Which set texts did you have for school/college/uni and would you recommend them?

[CakeBeTheFoodOfLove]

Just interested to know as I'm a very avid reader and surprised at the amount of set texts I haven't actually read! I can't remember all of the ones I did but secondary school was Of mice and men and Macbeth, college was Great expectations and I had too many to name for uni really (did an OU degree so lots of different modules with many books).

After talking to my sister who is doing GCSEs currently I've vowed to read Animal Farm (only read bits up until now), To kill a mockingbird and Jekyll and Hyde.

[Hobbes8]

I loved To Kill a Mockingbird at GCSE and The Handmaids Tale, Wuthering Heights and Death of a Salesman at A level. At degree level we rattled through too many books to really enjoy them, but I did discover Slaughterhouse Five which is amazing.

[lastqueenofscotland]

I can’t remember my GCSE texts but at a level
Dubliners: very funny
Tess of the durbevilles: fucking hated it. Don’t like hardy at all in general. Maybe if he was a bit nicer to his wife he’d not be such a misery in his writing.
The collector: loved
Brideshead revisted: remains one of my favourite books.

[spinabifidamom]

I loved shakespeare. As a homeschooled child I didn’t undergo formal exams when I was fifteen years old. I did my literature exam when I was seventeen instead.
MacBeth was my personal favourite text. I also enjoyed Romeo and Juliet.

[SnotttyNosedSheila]

The Trumpet Major - Thomas Hardy - one of the dullest books I have ever read. Put me off Hardy for years.

The Pearl - John Steinbeck - one of the most depressing books I have ever read. Put me off Steinbeck for years.

Miss Julie - Strindberg - one of the most mysognistic plays/books I have ever read. It still offends me to this day.

The Devil's Disciple - GB Shaw - I really liked this. It had some action and suspense and real questions regarding the rights and wrongs of the situation and protagonists.

[AdaColeman]

We studied quite a lot of Shakespeare, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, Romeo and Juliet.
Chaucer, The Prologue and The Pardoner's Tale in depth and read the rest generally.
Novels included Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett, To The Lighthouse, Brideshead Revisited, Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Poetry was Rape of the Lock and The Ancient Mariner

I loved them all really, I still read a lot of Hardy, and TTL led on Mrs Dalloway and later to James Joyce, and I do love a Shakespeare play!

[HaventGotAllDay]

French and German at school, the standouts were The Little Prince for French and Danton's Death for German (oddly) which gave me a passion for the French Revolution.

[lotusbell]

Dubliners - James Joyce.

[starkid]

Think there was more, but I remember:

Of Mice & Men (loved)
Tess of the D'Urberville's (meh)
Jane Eyre (meh)
A Streetcar Named Desire (loved)
The Duchess of Malfi (quite liked)
A Room with a View (loved)
Emma (loved)
Philip Larkin- The Whitsun Weddings poems (quite liked)
Romeo & Juliet (quite liked)
Macbeth (meh)
The Tempest (quite liked)
Much Ado About Nothing (meh)

[midsomermurderess]

Sons and Lovers. In a word, no.

[MealyPotatoes]

English GCSE: All Quiet on the Western Front, 1984, Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Enjoyed all.

English A level: Enjoyed The Handmaid’s Tale, Talking Heads, Othello, The Merchant of Venice and DH Lawrence poetry. Didn’t enjoy Canterbury Tales or Dubliners, although I’ve read Dubliners again since and thought it was excellent. Probably just got it more.

Theatre Studies: Enjoyed Oedipus Rex, Blood Wedding, Our Country’s Good (loved it!)
Didn’t enjoy The Doll’s House and The Cherry Orchard.

[ShadyLady53]

I’m an English Lit BA Grad and also trained as an actor at a major drama school so read LOTS.

The stand out must reads that I remember are The Handmaid’s Tale (A-Level), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (BA) and The Cherry Orchard (Drama School).

I hated The Canterbury Tales, was pretty bored by Remains of the Day and remember an odd book that sounded something like The Man Who Drilled A Hole In His Head that we did for A-Level that I also hated.

I adored studying Shakespeare, my favourite being Antony and Cleopatra. Also enjoyed Johnson’s Volpone.

Not keen on Blood Brothers or Heart of Darkness.

Really liked The Mill On The Floss and Rebecca.

[cdtaylornats]

Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. I hated it, I resented every page because I could have been reading something better.

[WickedWytch]

So many to remember:
King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth (loved) The Merchant of Venice
Dickens: Great Expectations (didn’t live up to its name), Hard Times (lived up to its name)
Beckett: Waiting for Godot (head ache)
James: Portrait of a Lady (extraordinary)
Friel: Dancing at Lughnasa, Philadelphia here I come, Translations (all excellent)
Brontë: Wuthering Heights (magnificent)
Austen: Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion

Poetry
I loved it all: Shakespeare, Keats, Donne, Hopkins (fully agree with pp), Eliot ( The love song of J Alfred Prufrock blew my mind at 16), Yeats, Clarke, Kavanagh, Milton’s Paradise Lost