A Modern Reading List for High School?

[Jeff W]

1. The Hobbit
2. 1984
3. Dracula
4. Frankestein
5. Othello
6. Much Ado About Nothing
7. Notes from the Underground
8. Metamorphosis
9. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
10. To Kill a Mockingbird

An eclectic mix of styles, genres,etc... All works of high literary merit that I personally enjoyed. None of the works is impenetrable for a 9th-10th grader.

[Triumph36]

of the lists I like SoloAJ's the best - I think people are getting a tad idealistic thinking high schoolers will read Dostoyevsky.

As for short stories, I suppose it's trite thanks to Donnie Darko, but the Destructors is pretty good. Araby is a terrific little story and relates to childhood exceptionally well. Hamlet is also one of the most 'adolescent' Shakespeare plays - the Prince is basically Holden Caulfield with murderous rage.

[J.Brown]

AJ,

i am jealous. i would love to start over and get to read alot of the stuff you are going to for the first time. you truly have a great list going and this thread covers the rest of it pretty damn well.

the book i was talking about was jack kerouac's "on the road"
check it out.
it used to be really hip.
now it seems to get bashed a bit. i was a big fan of the beat generation writers and took a class in college on them that still goes down as one of my all time favorites.

check that one out and tell me what you think.
other than that stick to the classics and the authors you really enjoy.

oh and great to see you on here as well. lates. J.

[dcasper70]

Pretty sick library here (omitted duplicates).


SoloAJ
Of Mice & Men
The Great Gatsby
Catcher in the Rye
Hamlet
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Fahrenheit 451
I, Robot
Ender's Game
1984
Brave New World
A few short stories by James Joyce
Odyssey (O Brother Where Art Thou)
The Things They Carried
Slaughter House Five
Freakonomics
Batman: The Killing Joke
V for Vendetta
On Writing
The Lottery
The Ones Who Walked from Omelas
The Lady or the Tiger
The Most Dangerous Game
The Necklace
Tell Tale Heart
A Modest Proposal
Bartleby the Scrivener
The Yellow Wallpaper.

Peter666
Don Quixote
Robinson Crusoe
Pride and Prejudice
Crime and Punishment
Romeo and Juliet
Animal Farm

diebitter
Lord of the Flies
Cannery Row
Martian Chronicles
The Hobbit
The Body
The Green Mile
Dune
Macbeth
The Shrinking Man/Danse Macabre
The Old Man and the Sea

Tigermoth
The Things They Carried
We (> Animal Farm)
Everything is Illuminated
Grendel
Beowulf

John Cole
Pride and Prejudice
Lord of the Flies
Macbeth
Henry IV (parts one and two!)
Addison and Steele
the Roger DeCoverly Papers
selected essays by English writers such as Charles Lamb
The Lady with the Dog
Maus I
The Dead

Butnahhhhh
10 Little Indians

dcasper70
How To Win Friends And Influence People

mflip
Beloved
Fifth Business
A Handmaid's Tale
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Julius Caesar
Oliver Twist
The Outsiders
To Kill A Mockingbird

AceLuby
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
Hyperion

MrWookie
The Republic
The Things They Carried
Man's Search For Meaning
The Brothers Karamazov

Kimbell175113
Handmaid's Tale

Dominic
The Mists of Avalon
Heart of Darkness
Rendezvous With Rama
Into Thin Air
Gulliver's Travels
Wuthering Heights
Metamorphosis
Tess of the D'urbervilles
The Turn of the Screw
West With the Night

GeraldGiraffe
Gulliver's Travels
Journey to The Western Isles of Scotland
The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts
Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman
The House of Sleep
The Rotters' Club
The Closed
The Importance of Being Earnest
Gagarin Way

JMP300z
The Man Who was Thursday
Killing Pablo
Starship Troopers
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
High Fidelity
Catch-22
Equal Love
Lolita
Death of a Salesman

Jeff W
Dracula
Frankestein
Much Ado About Nothing
Notes from the Underground
Metamorphosis
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Triumph36
Destructors
Araby
The Prince

J.Brown
On The Road
Howl

[Kimbell175113]

Thought of another choice for the graphic novel slot: Persepolis.

The thing is, a lot of the greats are too deep in comic meta-stuff for young, inexperienced readers. Watchmen doesn't work as well without knowledge of the standard superhero tropes and plotlines, and Killing Joke (or DKR) presupposes familiarity with a bunch of Batman characters.

V for Vendetta is a maybe, but it would be better appreciated by an older audience, imo.

Maus could work.

[Dominic]

while I wish it were not the case, any HS teacher who assigned his Lolita would most definitely be fired! [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Sifmole]

I have to throw in that I too found that these few in particular have stuck with me as enjoyable in High School and still enjoyable -- I am very glad to have been introduced to them.

To Kill a Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies
Catch-22 (This is in my mind, THE book to include for comedic literature)

I also personally love The Heart of Darkness, but I believe most High Schoolers have issues with it's pacing and find it tedious.

Also -- Is there some way to teach Shakespeare so you can absorb the threads of the plots without being hampered by needing an english-to-english translation constantly? I like Shakespeare (not love) but I always felt that the language was a huge roadblock for most High Schoolers to overcome in order to get the interesting aspects of what they were reading.

[mflip]

The copies of Shakespeare I was given in High School had the play on the right side of the page and English-to-English translations on the left side of the page. Most of the words that were hard to understand had easy translations/explanations right there.

[Kimbell175113]

This is all wild speculation on my part, but could the "english-to-english" translations actually hinder comprehension? If you can just look to the margin and find a word you're more comfortable with, then you'll never have to try to think over the real text.

And, imo, a huge percentage of the difficult language in Shakespeare can be figured out (with a combination of logic and intuition) by a thinking reader without any outside assistance. (I guess I'm speaking more for honors classes, students who are interested in Shakespeare, but hey, those who aren't interested still aren't even with the translations.)

[Sifmole]

[ QUOTE ]
This is all wild speculation on my part, but could the "english-to-english" translations actually hinder comprehension? If you can just look to the margin and find a word you're more comfortable with, then you'll never have to try to think over the real text.

And, imo, a huge percentage of the difficult language in Shakespeare can be figured out (with a combination of logic and intuition) by a thinking reader without any outside assistance. (I guess I'm speaking more for honors classes, students who are interested in Shakespeare, but hey, those who aren't interested still aren't even with the translations.)

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't believe this is true. Much of the language used, especially the "slang" and play-on-words that are used throughout. These are very tied to the time in which the play was written -- by design, because of his target audience. This kind of thing is not something someone just picks up without outside assistance.

As for not having to think over the text -- I guess it depends if your goal in reading the text is to understand the structure of the words and writing itself or if you goal is to understand the story and its uses of irony, foreshadowing, etc. (all those high school English buzz words). Both of these are worthy goals, but more often what I remember being focused on was the plot and literary devices such as those mentioned above; the fact that it was iambic pentameter (or other aspects of the manner of writing) was of course always mentioned but rarely seemed to be the main point. When this second goal is desired I believe having to struggle with the language reduces what the students get from the study.