books I read in school

notable books I read in middle school:

Animal Farm by George Orwell
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

I was looking through my old agenda books from freshman/sophomore/junior year, because I always list the books I read in school along with the nonsensical doodling, list-making and relevant reminders to do homework (it’s actually sort of funny to read, much more effective in displaying my high school years than a yearbook ever could). so I compiled this. outside reading at the bottom (and I don’t even know if I remember all the outside reading books).

books I’ve read in my high school English career, in order:

* really loved
x really didn’t love

nine: genre fiction
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens x
A Separate Peace by John Knowles *
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Anthem by Ayn Rand
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Odyssey by Homer
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

ten: American lit
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Native Son by Richard Wright x
The Catcher In the Rye by J. D. Salinger *
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Death of A Salesman by Arthur Miller
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

eleven: British lit
Beowulf by Anonymous x
Grendel by John Gardner
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Bacchae by Euripedes
Equus by Peter Shaffer *
A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt
Utopia by Sir Thomas More
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley *
1984 by George Orwell
Macbeth by William Shakespeare

twelve: World lit
Beloved by Toni Morrison x
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard *
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre *
The Stranger by Albert Camus *
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad x (blaaaa)
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf *
Oedipus the King by Sophocles

if you noticed a trend, I love great narration and I don’t love stuff that’s difficult to read, because I am inherently lazy and don’t enjoy convoluted language (sorry Conrad).

summer reading (I pretty much loved all these books… except for the Kate Eliott one)
nine (genre): King’s Dragon by Kate Eliott, Goddess of Yesterday by Caroline B. Cooney
ten (American): The Cider House Rules by John Irving, Closing Time by Joseph Heller
eleven (British): A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipul, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
twelve (world): Zorro by Isabel Allende, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

outside reading (incomplete and in no particular order)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Color of Water by James McBride
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (okay, I admit, I cheated with this one. too bad, I loved it so much I read it again)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro