Thread: Must Reads Before the End of High School (?)

I just got done with "The Time Machine" by HG Wells, an exeptionally good book that makes you think a lot. Very easy to read with great literary and philosical meanings.

Originally Posted by playstation60

My two cents:
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The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Awesome book, a lot shorter of a book than I would have liked, but very enjoyable.
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Ben


P.S. Like they said before, just read. Don't worry so much about particular books. Just enjoy the magic of reading, and the pleasure it brings.

Death of a Salesman was really good too. And so was The Crucible.

I quite enjoyed 'The Talisman' and 'It' the best of Stephen King's works. They are a bit longish but the flow of the narrative I found easier to follow [more straightforward, less convoluted with literary gymnastics].

In my personal opinion, The Outsiders was just about the right length for the story that Susie wrote and the audience/characters she portrayed. Any longer and it may not have been as effective or attractive. I had to read it for a sophomore year book report. The movie version was, well, okay enough. Any shorter and the book would not have given justice or coverage of the storyline. In that sense I tend to agree with Ben.

Ricky

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand -- People tend to either love it or hate it, as few are partial to it. This is an incredibly indluential and thought-provoking book that is worth a read even if you don't agree with its ideas.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand -- Shorter than Atlas, and perhaps a bit easier to dive into: this is a more person, isolated tale. Still, great characters, great plot, ingenious writing style.

The Stranger by Albert Camus -- It's an interesting read that is short and concise.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell -- An epic romance set to the backdrop of the civil war.

The Magus by John Fowles -- A thought-provoking psychodrama that's definitely worth a read. Sex, murder, love, and psychology all combine to form one great book.

Some of the books I've been told to read before I leave High School are:

On The Road-Jack Kerouac (best read in my opinion)
The Jungle-Upton Sinclair
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest-Ken Kesey
LEs Miserables-Victor Hugo
Heart of Darkness-Joseph Conrad
Tale of Two Cities-Charles Dickens
All Quiet On the Western Front-Erich Remarque
Naked Lunch-William Burroughs
Tom Sawyer-Mark Twain
Christmas Carol-Charles Dickens
Electric Kool-aid Acid Test-Tom Wolfe
To Kill a Mockingbird-Harper Lee
The Picture of Dorian Gray-Oscar WIlde
The Murders at Rue Morgue-Edgar Allen Poe
Catcher In The Rye-J.D. Salinger
For Whom The Bell Tolls-Ernest Hemingway
Of Mice and Men-John Steinbeck
Grapes of wrath-John Steinbeck
Old Man-William Faulkner
Uncle Tom's Cabin-harriet Beecher Stowe

that's all I can think of for now!

KERpoe

Originally Posted by Ham

Sorry I didn't see this sooner (months sooner). As somebody who has at times had a hand in designing college lit curricula and in evaluating students for placement therein, I've got some very concrete suggestions on this. Assuming your sincere interest is preparing your mind for the Eng Dept rigor of a GOOD school, you should consider the following:

1) If you're going to major in English LITERATURE, then it isn't so much what you've read, as how you've learned to read. Most HS students are woefully deficient at any aspect of literary understanding beyond simple matters of plot and theme. You can remedy that with a decent understanding of the material in something like Thomas Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor. In one book, you'll be literarily ahead of somebody who's read the whole Western canon without knowing what to look for.

From there, you'd be well advised to let a scholar lead you by the hand through a few literary works. Something like Nabokov's Lectures on Literature will walk you through several excellent literary novels in the way a scholar would approach them. Or, if you prefer the material, Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why. Either volume, studied together with the first I mentioned, will have you in a more literarily savvy place than 90% of public school BA grads in no time.


2) If you're going to major in English WRITING, it isn't what you've read, and it isn't what you intend to write. It's how well you write and understand that peculiar beast, the LITERARY SHORT STORY. Almost every creative writing program in a good school workshops almost exclusively in this form.

To understand the literary short story, read, re-read, and comprehend Rust Hills' Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. It's the only guide to writing and understanding this breed of story that will serve you well in a collegiate workshop environment. When other students say, "I really like it. I can totally relate to the character Tom," you'll be able to comment meaningfully on the structure, symbolism, voice, POV, etc., and suggest worthwhile improvements. Your professors will be kept so busy writing little stars next to your name that they won't have time to be impressed by anybody else in the room.

To write the literary short story, grab volumes and volumes of short stories of a style and voice you like.

Minimalist? Read all the Hemingway and Carver you can.

Postmodern? David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollman, and the like.

Satirical? George Saunders, Adam Johnson, TC Boyle.

Any SS reading will help, but you'll develop your voice and style more quickly and solidly if you read heavily in a style that grabs your imagination.

Good luck.

AMEN, and Nabakov's lectures are beyond amazing

Les Miserables. It's a tearjerker but well worth it.

Yeah I'd agree

Dickens was hard for me to get through at times, but worth it

"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini is an amazing new book. I recommend it to everybody.

Try to mix well between modern books and classics.
As already said the Illiad is a must read.
Equally contrast it with Atwood's work 'The Handmaid's Tale' and 'Oryx and Crake' (by far her best book)
Also try 'Enduring Love' by Ian McEwan
and 'Love of Worker Bee's ' by a femal Russian writer (around time of 1917 revolutions.)

I would also recomend the following plays:
Oscar Wilde 'The Importance of Being Earnest'
Aurther Miller 'The Crucible'
Shakespeare 'Hamlet' & 'Macbeth'
Marlowe 'Dr. Faustus'

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry is the only book that has every brought me to tears since Stone Fox in grade four. This book is so powerful and so wonderful. A definate read for anybody, even those who rarely read.

Life of Pi by Yann Matel- I'm surprised nobody has suggested this one. It is a part of the high school curriculum in Toronto. One of my top books.

Life After God by Douglas Coupland- My bible...what more can I say.

I'm a junior in high school and so far, for school, I've read:

The Giver- Louis Lowry
The Mist's of Avalon- Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Sword in the Stone- ?
Cat's Cradle- Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughter House Five- Kurt Vonnegut
1984- George Orwell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest- Ken Kesey
Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison
Lord of the Flies- William Golding
The Crucible- Arthur Miller
Twelth Night
Macbeth
The Martian Chronicles- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury

Agree with Wilde's Dorian Grey...

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World Also.

And yes, The Talisman was excellent, but I read that when I was like, 10. Re-read it at about 29.

I suggest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. (who said they didn't like his writing style? my god... i hope you don't get struck down by lightening...)

If you want to read something trippy, find the essay "The Doors of Perception" by Huxley. http://www.mescaline.com/huxley.htm

My senior year in high school is when I started reading Keroac and Bukowski... blew my mind...

you know a good person to actually ask this question is your lit teacher. surprisingly, they are pretty fluent in this subject matter...

vodka

There is another one that I can't recall the author or the title of the book. I had to read it in high school. Really good book too. Had a lot of symbolism in it. The author was a perfectionist, didn't release a lot of books, because he never felt it was good enough to go to print. The stories were based in the 1920s and 30s. He wrote "The Other side of Paradise" or something like that. I can't for the life of me remember who he was. GRRRR!


His name is F.Scott Fitzgerald you should read "The Great Gatsby" or "This Side of Paradise"
Also, something by Najib Mahfouz even if it's a short story like "The Happy Man"
Anything by Primo Levi
Some Doulgas Coupland to open your eyes.