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Chatterbox: Blab About Books
Assigned Reading
I'm not sure...
I'm not sure if a thread like this already exists but I thought we could all share books that we've been assigned to read for school. I think that having to read things for a class can be interesting because you sometimes end up reading things that you never would've picked out to read on your own. So tell me, what books have you been assigned to read and what did you think of them? Were they a genre you already enjoy or something totally different? Did you have any expectations about whether or not you would like them that ended up not being true?
I'll start with a few books I've read for school so far this year:
The Crucible by Arthur Miller - I was excited to read this because I've always been interested in the Salem Witch Trials and it did end up being very fascinating.
Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass by Frederick Douglass - This one I read for my U.S. history class during the Civil War unit and I found it very insightful.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Another interesting read. I wasn't sure what I thought of this one until I finished it because I got confused about parts of it but overall I think it was good.
Billy Budd by Herman Melville - The storyline in this was intriguing but personally, I found the writing kind of pedantic which made it hard to get through.
submitted by Katie
(February 16, 2019 - 12:09 pm)
(February 16, 2019 - 12:09 pm)
Ooh, good idea!
The Giver by Lois Lowry - I'd actually already read this when we read it in class, and that gave me somewhat of an advantage, as our teacher kept making us stop on cliffhangers. :) I love this book and highly recommend it!
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - I enjoyed this book and found it really insightful.
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (adapted for young adults) - I cannot recommend this book highly enough! It inspired me greatly to do something about our flawed justice system and almost made me cry...
(February 16, 2019 - 4:30 pm)
-The Little Prince, by an author whose name I cannot spell or pronounce - this book is really good, and though it's meant for kids, it has some really deep meanings, the kind you'd find in a young adult book.
-Chains, by Laurie Halse Anderson- OH MY GOSH THIS BOOK MADE ME CRY!!!-which is saying something, I'm a hard crier. Like The Little Prince, this book has some deep meanings, but has a wonderful yet cliffhanger ending.
The author is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I have a copy handy on one of my bookshelves!
Admin
(February 17, 2019 - 6:24 am)
You read Le Petit Prince in English for school? I read that in French when I was a kid! You're right, though, it's really a more adult book disguised as a kids' book.
(February 17, 2019 - 10:52 am)
Top!
(February 16, 2019 - 6:58 pm)
Oh gosh lets think...
There was Animal Farm by whats-his-face, which scared me as a young child. It's basically the communist revolution but as animals overthrowing humans. Stalins a pig. I mean, it's a good meaningful book and it helped me understand the communist revolution better, and all the metaphors were really well placed, but don'r read ot as a young child. *shudders*
Theres the Catcher in the Rye. I actually didn't read it in school when I was supposed to cause well, Claaws doesn't school well, I ended up reading it at a mental hospital cause I was bored and it was something familiar among the crazy\iness that was happening. I actually really like it. And I can relate to him and what he was going through and PTSD is just so fun. The whole 'Alli, please don't let me disappear' really had me. And the end.
Shoot, sorry this is so weird I'm typing in the dark and I can't see. Don't ask me why, lol.
(February 18, 2019 - 1:01 am)
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton - I don't cry at books very often, but man, if I didn't cry when reading this book. It's so good. I definitely would have read it outside of class.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - I had already read this when we picked it up in class, but there were a lot of things that went over my head the first time, so it was really nice to get a deeper, analytical outlook on it. I'm sure most of you have read it, but gosh, if you haven't you really should. It sticks with you, it really does.
Our Town by Thorton Wilder - It was boring, but... also good? It's mundane and slow and tedious in places, but there are just those few lines that almost make it worth it. "Just look at me one minute as if you really saw me" still messes me up when I think about it.
The Pearl by John Steinbeck - Boring. Did not like it. I was reading it on the plane and the woman next to me asked, "Is that for school?" I said yeah, and she said, "I figured, no one reads Steinbeck for fun."
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid - I liked parts of it, and other parts I didn't. The pacing was odd, but I loooved the writing style. Very VERY adult content. Discussing it in class was awkward.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding - I loved this book! It's very dark and violent but the writing is gorgeous, and it's painful and sad and achingly human in a way that's difficult to describe. Depends on your tolerence for gore— Some people in my class thought it was gross.
Medea by Euripides - I'm probably one of the only people in my English class with heart-eyes for ancient Greek literature, and subsequently adored the play. Ugh. It's so good. I had chills. Some of my annotations dissolved into things like "OMG LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS LINE" and "AHHHHHH". The part where she monologues about "passion being the root of all life's evils" made me put down the book to flail.
John Steinbeck: I had never read his masterpiece "The Grapes of Wrath," so decided to a few years ago. It was tedious and hard to read, but I stuck with it and I'm glad I did, because I learned so much about life in the 1930s and the hardhships people endured. It has some great lines and references.
Admin
(February 18, 2019 - 3:54 pm)
Stuff I read last semester: (* means only excerpts)
A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
Mac Flecknoe - John Dryden
*Samuel Pepys' Diary - Samuel Pepys (peeps)
*Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave - Aphra Behn
*Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
A Journal of the Plague Year - Daniel Defoe
A Relation of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal - Daniel Defoe
*The Way of the World - William Congreve
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
*The Spectator - Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele
*The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African - Olaudah Equiano
The Lover: A Ballad - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
The Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language - Samuel Johnson
*The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell
Stuff I'm going to read this semester: (* means only excerpts)
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - this book includes A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow, and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
The Haunted Mind: The Supernatural in Victorian Literature - A Collection, edited by Elton E. Smith and Robert Haas
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Dover Beach - Matthew Arnold
Lord Alfred Tennyson: The Lady of Shalott; The Passing of Arthur; Ulysses; Mariana; Tithonus; Break, Break
Robert Browning: My Last Duchess; Andrea Del Sarto; Porphyria's Lover
*Dracula - Bram Stoker
*Carmilla - Sheridan le Fanu
The Vampyre - John Polidori
The Purloined Letter - Edgar Allen Poe
A Jury of Her Peers - Susan Glaspell
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
Lots of Enlightenment/Victorian literature--I'm super excited! :D
(February 19, 2019 - 2:48 pm)
Coming back to add to this thread because I just finished Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals for my history class and I would very highly recommend it to everybody. It was so well written that I finished it in a single weekend and it gave me a mucher deeper understanding of the Civil Rights Movement and the issue of school integration. Reading about them in a textbook is one thing but this first hand-account of events during that time period gave such a clearer picture.
I also liked reading Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I felt like the language used made it easier to read and comprehend and I found the plot very interesting. Fair warning though, this is a sad one!
Just recently I was also assigned The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald which I am finding quite enjoyable even though I'm only on chapter 2.
(June 2, 2019 - 4:07 pm)
These are all the books for school I've read in the last 3 and a quarter years:
Far North by Will Hobbs
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'engle
Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan
The Cay by Theodore Taylor
The Giver by Lois Lowry
The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
Refugee by Alan Gratz
Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt
Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
(November 20, 2019 - 8:43 am)