Literature Must-Reads?

[Linda (Australia)]

If you had to list, say, the twelve 'must-reads' for your high schooler what would they be? eg novels, historical fiction, shakespeare, etc. Twelve books that should definitely be read before they finished high school.

 

We've been a bit slack with reading the Great Books - and I'm running out of time! I want to assign a literature list for the older ones, but am having trouble deciding which books to insist on.

 

 

Suggestions?

[jelbe5]

Just my opinion, but read a novel by Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities is the usual in high school. I did enjoy that. BUT I recently read Oliver Twist (I actually listened to it using a "Playaway", a preloaded mp3 player. Our library now has these for check out.). I thought it was one of the best books ever, even though I have seen various movie versions of the story. There is so much more to the original work. I was truly captivated by it. Of course, the wonderful voice of the narrator was part of that captivation, but I highly recommend it.

 

Editing to add Kidnapped by RL Stevenson is another book I listened too. Fantastic story. It helps if you know a little bit about the history of Scotland at that time. The book I have also had a map of David's journey which I looked at once in a while. I did not think I would enjoy it but I did. Again, the wonderful voice of the narrator brought the story alive. It can be a little difficult to understand due to the Scottish dialect (my parents were born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland and came to the US in 1961). Listening to the story might be more enjoyable than reading it. I checked out the Blackstone Audio version.

Edited September 15, 2009 by jelbe5

[Faithr]

1) The Iliad, 2)The Odyssey, 3)Oedipus Rex or Antigone, 4)The Aeneid, 5)Canterbury Tales,6) MacBeth or Hamlet and 7) Midsummer's Nights Dream or The Tempest, 9)Pride and Prejudice, 10)a Dickens novel, 11) The Scarlet Letter 11) Huckleberry Finn 12)The Great Gatsby

 

Wow, this was hard to narrow down!

[aggieamy]

Good suggestions so far. I'd add some Sherlock Holmes in there too.

[Storm Bay]

In addition to the regular things (and some of them great) that others have suggested:

 

A Woman in White (first mystery novel, and later this author developed the prototype of the detective after a horrifying murder of a 3 year old had happened IRL which ended the career of a real detective, who later turned out to have been correct--it ties into social history.)

 

Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is my favourite of all the Bronte novels. Be sure to get one of the editions taken from the first edition (I think Oxford has one, and there's at least one other good one) since it was controversial, and her sister Charlotte had some of that removed after Anne's death. What was controversial? A married woman stood up for herself with an abusive husband, and even left him. Also, her first book, Agnes Grey, although not quite as well written, shows what things were really like for governesses (Anne had been one).

 

I agree about reading a Dickens novel--either A Tale of Two Cities or Oliver Twist would be my suggestions. The first ties into a war, and the second would be good to tie in with a study of orphans in 19th century England (of course, I'd tie it in with George Mueller, whose work with ophanages paved the way to reforms.)

 

Pride and Prejudice is my favourite Austen novel--actually, I really like it and don't like her others, so I am biased.

 

There are more, of course, and others have mentioned some of them. You may want to take a look at SWB's list in WEM, as it is a good one and does include Austen & Dickens. However, I haven't liked all of the novels on the list, and won't make all of my dc read all of them (I didn't care for the first two, for example.)

 

Victor Hugo has novels that tie in with the French Revolution, of course, and the movies just don't do justice to Les Miserables. However, that's one book I read the abridged version of, because there's no way I want to read pages and pages on French sewers.

 

Since I'm obviously chatty today, I'll end here, but there are other great ones I plan to include.