What books did you read at school?

[OneUmberJoker]

mice and men and blood brothers

@Mumteedum Yes! Hardy. We did Tess of the d'Urbervilles. And the poetry of John Donne around the same time. Tried a bit of Chaucer at lunch times for an extra paper they wanted us to sit, but it was a bit much to be honest.

@elliejjtiny I remember watching the film of Gregory's Girl 😂😂😂 (see my previous post upthread about my school and their film obsession).

Are you thinking of Catcher in the Rye for the title you can't remember?

Great question!

Primary: Amelia Jane, My Naughty Little Sister, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Charlie & the Great Glass Elevator, The Twits, George’s Marvellous Medicine, The Worst Witch, A Little Princess, The Wind in the Willows, Stig of the Dump, The Hobbit, Emil & the Detectives, The Box of Delights.

Early Secondary: Hound of the Baskervilles, Midsummer Night’s Dream, An Inspector Calls, Jane Eyre, The Merchant of Venice, Pygmalion, The Winslow Boy, Tuppence to Cross the Merseyside, The Importance of Being Earnest, Romeo & Juliet, Pride & Prejudice, Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World, some play about the Suffragettes.

GCSE: To Kill a Mockingbird, Educating Rita, Northanger Abbey, Much Ado About Nothing.

Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Dickens, Chaucer, Virginia Woolf, Arnold Bennett, Lawrence, lots of poetry and modern plays.
Especially enjoyable were...
Moonfleet
Travels with a Donkey
Murder in the Cathedral
Clayhanger

GCSE
Goodnight Mr Tom
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry
Great Expectations
Romeo & Juliet

A Level - hard to remember which were for English and which were for drama.
Othello
The Tempest
Macbeth
The Canterbury Tales
Thomas Hardy poetry
The French Lieutenants Woman
Jane Eyre
After Easter

Thats all I can remember for now.

As I recall, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge, Chaucer's Prologue and Pardoner's Tale, Mansfield Park and Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights. Nightmare Abbey, King Lear, Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummernight's Dream, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, the Romantic Poets, Paradise Lost, Southey's Life of Nelson (why?),Othello, Cider with Rosie, Duchess of Malfi.

We did She Stoops to Conquer, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night's Dream,Pride & Prejudice, Great Expectations, Corridors of Power, To the Lighthouse, Cider with Rosie, Larkrise to Candleford, Lord of the Flies, Jane Eyre, The Sandcastle, part of Canterbury tales ( Prologue and the Franklin's tale) some of the war poets ( Owen, Sassoon, and others) Browning, HG Wells collected short stories, something by Ford Maddox Ford...it's a long time ago now!
In my own time I read a lot, Jean Plaidy and Georgette Heyer, Neville Shute, Oscar Wilde, Flashman, Leon Uris and loads more, I was always reading.

Many, but the ones that stick in my head are Romeo and Juliet and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Secondary school, as in read them as a class:

Wind in the Willows, The 39 Steps, Heart of Darkness, Animal Farm, can't think of any more just now. When I see film adaptations of The 39 Steps I tell the screen that I don't remember a woman being in it.

Plays: She Stoops to Conquer, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice.

Going up the school, Jane Eyre, Moonfleet (which I'd forgotten until someone else mentioned it) My Family and Other Animals, A Town Like Alice, I think. Plus various Shakespeare and the war poets. Must have been others that I've forgotten. Oh yes, the Mayor of Casterbridge was another one.

O Level was Far From The Madding Crowd. Henry IV Part I, I think. Chaucer, Wife of Bath. Oh and Scott, Heart of Midlothian, which I didn't care for.

Some things I can't now remember which were for O Level and which A Level.
At some point I did Mansfield Park, which I didn't like and Persuasion which I did like, and stll re-read.
Wordsworth which I didn't like and Keats, which I did like - other than Isabella or the Pot of Basil.
Hamlet, King Lear, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest
T S Eliot

I seem to have gone through school without having to read any Dickens, though I did read some out of school.

When I see film adaptations of The 39 Steps I tell the screen that I don't remember a woman being in it.

None of the film or tv adaptations of The 39 Steps bear any relation to the book!
If I had to pick one to watch, it would be the original Hitchcock, with Robert Donat.

Thinking about it, 39 Steps is the only Richard Hannay book which doesn't have a girl or woman in it (other than incidental characters).

The Nicholas Fisk one is Grinny though I definitely didn't read it at school.

I still vividly remember a Seamus Heaney poem about kittens being drowned and that was forty plus years ago - thanks Seamus!

