What Books Did You Read At School?

[stuartdg]

Animal Farm
Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator
The Silver Sword
The Railway Children
James And The Giant Peach

all spring to mind but what were you reading?

[Dirk Gently]

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator
Elidor
Plus we had graded books in primary school. Graded from Bronze, Silver & then Gold were the hardest.

The Catcher in the Rye at Secondary school springs to mind first.

[SiHart]

The Turbulant Term of Tyke Tyler
Easy read versions of Oliver Twist and Great Expectations
The Granny Project
Carrie's War
The Village With Three Corners books at infant school, followed by the Hummingbird books.


Si xx

[Jon Masters]

The War of the Worlds
Lord of the Flies
A Tale of Two Cities

However, I much prefered primary school, and vividly remember Friday last lesson when the teacher would read to the whole class, with a cliffhanger each week. I particularly remember The Hobbit and at least 3 of the Narnia books being delivered this way.

[Andrew Curnow]

We had the Hobbit read to us as well, Jon (by the sadly now deceased Mr Pringle, in what would now be year 4). Also, Treasure Island, and his particular favourites, the "...Of Adventure" series by Enid Blyton - Kiki the parrot was his piece de resistance.

As for books we studied at school, I didn't do O-Level lit because it clashed with French (don't ask) but at A-Level I did:

The Taming of the Shrew
Collected Poems of TS Eliot
The Color Purple
Death of a Salesman
Translations (a very dreary Irish play)
The French Lieutenant's Woman

[WhiteCrow]

Ah two I remember from O-level English.

The Slave Dancer - a depressing tale about a boy who works on a slave ship, witnesses the awful conditions of the slaves, and in an accident, only he and a slave boy survive.

Z for Zachariah - post-nuclear war. A girl is the last survivor of her family in a sheltered valley. She must fend off a visitor from outside, a scientist out to rape her. Oh those fun filled 80s!

[Rob McCow]

Depressing stories about sex and violence? We had a depressing play to study at A-level called 'Our Country's Good'. The title is indeed a pun on the C-Word, in fact both the F and the C-words appear on the very first page!

The best thing about the play was the author's name. Timberlake Wertenbaker!

[Dirk Gently]

Z for Zachariah - post-nuclear war. A girl is the last survivor of her family in a sheltered valley. She must fend off a visitor from outside, a scientist out to rape her. Oh those fun filled 80s!

Oh yes, I remember we read that one. She ends up shooting him, taking his rad suit & going off to see if anyone else is still alive outside her Valley.

[WhiteCrow]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_for_Zachariah

Yeah - what a laugh a minute. This was part of what was the Abbot Beyne School curriculum of "in a nuclear war, you're all going to die".

Study of this book was suplimented with watching Threads (nuclear bomb hits Sheffield) and studies on what happened in Hiroshima. Everything short of supplying us with suicide pills in the event of an attack. And in the 80s, an attack seemed just around the corner - scarey times - give me worrying about the credit crunch or global warming anytime.

[WhiteCrow]

Oops ...

[cullsoft]

Oh boy, and I think my school reading days were far closer than the rest of yours...

Off the top of my head, I only remember the Shakespeares we studied:
- The Tempest
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing

I can't remember any of the other books... or at least titles - I recall in year 8 we read some boring thing about a whingy teenage girl that didn't appeal at all.

If we go even further back, whilst I can't remember which "learn to read" books I used, I do recall that we didn't have the Roger Red Hat books at my primary school... I know we had Bangers & Mash in the school library, though. And at playgroup it seems that I spent less time on arts & crafts than I did reading the newspapers covering the tables.

[Si Hunt]

"Kes"! It's no wonder I gave up reading shortly afterwards!

Si.

[SiHart]

Oh yes! We did Kes too, along with To Sir, With Love (we didn't get to see the Lulu starring film though), To Kill a Mockingbird and Across the Barricades (which was a love story set in Northern Ireland and which everyone seemed to love in my class).


Si xx

[Wayne]

Beano
Topper
Beezer
Whizzer & Chips
Commando
Battle Pictire Library
War Picture Library
Knave
Fiesta
Playbirds
Lovebirds

[SiHart]

Your school was very progressive, Wayne!

Si xx

[Wayne]

Ok serious answer. I might not remember them all but.....

Lord of the Flies
Animal Farm
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Spring and Port Wine

Some Shakespeare crud. Can't remember what.

[Rob McCow]

Some Shakespeare crud.

I think Ian McKellan was appearing in a production of Somne Shakefpeare Crudat the National just last year.

It's one of the classics, up there with Henry V, Ian II and Timon of Athens.

[Wayne]

Actually, 'To Kill a Mocking Bird' & 'Spring and Port Wine' were/are both very good.
I think the former had quite an influence on my thinking.

[Alex]

I did Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm and 1984 as well, and pretty much enjoyed them - though some of 1984 went right over my head and I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more when I re-read it a few years back.

Shakespeare-wise I remember doing The Merchant of Venice, which is a particularly poor Shakespeare play anyway, why they bother inflicting things like that on kids when you could study some of the really great ones like Midsummer Night's Dream or Henry V is beyond me.

At A-Level, like Andrew I read Translations, and I think he's being kind by saying it was 'dreary', I honestly don't think I've read a duller thing in my life. I also had to read Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy which is an incredibly tiresome slog, and amounts to about 600 pages of a twat whining about being born in the wrong class. Important it may be, but by Christ it's not an entertaining read in the slightest.

It's amazing I've the love for literature that I do considering some of the nonsense I had to read back then...

Oh, and we didn't study it, but Paul and I appeared in our school performance of To Kill A Mockingbird in our final year, which was well received but I always thought it was a bit dodgy - especially as we didn't have any black children in our school so they 'blacked up' one of the fifth years to play Tom Robinson. I've got it on video somewhere and plan to get it converted to .avi hopefully soon, just because it should be quite amusing to watch again / put on youtube and see if the school comes in for flack for doing such a thing...!

[Andrew Curnow]

At A-Level, like Andrew I read Translations, and I think he's being kind by saying it was 'dreary', I honestly don't think I've read a duller thing in my life.

My entire class absolutely hated it - but the teacher really loved it, and reckoned it was one of the best set books for that year!

[shada pavlova]

Until about a year ago, my school library had the Target Novelisations of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Dominators, Pyramids of Mars, Logopolis and Castrovalva, plus the novelisation of The Ghosts of N-Space.

They threw 'em out because there was only one person that ever read them.

Okay, it was me...

[Dirk Gently]

Why didn't they just ask if you wanted to buy them for 50p each rather than throw them out? Seems quite a waste.

[shada pavlova]

I offered to take them off the school's hands, but they said it was "against school policy" or some rubbish.

[Stephen Morgan]

Books that spring to mind for me, John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes, Treasure Island, Black Beauty and Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, which we had to study for Prince Charles' Investiture in 1969. I'm afraid I never "got" this one, it was totally beyond my understanding, and, if the truth were known, I'd rather have read the Tintin books, if I could prise them out of the grubby hands of the big boys that is.

[shada pavlova]

I've got all the Tintin books!