The Book Thread Book • Page 128

The Time list from 2005 is also decent. It starts in 1923 so there's a lot of early stuff (especially Joyce) that isn't on there.

 

My English class read Brave New World in high school, and we all enjoyed it a lot, whereas the class that had to read 1984 didn't, so there is that lol

I definitely recommend BNW. Also the terrible 70s movie.

 

I have to give it to Gatsby

 

I loved BNW in high school too. I also loved Anthem in high school sooooo

 

is that to say it doesn't hold up tho?

 

BNW was good/ok from what little I remember. Island totally sucked though. That was a disappointment.

 

I love Brave New World. *shrug*

 

I feel like people construe 1984 kind of like that in a way. like since it's required reading for so many or kind of a stepping stone for some, that they start to believe it's somehow not as good as it is and I completely disagree

 

Lol it might! I just question my 14 year old taste

 

that's what I'm kind of getting at here. like I get it but it's a damn shame in some cases

 

I recommend reading those required reads from middle/high school over again. That's what I've been doing the last few years. I didn't give those books a fair chance because they were forced assignments, but reading them leisurely years after the fact definitely feels worthwhile.

 

I re-read 1984 and BNW fifteen years after my first reading and they not only held up, but got better. Especially in a post-Snowden world.

 

I definitely always understood why I’m reading the book they’re making me read

 

My high school English curriculum must have been a little weird - there are so many books that we just didn't read and I only caught up on later. In some cases, that probably increased my appreciation of them (Slaughterhouse-Five and Gatsby come to mind), and others I feel like I would have liked at lot more if I had read them younger (Catcher In the Rye, which is easily my least favorite Salinger book).

 

To be fair my high school English classes were English as a foreign language classes, so our reading list wasn't as extensive as our reading lists for our native language classes were (in went to high school in Germany and the Netherlands, so German and Dutch)

 

I had a weird curriculum too. We never had to read Slaughterhouse-Five or Brave New World, or Grapes of Wrath, and a few other big names we seemed to skip. Instead we had some cool books that I genuinely loved at the time. I honestly attribute a lot of my love of literature to those selections. Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates, Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. We also had Hamlet, which I absolutely adored haha

 

only read a few short stories here and there from D.H. Lawrence but I'd like to delve into more. anyone have a favorite?

 

We read Romeo and Juliet. We went to a performance too, which I enjoyed a lot more than reading it. Somehow I understood it way better that way.

 

discovered The Stranger on my own (which was perfect for me)

don't remember it being on any required reading lists either

 

We did a few plays which were great. A Streetcar Named Desire, Long Day's Journey into Night, Death of a Salesman. We read them and then we watched film/recorded versions while reading along, which was even cooler. I think that's probably the best way to experience them.

 

We had to read a lot of plays in German class, Germans were really into writing plays for a while there

 

Any faves you recommend checking out? (so long as they're translated into English haha)

 

I think most classic German literature is. I don’t really remember the titles well enough right now, but I do remember which one I liked once I see and I actually have a few of them on my bookshelf still, so I’ll get back to you.

 

Speaking of high school curriculum... I'm moving to a new school and teaching 11th grade English this year. What books should I teach!!

 

@OotyPa I can tell you this one already. We even performed it.

The Good Person of Szechwan - Wikipedia