fun of.)
- The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer (It's all about the miller)
- Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (Maybe just a book about a kid who curses and complains a lot, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't keep me interested. I do think there's more to it than the above statement, though.)
- the poems of Catullus (Passionate Roman poet. Sometimes funny, sometimes caustic, usually insightful.)
- A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (Such an iconic book. I could've told you the story long before I read it)
- Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller (Heartbreaking left-wing tale with well-defined, fascinating characters)
- The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee William (Awesome portrait of the characters with great bizarre twists in this memory play.)
- The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (Amazing, amazing book, probably the definitive American novel.)
- Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Of course.)
- Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (Has a lot to say, and I agree with every word. Imperialism is bad!)
- Henry IV, Part One - William Shakespeare (Great history from Shakespeare. Interesting parallels between the characters. Often very funny as well.)
- 1984 - George Orwell (Brilliantly depressing, often horrifying, always engaging)
- Othello - William Shakespeare (Probably my favorite Shakespeare play)
- The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien (Shocking book that mixes reality and fiction. Brilliant.)
- To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (One of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Atticus Finch rules.)
- Twelfth Night - William Shakespeare (Insane, twisted comedy that I really enjoyed)
- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee (Great bittersweet, tragocomedic play)
- Books I Was Lukewarm About
- All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque (I don't really remember this book very well, but at the time, I think I thought it would fall into this category.)
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (Some of this book was exciting and witty, but man, there were long stretches of time that were agonizingly annoying. It starts off very strong, but I hated the Duke and the Dauphin, and with each subsequent page that they were on, I wished they would just die even more. This overlong book could've really used better editing.)
- A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen (Pretty good up until it becomes feminist literature. I don't believe Ibsen thought he was writing feminist literature, but I also don't believe the sudden 180-degree character shift which one character undergoes. It seems forced, and thus, the character becomes not a character but a symbol for something in a social-problem play. Sad.)
- Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott (This book was mildly interesting, but come on - it's an allegory for geometry.)
- Lord of the Flies - William Golding (When stuff was happening, this book was interesting, but I grew very impatient waiting for something to happen. Just build the damn fire already!)
- Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare (Okay, but not one of the Bard's best)
- The Odyssey - Homer (A good story, if a bit repetitive, but I couldn't really get into it very much.)
- The Other Side of the River - Alex Kotlowitz (Racism is bad. Actually, this was a fairly interesting account of the difference in perspective of two towns. Kotlowitz's problem was that he had spent so much time doing research on the case that he doesn't know when to stop talking about it. He takes three hundred pages to admit he's still clueless about what happened)
- The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne (Like below, the style irritated me, though I liked the characters)
- A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (While I loved the plot of this book, the antiquated, wordy style hurt it a lot for me. But hey, I did read this one in 9th grade, and a lot can change in 4 years. Maybe if I revisited it, I would like it more. Then again, maybe not.)
- Books I Hated Reading
- The Aeneid - Vergil (Thinly-disguised propaganda. Aeneas is the most boring hero in the history of literature. He is not a character. He has no personality traits. Every single important decision he makes is based on the gods simply telling him what to do. Vergil lacks the sheer creativity of Homer's epics; Vergil is just plain boring. After Hamlet, this may be the most widely read non-religious work in existence, and I'm simply baffled why. It's not any good. Still, it's better than Horace - see below.)
- The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver (Honestly, why would you assign this book to an all-male school?)
- Founding Brothers - Joseph J. Ellis (I no longer fear death, since I survived reading this book)
- the poems of Horace (Awful propagandist who outright states his message in every poem he writes. Ever heard of subtlety, Horace? Also, stop using imagery involving an urn; it bothers me.)
- The Last Shot - Darcy Frey (Overlong, tedious book about inner-city kids playing basketball. Jeez, between this and "The Other Side of the River", documentary books don't seem to fare well with me.)
- Morality Play - Barry Unsworth (I don't remember anything that happened in this book. In fact, I don't think I did five minutes after finishing it)
- The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (I'm not a Hemingway fan, and this book is booooring.)
Author Comments:
I'm not talking about how supposedly great these books are, only how much I enjoyed reading them.
Cloned From:
I hated The poems of Horace myself and Beowulf it seems as if I study it everywhere I go. Middle school,High school,College I just want it to leave me alone!
Isn't Horace annoying? He always writes about the same things too: golden mean and carpe diem. That's pretty much all there is to it.
That said, I did like his 3.9, the one where the guy and the girl are broken up but each want to get back together in the end. Maybe because he didn't overstate a banal theme in that one.
BTW, have you read John Gardner's Grendel? Great book - it's a different take on Beowulf, told from Grendel's persepective.
Yes I have read Grendel. I read it for my Mythology class and it made me sleepy.
That seems like pretty standard high school stuff. I definitely hated Beowulf.
"I no longer fear death, since I survived reading this book."
I haven't read the book in question, but that's an awesome quote.
Thanks! :-)