We did Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected! I remember a really interesting essay we had to write about how he appeared to see women.

plus Of Mice and Men, various Shakespeare plays, An Inspector Calls, some unbelievably turgid and depressing DH Lawrence (not the rude ones!), and Gerald Durrell’s My Family abd Other Animals - twice, in different schools!

Pre GCSE - The Hobbit, Midsummer Nights Dream, The 39 Steps, Oliver Twist, Merchant of Venice, something called The Fox in Winter about a girl who makes friends with an old man which I hated. Probably others as well, that’s what I remember.

GCSE - Macbeth, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, The Crucible, Of Mice and Men, war poetry

A Level - Mayor of Casterbridge, The Franklins Tale, Antony and Cleopatra, Much Ado About Nothing, Keats’ poetry, Hopkins’ poetry, Larkin’s poetry, Dr Faustus, Sons and Lovers. Not a female author to be seen.

Primary school - in what is now year 6 we were read Animal Farm, for some reason. Year 5, French stories about a boy called Nicolas, just because the teacher liked them (in translation). Can’t remember being read anything in Years 4 and 5. We learned to read with the gorgeous and magical Through The Rainbow scheme which culminated in silver and gold, with titles like Firelight and Candlelight https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B0034P8VB8. My year must have been one of the last to use those books as my sister who is two years younger had the Village with Three Corners

A Taste of Honey. The quote about the dark inside houses still sticks in my head.
Romeo & Juliet, Measure for Measure and As You Like It.
Possessing the Secret of Joy
Philip Larkin's poetry. I remember Ambulances in particular.
North & South
War poetry. 'Vergissmeinnicht' from 2nd and the works of Wilfred Owen from 1st stick out.
Journey's End (Probably my least favourite of the lot)
Odour and Chrysanthemums by DH Lawrence
Emily Dickinson's poetry
Some TS Eliot.

First year was The Rats of Nimh which I loathed for some reason. Also Kidnapped which I liked and Conrad's War.

I was lucky enough in the early secondary years to have one of those teachers who noticed what you were reading from choice and gave you books to stretch you a bit. The Blackboard Jungle was one that I would never have come across otherwise that was memorable.

I also remember reading Persuasion for A level. I’d never even heard of Jane Austen before (this was 1977 before all the film and TV adaptations) and that was a real door-opener.

I remember we had textbooks that had lots of extracts from various novels and we would read those and then there would be question and answers to do about what we had read.
So there's probably several novels that I have only read a chapter or two.
Did anyone else have similar textbooks (this was mid 80s).

I was a big reader as a child so read loads but we had to study To Kill a Mockingbird and Wuthering Heights for state exams. The plays we had to study were Merchant of Venice and King Lear. It took me a long time to go back and read any of them as an adult, but I now realize that so much of To Kill a Mockingbird went over my 15 year old head. Love it though, Wuthering Heights not so much.

The only ones I remember are, Of mice and men, Animal farm, Kidnapped and Catch 22 which I don’t think I finished as it was so awful, in my opinion.

we also did poetry which was Philip Larkin and some Rabbie Burns

Loads but the one that stands out was The Lord of the Flies and my favourites were The Iliad and The Odyssey.

I also remember reading Persuasion for A level. I’d never even heard of Jane Austen before

I'd read P&P. I'd been given a copy by a relative a couple of years earlier.

None of us in my A Level group liked Mansfield Park. We all thought Fanny was such a drip, and Edmund was a prig.

In Secondary school. The silver sword, Roll of Thunder…Hear my Cry, The Hounds of the Baskerville, Brave New World, of Mice and Men, I know why the caged bird sings, Animal
Farm, To kill A Mockingbird, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth. For A level - Great Expectations, in Cold Blood, Frankenstein, Hamlet, Ted Hughes’ Crow poetry anthology, Talking Heads by Alan Bennett.

KS3 Moonfleet, My Family and Other Animals, Stig of the Dump and Goodnight Mr Tom (also done at primary)
KS4 (O Levels) Lord of the Flies, Othello, Billy Liar and A Christmas Carol
KS5 Heart of Darkness, Measure for Measure, Canterbury Tales, The Handmaid's Tale and Brave New World.
Went in to study at degree level.

I remember The Ghost of Thomas Kempe and Daz 4 Zoe! Wonder what the focus was, don't remember if it was an essay or anything.

Matilda, Stig of the Dump, The Darkness Out There.
Flowers for Algernon, Chaucer's Wife of Bath etc, Lord of the Flies, Pride and Prejudice, Othello, Paradise Lost, Seamus Heaney's poetry, Brian Friel's Translations, Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, Oedipus Rex, 'Poetry from other cultures' GCSE anthology.' The Communist Manifesto.
Atonement, Brideshead Revisited.