The best book you had to read in high school..?

[Aberforth]

You know how our high school teachers always seemed to make it a point to ruin our lives by having us read to worst books possible..?

Well, some of these weren't actually that bad. I even read a few that were good.
I, for one, once considered becoming a literature teacher.

So, my question is: what is best book you had to read in high school?

The best book I had to read in high school is, without any doubt, Der Process by Franz Kafka in German. Its actually a short story.

Quick summary:

An ambitious, worldly young bank official named Joseph K. is arrested by two warders "one fine morning," although he has done nothing wrong. K. is indignant and outraged. The morning happens to be that of his thirtieth birthday. One year later, on the morning of his thirty-first birthday, two warders again come for K. They take him to a quarry outside of town and kill him in the name of the Law. K. lets them.

Quick review:

Finishing it, I was left bewildered and emotionally distant, like my feelings were stuck looking out into the middle distance not really able to focus or provide me with any input. I felt numb and a bit soul-weary.

It literally changed my life. It is what opened my mind to the idea of becoming a lawyer.

[TheoreticalSelkie]

One of the best books I read in high school is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. My class read this coming off the clusterhell that was Hamlet, and it was one of the most side-splitting play / book I've ever read for a class.

And now for a quick summary from Goodreads:

Hamlet told from the worm's-eye view of two minor characters, bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, reality and illusion mix, and where fate leads heroes to a tragic but inevitable end.

Man that's like... the best summary ever. So the play follows the plot of Hamlet, except this time, instead of following Hamlet around, we follow Rosencrantz and Guildenstern around. As my teacher describes them, they're two of the most normal people in the play surrounded by crazy people. And the contrast is seen where Ros and Guil speak normally, but the Danish court speaks in Shakespearean English, confusing the heck out of them. If you remember the confusion you had as you read Hamlet, don't worry, those guys feel the same way too ;3. There's a whole lot of details packed into the two acts, filled with soliquys from the two main characters as they contemplate the details of their situation and the lack of control they have.

Personally I found the book a really good change from the classic Shakespeare play and a way to see how a play doesn't have to be stifling and boring at first glance. It's a really short read, and I definitely recommend reading it after you've read Hamlet.

[Neo Emolga]

As a person who loves fantasy novels, high school was a pain because you almost never read that kind of stuff.

Anyway, one book I liked a bit more than the other junk I had to dredge through in high school was The Cather in the Rye, because even though Holden Caulfield was kind of a loser, seeing the story from his point of view and reading his cynical and sarcastic commentary through every step of the way made it a lot more enjoyable of a read than any of the overrated stuff by Shakespeare. His way of describing things was funny and how he hated things like the word "grand" and how typical it was for people to eat steak on Sunday just because. It's been YEARS since I've read the book, but I remember all these hilarious little details. I also found it funny how he described the smell of the taxi cab he was riding in as "someone tossed their cookies." It's these little, funny bits that totally sold the story for me and it was one book I actually enjoyed reading as opposed to just skimming through it to get it over with.

As far of a high school assignment, the class had to act out parts of the story, and I was the old English teacher. There was one guy in the class who played the role of Holden PERFECTLY even though I couldn't stand that guy. Good times.

[Noblejanobii]

Given that I am still in school I don't know if my judgment will still be fair when I eventually graduate many years from now. On top of this I like a lot of the books we've read so I do have a partial bias. However, being the indecisive person I am, I've split it into three categories: assignments I had no choice in, assignments I could pick from a certain category for, and assignments I had free reign in.

Assignments I had no choice in:
The Great Gatsby is probably my favorite. While Huck Finn, Scarlet Letter, and the Crucible were all great too, this stuck out to me for two reasons. First, the redone movie came out the same time I had to read this so I got the double experience. Second, I've always liked the 1920s. On retro day my freshmen year of high school I came to school dressed as a flapper (the fact they let me do that is a bit shocking but eh). It's one of my favorite times in history because it's a time of freedom and scandal, which means writing stories about it is all the more fun. And it's not scandal like during Grant's presidency. It's scandal like smoking, drinking, and other sorts of things. It's just fun to right about so seeing I wasn't the only one interested in it made me find it all the more entertaining. I like the whole plot around the story as well and the fact that they make several historical references in it gives it points too. The movie also gets points because the name of the insane asylum is my family's name.

