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This is going to be a much longer list than the one I had a few weeks ago. I liked to loved most of the assigned reads in school, including:
1. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
2. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (but I thought these two should have listened to their parents and not been so impulsive or dramatic!)
3. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
4. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
5. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
7. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
8. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (even though it made me permanently suspicious of books about beloved pets and what will probably happen to those poor animals by the final scene)
9. The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe
10. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
11. Walden or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau (although I wanted a sequel where his poor mother went off into the woods to find herself while Henry stayed home to do all of the washing, mending, gardening, and cooking for once!)
12. Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1) by Chinua Achebe
13. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson (I wish we had lived in the same era. I think she and I could have been great friends).
14. Selected Poems by Langston Hughes (I feel the exact same way about Mr. Hughes and wish I could have been his friend, too).
I read Red Fern to all my fifth grade classes. Quite a few tears were spilled when…well, you know.
I’d definitely have befriended Langston and Emily.
Very cool, Deb!
There’re some great book on your list, Lydia! Diary of a Young Girl is such an important read. Emily Dickinson is one of my favourite poets.
Thank you, George!
You were lucky to read these in school. I have read most of them later.
Thank you! I’m glad you were able to read them later, but too bad you weren’t introduced to them as a teen.
I have read most of these… and the others are on my TBR list. Fun fact: you can sing most of Dickinson’s poems to the theme song from Gilligan’s Island or The House of the Rising Sun. 🙂
Oh, too funny! I’m going to have to try that sometime.
Where the Red Fern Grows, Bridge to Terabithia, A Separate Peace… Yeah, they were very well done books, but I still file ’em under “Hi let’s traumatize the school children”. I did have a teacher who read us The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles as we were waiting during carpool, though — that was fun.
Heh, exactly.
I’ll have to look that book up!
If you liked Love in the Time of Cholera, I hope you’ve read A Hundred Years of Solitude since then. It’s his best.
My 3rd grade teacher read Where The Red Fern Grows to our class, so I’ve always loved that book. I also had to read #s 2, 4 and 7 in school…and I actually liked them. Fun post. 😀