So, I’ve never tried one of these threads before…but I thought I’d give it a go!
In my Sunday essay this week, I wrote about Harper Lee and her seminal book To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s one that whenever I mention it often gets the response Oh! That’s my favourite book of all time! I studied it in school…
This got me to thinking: what books did you discover through school (whether that be as a child, adolescent, or through further education) that have stuck with you into adulthood?
Drop yours in the conversation thread, and let’s compare notes :)
I gave up English at School at 16, didn't like the teacher, she put me off everything! But I had a wonderful French teacher at A Level, and I've never lost my memories of Camus: The Plague, so relevant recently; and the lovely Colette, The Ripening Seed. So proud of having studied them in French as well!
I attended a High School in Yorkshire, England in the early 1970s, and the book that changed my relationship to the novel and my heartfelt response to literature was Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. It wasn’t that I had a charismatic teacher, or that I was a star student, but that I had entered that magical world- the conversation between author and reader - and my life has been enriched and rewarding because of this.
For me it has to be 'Of Mice and Men'. I think many people have studied it at some point, but it's one that's always stuck with me, particularly the character of Curley's Wife. I could still quote chunks of it now!
I read HG Wells The Time Machine back in school and it stuck with me, morphing over the years as commentary that fit how split society has gotten long past where and when the original narrative discourse was.
Two very different books left lasting impressions on me. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card and The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. I have read them both many times and they still resonate with me all these years later.
TKAM is a primary example, I love having this discussion in person and online.
For me, top of mind is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston - eye opening, epic, so southern in a way that I adore, romantic, surprising, and beautifully written. That is one of the most impactful books I have ever read, especially as I am inspired to write in a similar fashion.
I love the spirituality infused in that book and also in Beloved by Toni Morrison - again, history, spirit, heightened metaphor, and magical realism makes it so very impactful.
Wuthering Heights and short story: First Love by Ivan Turgenev - I also loved and found very impactful at the time that I read them in highschool, I'd like to return to those and re-member why. I think because they are so romantic. Similarly, Romeo and Juliet, naturally. 💗
Although it wasn't on my school curriculum, a friend doing an English Higher passed onto me a copy of The Great Gatsby. On first reading I wasn't overwhelmed, but I reread it in 2012 after finding a second hand copy, and have read it every year since! From my own studies, I did Tender Is The Night for English Lit A Level and adored it - another book I reread often. Ditto Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, and Janice Galloway's The Trick Is To Keep Breathing. There are so many wonderful new books out all the time, it takes a very special book to keep me going back to it!
Although not a high school or academic book Danny Champion of the a world sticks with me. It was the way my teacher, Mr Lloyd read it with such passion that always made me want to read. Now I am a primary school teacher and am never far away from a copy of that book. 🤩Great question.
We read Animal Farm in our last junior year . We took turns to read out loud, which I found very frustrating as many of my classmates were not so good at reading, but it did make a strong impression. Having re- read it, along with many of Orwell’s books I’m still amazed at how relevant he is, even now.
I read Sartre's Existentialism is a Humanism (in a commented edition by a Portuguese philosopher) when I was probably too naive to understand it fully, and I've never forgotten it. Another one is Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. It was at a time when I started contemplating pursuing studies in Politics or in Philosophy. Somehow, I have shamefully never read To Kill a Mockingbird, maybe I should move it to the top of my TBR. Thank you for sharing this!
I love this question. I'm immediately transported to my high school friend's living room, reading together aloud, one chapter each, doing the voices, reading Grapes of Wrath for honor's English. I'm thinking that nostalgia and the performative element of this read contributes to the very memory of 'classroom literature.' This reading also inspired me to read East of Eden, now one of my favorite reads. Fast forward to uni, with a heavy reading load as I faked my way through Anna Karenina, which is now my favorite book. However, it only became so when I had the leisure to read it without having to submit a paper on it. This has me thinking that a book really finds you, depending where you are. Pressure reading v. pleasure reading truly shapes an experience with text and leaves that first impression.
Toni Morrison's Beloved - for the book but also because it was the first book assigned in school that had really captured my interest as a reader in a long time. I am a voracious reader but had stopped reading much that was assigned in school because old dead white men writers weren't appealing to my teenage girl self and I was able to get by without doing the reading.
In Australia we read ‘My Brilliant Career’ by Miles Franklin and a ‘a fortunate life’ by Albert Facey.. Both books were quite different, but both left an impact.
I always loved books. I remember ordering A Taste of Blackberries by Doris Buchanan Smith in the mid seventies through the Scholastic catalog. Very exciting! It's about friendship and sudden death. Pretty heavy for someone in elementary school, but I remember loving it.
The first book I remember sticking with me from school was The Great Gatsby. It was through that book (and then Baz Luhrmann's extravagant 2013 adaptation!) that I fell in love with studying the deeper meanings of literature and stories more generally. At university level – and after years of struggling on my own – I was finally taught how to understand Virginia Woolf's writing through A Room of One's Own and she's still my very favourite author to this day!
The book itself didn't stick with me so much as the author whose complete works I read at 21. But in 7th grade when I was 12, my teacher Helen Berg read the entire A Tale of Two Cities to us. I hadn't been read to since I was about 5, so this stuck with me. I can still see her sitting on her desk, legs crossed, as she read that book to us every day.
Hola , Uno De Los Libros Que Descubrí En La Escuela , Fue Rayuela De Julio Cortazar , Un Libro Que Marco Mí Adolescencia , En Cuanto Al Descubriendo Del Genero Musical Jazz , Al Amor Por Las Viejas Calles De París Y Ha Los Escritores Iberoamericanos De Su Generación. Un Saludo.
