Your High School Reading List
Posted by David Duhr in 
Discussion question:Â If you taught (or do teach!) high school English, what books (say up to five) would you assign your senior class, and why? What books do you remember reading for class in high school, and did any of them have any kind of significant impact on your life? Have you reread any of those books as an adult, and how did they hold up?
I remember studying A Farewell to Arms as a senior in Mrs. Johnson’s English class and really enjoying it — how the constant rain is almost its own character, all the dialogue-underneath-the-dialogue. At times Hemingway’s dialogue is so subtle that I missed major plot points, and class discussion would be a revelation. (What? Catherine is pregnant?! How did I miss that?)
Over the years I thought about the book every now and again, but I didn’t reread it until early June in Portugal, when I ran out of books and had to choose from the limited selection of titles in English at a Lisbon chain.
It held up, more or less. It’s not an earth-shattering book, but though the love story struck me as flawed this time, I appreciated the scenes on the front lines much more than I did as a kid.
Still, I wondered… of all the incredible, potentially life-changing novels one might assign outgoing high school students, why this one?
I can’t ask. Mrs. Johnson died long ago.
And when I try to remember other books she assigned that year, I can’t think of any. Hemingway’s is the only one that comes to mind. Is that because my memory is flawed and/or I had already mentally checked out, or is it because Mrs. Johnson chose shitty, uninspiring books?
Likely the former, but who knows.
So I asked myself: If I were teaching high school English, what books would I assign my students, and why?
And now I’m asking you: If you were teaching high school English, what books would you assign your students, and why? i.e., what would you hope would be their takeaway for each one?
What books do you remember from English class, and did any of them have a significant impact on your life? Have you read any of them as an adult, and if so, did your opinion of them change?
Let’s chat about it below.
WriteByNight co-founder David Duhr is fiction editor at the Texas Observer and co-host of the Yak Babies podcast, and has written about books for the Dallas Morning News, Electric Literature, Publishing Perspectives, and others.
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Good picks. Thanks, Ava!
My high school did have a reading list for those of us who were college bound. (we had tracks so you could choose college, business or trade) It consisted of 100 books. We were required to read 10 and do reports on them. Those reports had to be quite thorough and somehow they knew if you used the cliff notes. I can remember reading the ‘Red Badge of Courage’, ‘The Scarlet Letter’, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, 20000 Leagues Under The Sea’, The Bridge over the River Kwai’, ‘From Here to Eternity’, ‘Gone with the Wind’, and a couple of others… Read more »
I like the idea of offering a list and letting students choose the books that grab them. But if you were all reading different things, what would you do for discussion? Did you have to deliver orally the reports you wrote, and then the class would respond to them?
We had books that we read as a class and discussed like one of Dickens, the Great Gatsby and so forth. These were the required outside of class where we turned in reports which only the teacher read. I loved to read, so it wasn’t difficult for me to read the ten books from the list. Others had major issues with reading that many books and choose their books based on the number of pages. Little did the know that in college those ten books…that was almost the amount you had to read for your classes in one months..lol.
I think my best reads from my high school era (a long time ago) came from recommendations of peers: one from my older sister “Catcher in the Rye” and the other “On the Road” came from a friend.
On the Road is great and I am currently re-reading it, but I just cannot get past the language in CITR, though I have read it. To me the language is distracting. That said, I am a real square.
I didn’t read either of those until I was well into my twenties. I’m curious what I would’ve thought of them in high school. “Catcher” in particular is one of those books people claim there’s a “right” time and a “wrong” time to read.
In fact, in the podcast I’m on we did an episode about some of these “right time” books, including “Catcher” and “On the Road.” If you’re curious: https://yakbabies.podbean.com/e/yb014/
Thanks. Will do. And yes, as a retired teacher, I agree there are best times, but I’m not sure there aren worst times.
I’m not sure I got the full depth and breath of these at the age I was, but it made my next read a few years later that much richer.
As a high school English teacher I would assign:
The Great Gatsby – themes are timeless
The Scarlet Letter – evolving role of women
A Catcher in the Rye – controversy it caused
The Age of Innocence – Old NY society
Now that you mention it, I’m pretty sure The Scarlet Letter was another one in Mrs. Johnson’s class. I haven’t read it since, though I’ve read almost all the rest of Hawthorne. I should give it a shot as an adult.
A Lesson Before Dying, Gaines. Used it in college English classes for years and in the time I spent in a school for Autistic kids and kids with emotional issues. Great discussions and it helped them with both empathy and understanding the consequences of their actions.
I’ve never read it; I’ll have to give it a look. Thanks.
I would and did assign Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Odd, because I’m a sucker for love (Not romance) stories. But, we were studying Ancient Rome and… he was an ancient Roman. My class was grade 6- gifted. We spent the first day discussing the cobbler who teases Marullus with a play on words, “I am a mender of bad soles.” The students loved the little nobody who dissed the patrician. My preteens already knew about kids who self inflict and were captivated by Portia who was a cutter’way back’ in 44 BC. We ended, not with an essay, but small groups… Read more »
You know what’s strange? I’m not sure we read any Shakespeare in high school. Isn’t that criminal? Maybe I’m forgetting something, but I want to say I didn’t read any Shakespeare until college.
Then again, I’m having a sudden memory of watching that famous Italian film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in class, which leads me to believe we read it as well.
We had to read Hamlet. At the time, I found it totally boring. Sort of like Chaucer. My guess is it was the language since most of it didn’t make much sense to me at the time.
