If you were a high school English teacher, which books would you require reading? - Teachers IRL should chime in

[AbyssStarer]

Finding books which would

• 1. have a good lesson
• 2. be age appropriate
• 3. hold the kids' interest
• 4. not be too easy or too difficult to read

seems pretty hard. I hated reading Shakespeare in school because it wasn't interesting to have to read something where every page in the textbook has a 2nd page of what was basically translation notes.
From what I've read I would pick at least these:

• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• Lord of the Flies
• Of Mice and Men
• Botchan by Natsume Soseki
• Frankenstein
• Death of a Salesman

There's plenty of great literature which I love and think have good ideas behind them teens could bear to hear but I don't think they would like to read.

 

[ShitCube]

Industrial Society and Its Future

 

[Amber the Hedgehog]

I would pick something from Agatha Christie. Those books are fairly easy to read and interesting because of it. Her writing is strongly colored by her being a worker writer. She wrote many books pretty much regardless of her personal feelings because she wanted to make money. This didn't mean she didn't do research for accuracy or include stuff she was genuinely interested in, she just knew that serving the readers was her job. I would probably pick a Poirot story as he is a fun detective character and becouse Christie hated him she made a really funny self insert character to comment on her feelings about him and generally being a popular author. She felt so strongly about him that she wrote a story that she kept to herself for decades that killed him so that nobody could continue writing his stories.

 

[RumblyTumbly]

Read?

Reading is for White Supremacists and an activity encouraged by the patriarchy.

 

[A man of no consequence]

 

[albert chan]

Anything Mark Twain, Fight Club and American Psycho (if we’re talking high school kids), Animal Farm and Aesop’s Fables

 

[Weed Eater]

I read it in middle school but to this day Homer's "Odyssey" has stuck with me. I think it captures the interest of people a hell of a lot better than "Iliad", and if you are a creative mind then it's a foundation piece that I find is necessary to understand especially if you are hellbent on being an """"artist"""" or writer.

 

[Revo]

The Green Book by Gaddafi

 

[Xolanite]

this is based on books I read for dual enrollment English on top of regular English class. I mostly read short stories in high school English.

• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• The Crucible (it’s a play, I know but there’s a movie tie in)
• Shakespeare‘s The Tempest (a personal read thanks to an anime called Blast of Tempest)
• The Odyssey (there’s a sick Marvel adaptation of it, and probably the only marvel comic I’d recommend other than The Runaways)
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (another personal read)
• Crooked House by Agatha Christie (Agatha Christie was a personal read because of Touhou)
• of Mice and Men
• Grapes of Wrath
• Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers (rest in peace)

to be honest, it’s near impossible to get high school students (who don’t like reading anything that isnt erotica or pulp fiction series like the Blueford series) to not only read a novel within 6-9 weeks but to understand why the book was/is significant in a current era. Hell, just getting them to understand what happens in something like Beowulf is a herculean task.

 

[Had]

Living Healthy In The Modern World(pdf) and​

How to Win Friends and Influence People​

 

[L50LasPak]

I'd be completely honest with my students and force the little shits to study the dictionary or fail.

 

[SojuDrnkr]

• Finnegan's Wake, for similar reasons as the poster above me.

I like Finnegan's Wake because it helps me come up with good lyrics if I have writer's block.

- "Portnoy's Complaint" by Philip Roth
- "Ham and Rye" by Charles Bukowski
-"The Stranger" by Albert Camus
-"Motel Life" by Willy Vautin
- "The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards" by Kristopher Jansma
-"Sirens of Titan" by Kurt Vonnegut
-"Sexus" by Henry Miller

 

[SojuDrnkr]

this is based on books I read for dual enrollment English on top of regular English class. I mostly read short stories in high school English.

• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• The Crucible (it’s a play, I know but there’s a movie tie in)
• Shakespeare‘s The Tempest (a personal read thanks to an anime called Blast of Tempest)
• The Odyssey (there’s a sick Marvel adaptation of it, and probably the only marvel comic I’d recommend other than The Runaways)
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (another personal read)
• Crooked House by Agatha Christie (Agatha Christie was a personal read because of Touhou)
• of Mice and Men
• Grapes of Wrath
• Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers (rest in peace)

to be honest, it’s near impossible to get high school students (who don’t like reading anything that isnt erotica or pulp fiction series like the Blueford series) to not only read a novel within 6-9 weeks but to understand why the book was/is significant in a current era. Hell, just getting them to understand what happens in something like Beowulf is a herculean task.

We must've went to the same High School because I read all of those my freshman and sophmore year.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Richard McBeef.

 

[User names must be unique]

Anything exciting, light with no subtext, context or moral. Reading as entertainment has been ruined in the anglosphere partly because English curriculums focus on books with "meaning" that students need to "get something out of", it turns reading into a chore for too many people, makes them feel the need to search for subtext rather than just be entertained.

Fuck that noise, let them read something cool that gets them excited about reading. Even if it is just garbage, if it gets them excited about literature that's far more important than having them analyse the subtextual/contextual meaning of a 80-90 year old work.

 

[Chocolate Wombat]

I'd want them to read something they might actually enjoy so that (hopefully) they would learn that reading can be fun, and then maybe someday read things that are more edifying. I'd also focus on sci-fi/more modern fiction because most classics are boring as fuck, and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit through the Scarlet Letter over and over again. It would probably wind up just being some stuff I liked when I was about their age. Also would include titles that had movie adaptations so that we could A) squeeze in movie days and B) discuss the difference between the different artistic mediums. I'd also poll the class and have them vote on something chosen by them as a group.

Dune by Frank Herbert
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

 

[DJ Grelle]

All Tintin comic books.
Not pozzed, easy to read and they fill children with a spirit of adventure, curiosity and an adherence to truth.

 

[niqlo]

The Anarchist Cookbook

 

[A Welsh Cake]

Journey to the West for if China becomes more culturally exporting.

also because monke

 

[Solid Snek]

So I'm allowed to come up with my own lesson plan? What sort of highschool are we talking about - public, private, inner city, boarding? What grade or grades will I be teaching? Is this a general class, honors, AP, remedial? What's the modal reading level of these students? Is this the first sememester I am teaching these kids, or do I already know some of them, and have a feeling for their hobbies, goals, what kinds of materials interest them (and if I do, then what have I learned about them)?