I gave up English at School at 16, didn't like the teacher, she put me off everything! But I had a wonderful French teacher at A Level, and I've never lost my memories of Camus: The Plague, so relevant recently; and the lovely Colette, The Ripening Seed. So proud of having studied them in French as well!
I attended a High School in Yorkshire, England in the early 1970s, and the book that changed my relationship to the novel and my heartfelt response to literature was Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. It wasn’t that I had a charismatic teacher, or that I was a star student, but that I had entered that magical world- the conversation between author and reader - and my life has been enriched and rewarding because of this.
For me it has to be 'Of Mice and Men'. I think many people have studied it at some point, but it's one that's always stuck with me, particularly the character of Curley's Wife. I could still quote chunks of it now!
I read HG Wells The Time Machine back in school and it stuck with me, morphing over the years as commentary that fit how split society has gotten long past where and when the original narrative discourse was.
Two very different books left lasting impressions on me. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card and The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. I have read them both many times and they still resonate with me all these years later.
TKAM is a primary example, I love having this discussion in person and online.
For me, top of mind is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston - eye opening, epic, so southern in a way that I adore, romantic, surprising, and beautifully written. That is one of the most impactful books I have ever read, especially as I am inspired to write in a similar fashion.
I love the spirituality infused in that book and also in Beloved by Toni Morrison - again, history, spirit, heightened metaphor, and magical realism makes it so very impactful.
Wuthering Heights and short story: First Love by Ivan Turgenev - I also loved and found very impactful at the time that I read them in highschool, I'd like to return to those and re-member why. I think because they are so romantic. Similarly, Romeo and Juliet, naturally. 💗
Although it wasn't on my school curriculum, a friend doing an English Higher passed onto me a copy of The Great Gatsby. On first reading I wasn't overwhelmed, but I reread it in 2012 after finding a second hand copy, and have read it every year since! From my own studies, I did Tender Is The Night for English Lit A Level and adored it - another book I reread often. Ditto Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, and Janice Galloway's The Trick Is To Keep Breathing. There are so many wonderful new books out all the time, it takes a very special book to keep me going back to it!
Although not a high school or academic book Danny Champion of the a world sticks with me. It was the way my teacher, Mr Lloyd read it with such passion that always made me want to read. Now I am a primary school teacher and am never far away from a copy of that book. 🤩Great question.
We read Animal Farm in our last junior year . We took turns to read out loud, which I found very frustrating as many of my classmates were not so good at reading, but it did make a strong impression. Having re- read it, along with many of Orwell’s books I’m still amazed at how relevant he is, even now.
I read Sartre's Existentialism is a Humanism (in a commented edition by a Portuguese philosopher) when I was probably too naive to understand it fully, and I've never forgotten it. Another one is Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. It was at a time when I started contemplating pursuing studies in Politics or in Philosophy. Somehow, I have shamefully never read To Kill a Mockingbird, maybe I should move it to the top of my TBR. Thank you for sharing this!
I love this question. I'm immediately transported to my high school friend's living room, reading together aloud, one chapter each, doing the voices, reading Grapes of Wrath for honor's English. I'm thinking that nostalgia and the performative element of this read contributes to the very memory of 'classroom literature.' This reading also inspired me to read East of Eden, now one of my favorite reads. Fast forward to uni, with a heavy reading load as I faked my way through Anna Karenina, which is now my favorite book. However, it only became so when I had the leisure to read it without having to submit a paper on it. This has me thinking that a book really finds you, depending where you are. Pressure reading v. pleasure reading truly shapes an experience with text and leaves that first impression.
Toni Morrison's Beloved - for the book but also because it was the first book assigned in school that had really captured my interest as a reader in a long time. I am a voracious reader but had stopped reading much that was assigned in school because old dead white men writers weren't appealing to my teenage girl self and I was able to get by without doing the reading.
I feel like I can’t answer because here I am teaching English and I will name a gazillion books 😆
Catcher in the Rye was such a formative book for me in school. I have a guest post for ME Rothwel coming out about it.
Honorable mentions: Jude the Obscure, Gatsby, The Crucible, Pride and Prejudice, Song of Solomon, Invisible Man. I’ll leave it there.
In Australia we read ‘My Brilliant Career’ by Miles Franklin and a ‘a fortunate life’ by Albert Facey.. Both books were quite different, but both left an impact.
I always loved books. I remember ordering A Taste of Blackberries by Doris Buchanan Smith in the mid seventies through the Scholastic catalog. Very exciting! It's about friendship and sudden death. Pretty heavy for someone in elementary school, but I remember loving it.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles for ALevel had a huge impact on me One of the contributions to my feminism. Still made me cry when I read it a few years ago
The first book I remember sticking with me from school was The Great Gatsby. It was through that book (and then Baz Luhrmann's extravagant 2013 adaptation!) that I fell in love with studying the deeper meanings of literature and stories more generally. At university level – and after years of struggling on my own – I was finally taught how to understand Virginia Woolf's writing through A Room of One's Own and she's still my very favourite author to this day!
The book itself didn't stick with me so much as the author whose complete works I read at 21. But in 7th grade when I was 12, my teacher Helen Berg read the entire A Tale of Two Cities to us. I hadn't been read to since I was about 5, so this stuck with me. I can still see her sitting on her desk, legs crossed, as she read that book to us every day.
Hola , Uno De Los Libros Que Descubrí En La Escuela , Fue Rayuela De Julio Cortazar , Un Libro Que Marco Mí Adolescencia , En Cuanto Al Descubriendo Del Genero Musical Jazz , Al Amor Por Las Viejas Calles De París Y Ha Los Escritores Iberoamericanos De Su Generación. Un Saludo.