What is the best book you've ever read for School?

Volunteer Fire Detective said:
My Junior and Senior year (ending here in just a couple of months!), I read some absolutely amazing stuff. The highlights included Prometheus Bound (Aeschylus's imagery is fantastic), The Awakening (better than it sounds, trust me), The Wild Duck (Ibsen! Need I say more?), Things Fall Apart (the very last line is one of the most amazing in literature, I think), and 1984 (simply amazing), and let's not forget the short stories of Hemingway and Macbeth.
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I totally forgot about Things Fall Apart! That was great!
 
Grocer Man said:
I totally forgot about Things Fall Apart! That was great!
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The jocks in my grade became so obsessed with that book that there's now a sports team called The Chinuas, with the T-Shirts featuring the author and everything. It was quite hilarious, and they still wear them to this day.


Oh, and moony? They totally teach comics at my school.

*ducks*
 
compound said:
I had a really open-minded English teacher in high school, who assigned us The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. This was in an all-boys Catholic school in culturally-stifling Singapore, circa 1993, so reading it was a real wake up call, for my 13-year-old self.
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We read that in the 9th grade and I loved it. Except for
the Sealander's philosophy. You're an advanced society and the best riot-control weapon you can come up with is an artificial spider-web that kills everything it touches? Even if they weren't involved, just nearby? You ****ing pricks. All the psychic powers in the world and you still don't understand the value of lives. **** you. I'm having my little sister thought-bomb you all into submission when we get there. Then we're taking your autogyro back and getting the rest of my friends.

But I loved most of the rest of the book.

Apparently, it's better known as Re-Birth, the title it was published under, in the US. (Which is actually a more fitting title, given the book's themes, even if it wasn't the one Wyndham intended.)
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It was The Chrysalids here too. I don't get why Re-Birth would be a better title though. They're almost synonymus, but one sounds cooler and more unique.

Ice said:
When I was in middle school, I never read Holes. I saw the movie (which I enjoyed a lot). Although, when my brothers were in middle school, they were given the book to read.
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The movie is definitely one of the most faithful and satisfying book adaptations I've seen. The only major difference is that in the book, Stanley starts out being fat and gradually loses weight digging at Camp Green Lake. It was one of my favourite aspects of the book, but it was totally fair to change that for the film(they couldn't have a kid in his early teens go through that during filming), and Shia was a terrific choice.

You ought to read the book sometime too, though, for all the great thoughts and subtext a film can't convey. Great, great stuff.
 
ultimatedjf said:
The jocks in my grade became so obsessed with that book that there's now a sports team called The Chinuas, with the T-Shirts featuring the author and everything. It was quite hilarious, and they still wear them to this day.


Oh, and moony? They totally teach comics at my school.

*ducks*
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I had a friend who made Chuck Norris jokes about Okonkwo.
 
Has anybody read Albert Camus? And if so, would anyone be interested in creating a thread for discussion of his works? I don't want to just start one if no one is going to read it.
 
I can't believe I forgot about this but I think Of Mice and Men might be the most heart wrenching awe inspiring book I've ever read. It's between that and 1984 for me.
 
Hmmmm. . .I didn't really count poems or plays. Shakespeare is all around fantastic. The Tragedy of Julius Ceaser, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet and Othello all come to mind as outstanding. Romeo and Juliet isn't bad either. Also, the Illiad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid are easily three of my favorite stories ever and are what really got me into Grecko-Roman mythology as a whole.

But, I did think of another book, one that I probably like better than The Lord of the Flies or Animal Farm (And I'm actually suprised it hasn't been brought up yet).

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Fantastic book all around.
 
You know what I just remembered. Hatchet. Its about a boy who survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a hatchet and how he survives. It was quite good back in 7th grade when we read it.

Lynx said:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Fantastic book all around.
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We didn't read HF here, just Tom Sawyer. I tried to read HF myself after reading TS but i think 5th grade was a little too young for me to get it. I should retry it.
 
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Baxter said:
You know what I just remembered. Hatchet. Its about a boy who survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a hatchet and how he survives. It was quite good back in 7th grade when we read it.
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I remember that. It was a pretty good book. I'm pretty sure it became a massive series and went a bit nuts though.
 