Assignments I could pick from a category:
Really until this year I never encountered this assignment except for like summer reading, so when my teacher assigned me it, I took as many liberties as possible. I have to say out of all the ones I chose to read, it's a tie between The Grapes of Wrath and Wait Till Next Year. Now, I love banned books in general because they all relate to history in some way (which in case you couldn't tell, I like). Given that the Dust Bowl is one of the time periods all of my history classes have skipped over, it was an eye opener to see what the migrants were going through at the time. I ended up having to write a paper on it later and that just added to the shock factor. I loved how accurate it was and how much research Steinbeck had put behind it. Now, Wait Till Next Year, while somewhat of a historical novel, is more a memoir than anything else. I've never been a fan of memoirs or biographies, but something about this book drew me in. Maybe it was because it took place around the time my parents, aunts, and uncles grew up. Or maybe it was because it could be paralleled to my own life in way. But it was probably the fact that it involved baseball. I've always been a fan of baseball and actually if you look on ESPN today at the Clemson baseball you'll more than likely see me sitting not too far behind home plate. I grew up around the sport and while I'm still learning about it constantly, I still love it. So the fact that this memoir was heavily influenced by baseball probably helped tremendously. On top of that, it showed me the perspective of a game I had never seen before. I've heard of the famous Giants-Dodgers game with the shot heard round the world, but from a Giants fan's perspective. Hearing it from a Dodgers fan's perspective was very interesting and I could almost feel my heart breaking inside when the game was lost. The memoir did very well in keeping the reader involved, which is what I need for most books, which is why I like it so much.

Assignments I had free reign on:
I've only had this assignment once this year, and four times my freshmen year of high school. This is probably my favorite type of assignment because it allows me to roam free with my creativity. As a result, it was hard to decide in this category. However, I think I'm siding with The Young Elites for this one. Yes I know, the classic dystopia. While I've read enough of the dystopian genre to be able to tell you the main idea behind all of them (I actually opened with the idea for the paper I wrote for this book), something about Marie Lu's stories keeps me in. It's probably because, while she follows the main idea, it's very little of the time that she falls into the common stereotype. Sure she has the whole dead parents classic and the whole love interest thing, but unlike most books, Marie Lu isn't afraid to throw you unheard of plot twists with her books and she rarely introduces second love interests. Her second books aren't romantic conflict like most second books. Hers may have a second love interest and some romantic conflict, but they aren't the main focus and the characters never really deviate from who they're supposed to fall in love with (the Legend Trilogy is a perfect example of this). So, having fallen in love with her last year, I was ready for this book and Marie Lu did not let me down. She was throwing in curve balls without restraint and it was hard to tell where she was going most of the time. She recognized the fatal flaws of her characters and embraced them in such a way that it was influential to the plot. On top of that, having not read anything from her since Champion I had forgotten Marie Lu's notorious trend for last minute plot twists. I can recall in Champion she threw us one in the last ten pages and The Young Elites had two in the last like thirty. Needless to say, I was very impressed with her handy work and I can't wait for The Rose Society to come out this October.

[[Desolate Divine]]

Tomorrow When The War Began was awesome. Read the whole series. One of the best australian books.

[Silverclaw]

I hate reading until i found out about warriors, basically its about cats that live in the forest and fight other cats.

[Caite-chan]

Romeo and Juliet.

I hated everything else we had to read and honestly don't remember many of them. I also hated with a passion that our teacher made us highlight and write in our books that we had to buy with our own money. Because let's face it we were never gonna read them ever again and couldn't really take them to Barnes & Noble to sell.

[SockPuppet]

Looking for Alaska and Into the Wild are two of the best books I've ever read. When I first read the latter, I was incredibly bored with it and found it difficult to visualize the concepts of survival presented by the main character, but I eventually got a grasp on it and it's something I'll really appreciate forever.

[Suicune's Fire]

The best book I had to read was probably Killer's Tears, which was about this murderer who killed this boy's parents and then sort of kidnapped him, but they had this really cute father/son-like relationship. The boy had, like, no emotion, so he didn't care that his parents were killed. In the end, the killer was either put in jail or put to death, but he ended up really caring about the boy, and the boy him. It's tragic, but nice.

I hated The Great Gatsby and ohmygod, Passage to India. Shoot me in the leg, but don't make me read that again. Oh my gosh.

Of Mice and Men was another we had to read, and it was okay, but not that great. I disliked all Shakespeare (especially Romeo and Juliet) except Hamlet, since The Lion King is totally Hamlet with animals.

[Neo Emolga]

I hated The Great Gatsby and ohmygod, Passage to India. Shoot me in the leg, but don't make me read that again. Oh my gosh.

Of Mice and Men was another we had to read, and it was okay, but not that great. I disliked all Shakespeare (especially Romeo and Juliet) except Hamlet, since The Lion King is totally Hamlet with animals.

Somehow, I actually managed to get through all my years of high school without having to read The Great Gatsby, which is quite a feat considering that's usually a "Required Reading" staple when it comes to school. My sister and brother both had to read it, and unfortunately, from what they told me also, that's several hours of their lives they'll never get back.

I really couldn't stand Shakespeare stuff either. The guy definitely gets WAY too much credit for recycling the same themes and not even being very imaginative. I had to Cliff Notes Romeo and Juliet because the old English fluff practically made it unreadable for me and I was getting sick of it and just wanted it to be explained in real people terms.

Steinbeck stuff, I was ok with. Grapes of Wrath and of Mice and Men had their qualities. Wouldn't read them again, but I didn't feel like throwing them against the wall.

Anything by Hemingway was a chore. Farewell to Arms is probably hands down, the worst required reading I've had to endure and the style he wrote the book in has me convinced that anyone who thinks this book is a "classic" will be the first ones to be part of the infected, brain-devouring horde in the inevitable zombie apocalypse.