I had to read a Wizard of Earthsea for school and HATED it (probably because I was expecting it to be like harry potter ngl). However, every discussion I’ve seen online about the best fantasy series almost always includes Earthsea, so I was wondering if I was just too young to appreciate it and should revisit it. I’ve heard similar things for Jane Eyre, which I also found boring but found out it’s apparently meant for middle-aged people.
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli.
I really enjoyed Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom in school and when I became an adult. It’s a very nice story about how you should value the time you have with others.
I hated pretty much every book I had to read for school. I realize that some of the classic literature is consider classic for very good reasons, but all it did to teenage me was turn me off classic literature. And seriously, fuck everything about Dickens. The only Great Expectations in that book were the expectations of the teachers that the students could stay awake and alert while slogging through it.
That said, there are two common books in US high schools which I do think are worth a read: 1984 and A Brave New World. Neither should be particularly surprising, but both provide a good view into how a modern dystopian society might work. References also show up all over the place in modern society.
I got into reviewing a few classics.
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species.
Origin is a fascinating read. People give Galileo and Newton credit for founding true science and its methods, but Darwin earned credit too. He forced us all to understand that we are just animals, despite whatever the holy books say. That was a rough fight, and Darwin won. In so doing, he helped lay down the blueprint for how to do science.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1228Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince.
This is one of the most maligned pieces of literature ever written. It as coldly logical and sensible as could be imagined. Niccolò had some things to say, and whether or not you agree with his conclusions about how we should act, he is demonstrably correct about how we do act. This is a slim volume, written in direct language, doesn’t take too long to absorb.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57037Johnathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
One of the most famous essays ever written. Savage satire that skewers the causes of the famines in Ireland in the 1700s. This is the same guy that wrote Gulliver’s Travels, which probably also has more teeth than one might expect upon re-reading it as an adult. Only a few pages long, A Modest Proposal is a master class in effective writing.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htmDante Alighieri, The Inferno
Officially known as The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, this is a trilogy about someone losing his way and going to hell. And back. The Inferno is the first book, and unsurprisingly, the Hell bit is the only part really worth reading. To be honest, even just The Inferno is hard slog. It’s supposed to be a poem, or at least be in verse of some sort. It was published in 1321. That’s a lot of language gap, they simply talked a lot different. Anyway this work is where an awful lot of our conceptions of heaven and hell came from. It’s worth the time, if you can stand the very, very old text.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41537I hadn’t heard of A Modest Proposal before, but I just went and read it, and wow. I’m not sure what I was expecting but that was a crazy read. I don’t think I’ll forget about it for a long time.
In my high school senior English class we read A Modest Proposal and had to write our own version solving a modern problem.
I wrote mine on solving the overcrowding of prisions by building a prison on the moon. Since establishing a space colony is dangerous work, you use the death row inmates to do the construction, then just turn off the air supply. (More effective than lethal injection…)
I had not heard of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress at the time, but I did end up reading it soon after.
Outstanding. You had teachers that cared. Out of that list, A Modest Proposal was recommended to me by a history teacher, and Gulliver’s Travels was probably assigned reading at some point. I sought out the others on my own in my late teens.
Earthsea is just great, totally worth revisiting. The first three are wonderful and self contained.
I read 1984 for school. If you haven’t read it, it’s definitely worth it at least once.
In Germany not a single thing. We call ourselves “land of poets and thinkers” yet the books I had to read during my time in school only made most people despise books in general. What a joke.
In Russia it’s kinda the inverse. Like 80% of the books I’ve read in middle/high school I’ve re-read as an adult, most of them were still really interesting even on the second read.
Your famous and kick ass writers is your literature laid bare, it’s all you have. Meanwhile the Germans have to wade through, I dunno, mein Kampf to get to phenomenology of spirit (you read that in high school, right?)
Of the two good books I had to read in school in germany (Krabat and The Great Gatsby), I had already read both of them before. Everything else was at least boring and often actively bad.
We didn’t even read those, some other classes in our grade did, but our selection was absolutely horrible. I like reading, but I never actually finished the books in school since they were just horrendous.
I never had to read Pride and Prejudice in school but it’s really good.
When I was in year 12, early 2000s in Australia, we had to read Cloudstreet by Tim Winton. I hated it because it just felt like reading for the sake of class work.
But looking back I thought I was probably being a jerkoff, so I bought it years later with no teen angst in me, and really enjoyed it. Good book, will read again.
Top three: the crucible, things fall apart and to kill a mockingbird
Jane Eyre has very long sentences containing very entertaining dialogue. I like that. And there’s more or less subtle critique on the rich assholes of that era.
If you want a modern and fun take on Jane Eyre: “The Eyre affair” by Jasper Fforde is a very funny and action rich read and the start of a series of very entertaining bikes about “book world”. Fforde really is in love with his topics and tropes and personnel, and it shows.
We had classes where we analyzed parts of the Odyssey, Iliad and other ancient books/plays. I didn’t like most of them but at least the Odyssey deserves a full read at some point.
At this point you can use the banned books in the Krause list. Some of the best books ever are in there.
I also hated earthssea btw, didn’t even read it at school, just at recommendation from the internet. The style just didn’t vibe with me, I fear, it didn’t feel immersive or intricate in its worldbuilding because nothing was unsaid - at least, as far as I got to reading it before I put it down, it was just like a legend or something, and not s particularly interesting one.