Baxter said:
...but... but it was perfectly self contained. Why would you do that...

:cry:
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Paulsen followed Hatchet with four additional novels about Brian. In the first, The River, a government agent asks Brian to return to the Canadian wilderness-about 100 miles from his original camp-and show him how he managed to survive. The agent gets struck by lightning and falls into a coma, leaving Brian to construct a raft to transport him to a trading post.

Paulsen revisited Hatchet in Brian's Winter. Paulsen answers (by popular demand, he says) the question of what would have happened if Brian had been forced to spend a winter in the Canadian wilderness. This is an alternate version of the story of Hatchet, in which the survival pack radio didn't work, so he couldn't call for help.

The third additional novel, titled Brian's Return, tells the story of Brian returning to the Canadian wilderness in a canoe, aptly named the Raft, a gift given to him at the end of the book, The River.

In 2003, Paulsen wrote Brian's Hunt, in which Brian finds an injured dog while in his canoe. He thinks that the dog belongs to trappers, so he goes to his Native friends to ask if anyone lost a dog. When he arrives at their house, he finds the mauled bodies of his friends. He finds out a bear killed them and noticed that one of their daughters is missing. He later finds her in a canoe out on the lake and goes to hunt the bear.
 
ProjectX2 said:
Paulsen followed Hatchet with four additional novels about Brian. In the first, The River, a government agent asks Brian to return to the Canadian wilderness-about 100 miles from his original camp-and show him how he managed to survive. The agent gets struck by lightning and falls into a coma, leaving Brian to construct a raft to transport him to a trading post.

Paulsen revisited Hatchet in Brian's Winter. Paulsen answers (by popular demand, he says) the question of what would have happened if Brian had been forced to spend a winter in the Canadian wilderness. This is an alternate version of the story of Hatchet, in which the survival pack radio didn't work, so he couldn't call for help.

The third additional novel, titled Brian's Return, tells the story of Brian returning to the Canadian wilderness in a canoe, aptly named the Raft, a gift given to him at the end of the book, The River.

In 2003, Paulsen wrote Brian's Hunt, in which Brian finds an injured dog while in his canoe. He thinks that the dog belongs to trappers, so he goes to his Native friends to ask if anyone lost a dog. When he arrives at their house, he finds the mauled bodies of his friends. He finds out a bear killed them and noticed that one of their daughters is missing. He later finds her in a canoe out on the lake and goes to hunt the bear.
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...oh **** that. I'm going to keep my fond memories of Hatchet and ignore the rest.

Like Enders Game verses the rest of the series. :D
 
Baxter said:
...oh **** that. I'm going to keep my fond memories of Hatchet and ignore the rest.

Like Enders Game verses the rest of the series. :D
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Yeah, true that. I tried reading Ender's Shadow and one of the books about Bean, but I couldn't get into them. Bean's book just felt like a copy of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow was just some weird **** that I can't remember.
 
ProjectX2 said:
Yeah, true that. I tried reading Ender's Shadow and one of the books about Bean, but I couldn't get into them. Bean's book just felt like a copy of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow was just some weird **** that I can't remember.
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Ender's Shadow was alright but you've really got to have some time in between reading it and game. Now it really fell apart for me with Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind. They were overly complex and had none of the charm that Game had.

I haven't checked out any of the other Bean books.
 
Hatchet was one of my favourites as a kid, before and after we were "taught" it. My grandmother got me it and The River one birthday.

However.... I think Brian's Winter was ever better. I consider it canon. The River was good, but the situation was reaching. Brian's Return was better than The River and had some good themes. My sister owns Brian's Hunt but I've yet to read it.
 
Frapalino said:
I actually like Beans books more than Enders with the exception of Enders Game.
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Like I said, the first Bean book was good but to appritiate it you need some distance from game or it'll feel like a retread. I haven't read any of the others. I didn't like the later game books at all.
 
*realizes Ender's Shadow and Bean's book are the same thing*

*wonders what he was actually reading*
 
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