My High School Reading List

Did I really do a book report 
on this in ninth grade?

Shame. The burden of an English major. And not just because most people use your degree as a one-liner. Unlike most other subjects, an English major requires that you have actually read (cover to cover) the essential texts of literature.* Because it's what everyone thinks--we read and we write! History majors, philosophy majors: they read texts and write to interpret and theorize just like English majors, but for some reason, our degree is knocked down. Less noble than philosophy! Less tangible than history!

So yes, I feel shame I haven't sailed cover to cover through the classics. I didn't even read classics on my own until high school was over. Suddenly, this great fear struck me: Everyone at college would have read everything! And what had I read?

The answer to that: My high school reading list, as best I can remember, after the jump:



Ninth Grade (Welcome to High School)
Animal Farm
To Kill a Mockingbird
Plays: Romeo and Juliet; The Miracle Worker

This was summer reading?

Tenth Grade (Short Stories, Introduction to Essay Writing)
Of Mice and Men
Alas, Babylon
Plays: Oedipus Rex; Antigone; Julius Caesar

Eleventh Grade (American Lit)
The Scarlet Letter
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Ethan Frome
The Great Gatsby
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Wise Blood (read solo for a research paper) 
Plays: A Streetcar Named Desire; The Crucible; A Raisin in the Sun

Twelfth Grade (World Lit, Preparing for AP Testing)
Wuthering Heights
Brave New World
Native Son
Cry, the Beloved Country
No-No Boy
Ceremony
Plays: Macbeth; Hamlet

Not bad, but not very comprehensive, either. Senior year's "world" literature was, with one exception, either British or Asian American/African American/Native American (in short, American). I made a point the summer before college to sink into the classics I'd missed. There were the books every other teacher at my high school chose: Lord of the Flies, The Color Purple, The Sun Also Rises. Then the books you see on every Barnes & Noble summer reading display: How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, Fahrenheit 451, etc.

During college, I tried to keep it up, feeling hopelessly behind as an English major (reading The Catcher in the Rye at 20! Heart of Darkness after seeing Apocalypse Now!), even taking single-author classes to fill the embarrassing void (hey, Faulkner).

I got through Crime.
Still need to tackle Punishment.

Now I am 25, and I still have a few things to get off my chest.

1. I've never finished a Russian novel. (Anna Karenina, can we reschedule for winter?)
2. I've never finished a Victorian novel longer than 500 pages.
3. I've never started a Dickens other than A Christmas Carol.
4. I did read Ulysses. So that makes up for everything, right?

Dear readers, how was your high school reading experience? Was anyone reading Woolf or Lawrence on the bus ride home?


*I'm not sure why we still call it "the English department," if we are expected not only to know English-language literature, but also world literature in translation, as well. You can't expect to be well-rounded in literature if you're never gone near Dostoyevsky or Garcia Marquez.