With all the madness, Hamlet should have been more engaging. It wasnt for me either. But I enjoyed Chaucer. A better teacher, perhaps…
Good question. Several books come immediately to mind, although there are so many more, including the ones already mentioned here. My list would include: To Kill a Mockingbird. So many good lessons in it, but the one that ultimately stuck with me is: Everybody deserves to be treated with respect. The Diary of Anne Frank. To be able to see positives amidst the cruelty of a world gone so utterly mad is a very special gift. Her story haunts me to this day, and yet I don’t remember it as a horribly depressing book—mainly I suppose due to the inimitable… Read more »
Good picks. Thanks, Carol. I like the mix of staple titles with something newer.
Carol, I love your picks! Sadly, I have taught high school and middle school for many years and where those books have not been required reading, when I have suggested them to students they tell me that they are boring. The classics these days must compete for kids attention with YA books which are much more direct and action packed.
Your first two are probably on a list of a lot of teachers, both essential, IMO. I have not read Tuesdays with Morris but will now put it on my list!
Susan: Darn Auto-Correct! It should have been Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.
Hi Dave. My high school lit education was dismal, but I did read then, and was touched by, Shakespeare’s MacBeth and Julius Caesar, and Hawethorne’s Scarlet Letter. I’ve read much Shakespeare since and have only grown in my appreciation of it. I have not read Scarlet Letter since, but I still remember lines from it, so I expect I would enjoy the read. Students in my “Get a Clue” high school lit class would read: 1. Henry V (Shakespeare) to show them the class nature of warfare. 2. Lord of the Flies (Golding) to remind them of the pyshcopathic nature… Read more »
I haven’t read much of the titles on your list. Somehow my school was one of the very few in the country that didn’t have either Orwell book on the syllabus, nor Lord of the Flies. I’ve read lots of Hemingway on my own, but not For Whom the Bell Tolls. And though I’ve read the Hobbit, I never ventured further into that world.
So I for one would greatly enjoy your class.
I have two suggestions. First, I read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” in high school. I was not impressed. Since then, I have read two other Hawthorne novels and many short stories, and I now see that, as far as I can tell, “The Scarlet Letter” is one of his worst works, and also his least relevant for an audience any time between the 1980s and today. I would suggest “The Blythedale Romance” with a discussion of the idea that what we call hippie communes existed in Hawthorne’s own generation. Or, if the students are ready for a serious dialog… Read more »
Good picks, Sid. Thanks for contributing. It seems to me now that I did read The Scarlet Letter in high school, and liked it. But I haven’t read it since, despite reading almost all of the rest of Hawthorne. (Excluding The Marble Faun… so far.)
My top five would be 1. This Side of Paradise 2. To Kill a Mockingbird 3. Tom Sawyer 4. Great Expectations 5. Heart of Darkness … I would also include Animal Farm and Tess of the D’ubervilles … All of these had a powerful if not always positive impact on me in high school and college and I remember them and the thoughts and emotions they engendered very well.
Thanks for sharing, Gregory. I’ve read… one of the books on your list, for sure. Possibly three, but memory fails. Either way, I need to take your class.
AS a former high school English teacher, I had the opportunity to assign reading – but sadly, I did not really have the opportunity to select the books. The curriculum was pretty much set when I joined the staff. Often, a teacher’s choices are bound by what books have already been purchased and are in the book closet. It is very expensive to purchase a couple hundred copies of a book, so schools tend to stick with the same titles for a long time. When I taught senior English, we read The Color Purple (not my favorite), Slaughter House Five,… Read more »
The Things They Carried is a great book for aspiring writers, too. Particularly “How to Tell a True War Story.” That one’s as much about writing as it is about anything else.
I’ve got to read this All the Light We Cannot See book. I’ve had about two dozen people recommend it by now.
As an educator for grades 4-9 math and/or language arts who no longer is in the classroom, I found this topic more than a little intriguing because as a student the only book I read, out of the many I was assigned, was Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I was not and still find that the classics are not necessarily my favorite. However, I have read many books that give me chills and cover the same time periods that were covered in school. My books that I would want students to read as seniors are The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch… Read more »
If you ever do teach this class, I’ll have to sign up–I haven’t read any of those four books you mention. Thanks for the tips!
“Catcher In the Rye” saved my sanity at age 14. Some of the parallels to my life were uncanny…an epiphanous experience…
Have you read it since, or do you not want to mess with that magic? I’ve had that conflict in the past.
I did read it again within the last 5 years. It was sort of like a time capsule of a particular moment, or an old photo…
Do you think you’d have liked it five years ago if it’d been your first read?
I would want to go back and re-read these first before I assigned them because they’re very “sixties”, but these issues have come around again. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. I can never ever since then think about war without imagining exactly how it impacts individuals. Also interesting because Trumbo was later blacklisted. I would hope kids reading it now would think twice about guns and war. Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn was my favorite novel when I was 12, but I would have to go back and read it with an adult eye. It was about… Read more »
Thanks for the list, Susan. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is something I’ve wanted to read for a long time. Maybe I’ll put that in my upcoming pile.
Nope. As soon as I hit “post comment” I realized I’m thinking of Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr. Hey, doesn’t mean I can’t read both of them.
Do you have an actual pile and not a list? I do, but it keeps falling all over the floor. Quite a difference in styles in those two books, I wouldn’t mind reading your Brooklyn book, but my pile is too big. Let me know if there are any trees in Selby’s book.
Ok David, those are just a bit different…
I LOVED Heart is a Lonely Hunter in my teens and 20s. So real…so empathetic…so cognizant of people’s pain…then I reread it in my 40s…such a tearjerker… so over the top…but considering she was only about 23 when she wrote it, it was a remarkable achievement. I thought the central premise of troubled people projecting their emotions on to the mute (named “Singer” fer chrissakes) was brilliant. The book was brilliantly executed, but a teenager’s sensibility.