<ol>
<li>Crime and Punishment</li>
<li>Romeo and Juliet</li>
<li>Hamlet</li>
<li>The Count of Monte Cristo (a little too long though)</li>
<li>Mao’s Last Dancer</li>
</ol>
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<p>King Lear is my favorite. And for comedies I’m partial to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. </p>
<p>We did Hamlet in AP Lit earlier this year. As a major theatre nerd who has seen and read Hamlet on multiple occasions, I had that part of the class pretty well handled without much effort.</p>
<p>I hate all books from english class, thats why I will never take AP english EVER</p>
<p>Speaking of Shakespeare, I also enjoyed reading The Merchant of Venice. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was entertaining as well.</p>
<ol>
<li>1984</li>
<li>Don Quixote</li>
<li>Divine Comedy</li>
<li>The Odyssey</li>
<li>Darkness at Noon</li>
</ol>
<p>Oh Christ, I don’t think I can name 5 books I liked. Let’s see:
Lord of the Flies
Animal Farm
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Macbeth
…err… Things They Carried? I guess?
Note that all of those except for Things They Carried are from Junior year. And I’m not in honors/AP, so we don’t read any good books outside of the ones mentioned.</p>
<p>In no particular order:
The Sound & The Fury
In Cold Blood
Beloved
Friday Night Lights (!)
To Kill a Mockingbird (but we read that in like 5th grade)</p>
<p>Four of them are from this year. Love this thread. I’m surprised how many people have read Into the Wild.</p>
<p>Jane Eyre
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Great Gatsby
Night
Wuthering Heights</p>
<p>and I absolutely despised Gulliver’s Travels :)</p>
<p>Oh hey let’s all pretend to like The Great Gatsby i.e. the most banal, unvisceral book in the history of mankind because it’s considered a classic and underrate other obviously superior books like The Road by Cormac McCarthy!</p>
<p>^The Road is the most beautifully written minimalist novel I’ve ever read. The Great Gatsby is the most beautifully written novel, period. And beyond that, it has the more beautifully tragic idea at its heart, though The Road’s central theme comes close.</p>
<p>hmm i thought the great gatsby was very wearisome to read too. in fact i remember i couldn’t even complete the essay on it. so jimbosteve doesn’t think less of me for it, i’ll add that i did really like ordinary people, which i picked up randomly from a bookshelf one day during reading time.</p>
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<p>How can one read that without being moved to tears? It’s a distillation of the tragedy of life: that we are faced with the choice to surrender our most fundamental desires, or to surrender our lives to their overwhelming power to destroy us.</p>
<p>those paragraphs were nice to read. for some reason i have a very strong aversion to * all * fiction writing now. part of it is on principle, but part of it is the fact that i can’t just bring myself to read something made up anymore. what I am very happy to read are certain autobiographies or memoirs from people that interest me - especially ones that are 70+ years old :).</p>
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<p>Although that’s my second favorite book ever, notice the title of the thread. It’s not common reading material. And Great Gatsby is a good book. Also, if you think The Road is good, read All The Pretty Horses, it’s amazing.</p>
<p>@JimboSteve I just thought everything about the book was so well written and gorgeous and it was really easy for the reader to picture everything.</p>
<p>The Great Gatsby
Into the Wild
A Tale of Two Cities
Lord of the Flies
To Kill a Mockingbird</p>
<p>Pretty typical stuff here, I’m afraid; my school doesn’t really go for books that aren’t classics except perhaps Into the Wild. Honorable mentions go to Animal Farm, The Crucible, and Life of Pi (although my class never had to read this one - a different English class was assigned it and I decided to read it anyways). Surprisingly, I’ve read neither Catcher in the Rye or 1984 for school reading.</p>
<p>As for the Gatsby debate, I love it both because of the language and because I strongly emphasize with Nick. I can understand why some people dislike it - many of the other characters don’t resonate well with me - but it’s that emotional connection I have to it that makes the difference. …as well I’ve been looking forward to reading this book all my life, since it’s my mother’s absolute favorite book.</p>
<p>As for some of the most hated books I’ve read in English, Jane Eyre tops the list. (Pride and Prejudice is infinitely better, although more superficial.) Nectar in a Sieve is a close second.</p>
<p>I did not like The Great Gatsby because the writing and the characters came off as more particular.</p>
<p>I prefer free-flowing writing to thematic writing.</p>
<ol>
<li>The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven</li>
<li>To Kill a Mockingbird</li>
<li>Anthem</li>
<li>Romeo and Juliet (lol)</li>
<li>Fahrenheit 451</li>
</ol>
<p>The first one on my list killed everyone in my English class except me. The writing was so different from anything we’ve ever read, and I loved it. My classmates kept talking about how they wanted to kill themselves while reading it and how they much preferred Huck Finn, a book which I hated. Go figure.</p>
<p>Hmmm…Aerobug, have you read The Sound and the Fury? It seems like the type of book you might like. It has a different style of writing (mainly stream of consciousness). Ceremony by Leslie Silko is also a good book (it’s similar to The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in that it focuses on life in a Native American reservation).</p>
<p>Oh God. The Sound and the Fury.</p>
<p>Clarification: by “Oh God,” I mean to imply that The Sound and the Fury is one of the best books ever written. </p>
<p>Faulkner beat it out by As I Lay Dying. But still. Amazing book. </p>
<p>I’m inspired to amend my list to include outside reading:</p>
<ol>
<li>Invisible Man (Ellison)</li>
<li>The Great Gatsby</li>
<li>The Road</li>
<li>As I Lay Dying</li>
<li>The Sound and the Fury</li>
</ol>