Flavorwire » 10 Books You Really Should Have Read In High School: An Alternate List

flavorwire.com:

This week, we came across this list of ‘books you really should have read in high school’ over at MSNBC’s Today Books. While their picks are definitely classics, most of which we did in fact have to read in high school, we think today’s youth (and any adults playing catch-up, which let’s be real, is almost everybody to some extent) would be better served by a few alternate choices.

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Comments

[Larkin31]

07:34 AM on 08/10/2011

"Johnny Got His Gun," Dalton Trumbo

[DanielAdler]

02:00 PM on 08/09/2011

Um, how about some more classics instead of the novels that have just come out? If you've got to include a trippy book that defines the present moment, let's read some Blake Butler. Who put this list together anyway? Try this one instead: http://danielryanadler.com/2011/08/08/high-seriousness-and-go-tell-it-on-the-mountain/

[fusillijerry]

05:12 PM on 08/09/2011

"Who put this list together anyway?"

Emily Temple, from Flavorwire.

[mzrecycle]

01:25 PM on 08/09/2011

It was decades ago, but Anna Karenina WAS required reading for me in H.S. I very much liked it.

[JoJoRae]

03:59 AM on 08/10/2011

I had to read it too and it was not that long ago....Okay, well two decades ago.

[Riley73]

12:01 PM on 08/09/2011

I'd suggest "Native Son" by Richard Wright over Morrison's "Beloved." Better, more intelligent writing. Also, "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Slaughterhouse Five" as counterpoise to those insulting, propaganda-laced visits to high schools by spiffed-up armed forces recruiters.

[Lev Raphael]

07:40 AM on 08/09/2011

Does the author actually know any high school students? David Foster Wallace and Tolstoy are ridiculous choices. Ditto Beloved, which is also way too complex for that age. And Susan Sontag? The list finally reads like a parody.

[zuzuzpetals]

07:40 PM on 08/09/2011

Excuse me? We read Moby Dick, Richard III and Henry V "at that age".
Also, The Golden Bowl by Henry James.
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Not to mention--Pride and Prejudice.
Among many others.

[Skyhawk]

12:22 AM on 08/09/2011

I like mixing contemporary with classic. I would definitely include Maus as part of the curriculum.

[c-tom]

09:13 PM on 08/08/2011

Infinite Jest + Anna Karenina = 2,000 pages. Good choices all high school students love to read excessively long novels.

[John David Redux]

06:36 PM on 08/08/2011

I don't think I've ever met a high school student that could ever appreciate Susan Sontag. Oh, wait, there was one. Me. I don't think there are many others.

[zuzuzpetals]

07:45 PM on 08/09/2011

Count me in too.

[triplettam]

04:38 PM on 08/08/2011

Orson Scott Card and Robert Heinlein. Pretty trippy. I would have preferred "Stranger in a Strange Land" to "Moon," but parents would probably be up in arms.

[kareemachan]

12:57 PM on 08/09/2011

I liked "Moon" better myself.

[triplettam]

01:34 PM on 08/09/2011

Yeah. It was great. de la Paz's description of himself as being a "rational anarchist" is something I've remembered ever since I read it when I was 14 or 15.