What books did you read at school?

[OneUmberJoker]

mice and men and blood brothers

Fireweed is indeed fantastic. I reread it every few years, and still love it.

someone told me that their child did Romeo and Juliet for GCSE without ever having seen a production of the whole thing!

Surely it can't be hard to find a film or tv version of Romeo and Juliet!

I did Hamlet for A Level and we saw so many versions. I remember a rather odd film version with Nicol Williamson in which all the actors were filmed from the waist up throughout - even in the fight scene.

At that time the Mermaid Theatre was still there at Puddledock and of course it was good business for them to put on whatever was in the O or A Level curriculum each year. We went to several productions there.

Ones I remember-
Primary:
Stig of The Dump
A lot of Enid Blyton
The Hobbit

Senior school:
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Colour Purple
Macbeth
King Lear
Midsummer Nights Dream
Romeo and Juliet
The Go Between
Lord of The Flies
Animal Farm
Canterbury Tales - loved these - had to read them aloud in Olde English

A' Level:
Christina Rosetti's poems
Volpone
Tess of the D'Urbavilles
The French Lieutenants Woman
Can't remember any more - our teacher changed and I began to hate Eng Lit lessons!

I can only remember a few off the top of my head, Romeo and Juliet, the Power Of One and Harp in the South. There were probably more but I don't remember.

For GCSEs-
romeo and Juliet
ptang yang kipperbang
billy liar
great expectations
to kill a mockingbird

all five I can remember clearly

Brideshead Revisited is a much loved and often reread favourite of mine, but I'd forgotten that I first read it at school. It must have been in those 'read around the class' lessons which I found so boring. I used to read ahead, so I never knew where we were up to when it was my turn.
I suppose it was an easy lesson for the teacher, with no preparation, and it ensured that everyone had read at least some of the book. I wonder if they still do that in schools now? It was more interesting when it was a play reading!

What yer did you go o leveks/gcses

I think we did a thing in dance lessons based on the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Lots of waving our arms around in a weird interpretative way and made masks in art class to go with it.
I hated it at the time but looking back it sounds quite fun.

O level. Cider With Rosie
Twelfth Night
A level. Sons and Lovers
Juno and the Paycock
King Lear
Richard Ii
All I can remember from the 1970s..

Not a book but one thing I have really fond memories of was studying the poem The Highwayman.
The music video for Fleetwood Mac's song "Everywhere" is basically a little film based on the poem.
We got to watch a Top of the Pops recording of the video (so cool) and then we all had to re write the poem as a story.

Oh Midwich Cuckoos too! How could I forget.

Bad luck on whoever played the albatross!

GCSE was Macbeth and Of Mice & Men.
A Levels covered Othello, A Millers Tale (Chaucer), 1984, Handmaids Tale and The Colour Purple.
Enjoyed all of them aside from Shakespeare.

I wasn't sure if that was the poem so I just googled.
As soon as I saw the word "albatross" I was "oh yeah....that was it".
I have no memory of the actual dance.

I remember being forced to read Romeo and Juliet then All Quiet on the Western Front for English Standard Grade. Just about put me off reading for life. Hated both of them.

We read round 'Twelfth Night', not for an exam, though. I was cast as Feste, the clown, which I thought was a bit of an insult at the time, but maybe it wasn't.
So I knew the story, and later in life I hired the video of the production which starred Toby Stephens as Orsino, languishing in the bath with Viola(?) sitting beside him as his servant, pretending to be a male who didn't fancy his knickers off. Hey ho.

I did English Lit A level in the late 80s. One of the books we studied was A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipal. I only remember he ate a lot of bananas which affected his bowel movements but I’m sure it had deeper meaning than that. Perhaps it’s time to reread.

Oh yes, we did this one as well, absolutely loved it

for the exam:
Juno and the Paycock, Sean O'Casey
Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse
Lark Rise, Flora Thompson

for the coursework:
Lord of the Flies, obvs
The Crucible
The Chrysalids
Of Mice and Men
TKAMB
there was a list in three sections but I can't remember what they were. Macbeth was on it but my group didn't look at that one. Seamus Heaney for poetry. And some war poets of course. We had to do 12 essays. Or was that language? Language was all coursework so maybe that was the 12, and lit may have been 8. Anyone recognise the first part of this list and able to suggest a few more? Things Fall Apart may have been on it too but again my group didn't do that one.

In [KS3] we studied the Taming of the Shrew and Animal Farm. Oh yes, Kes. In [Y7] we read through Over Sea Under Stone in class but I don't think we actually discussed it much.

In first year juniors we had Charlie and the Chocolate Factory read to us. And A Gift From Winklesea (Helen Cresswell) which owing to the similarity to my surname meant I was still occasionally being called Winklesea nearly a decade later

@Needmorelego Did you do interpretive dance at school as one of your PE lessons? I did and I can't hear Antra's Dance from Peer Gynt without wanting to start dancing around "feeling it from the centre", lol.

It was all interpretive dance in the dance lessons (it was a separate lesson to PE).
I hated it. All that waving your arms around being a tree 😁
I recently saw a tiktok video of teenagers in Scotland performing traditional Scottish dancing and I thought to myself "I wish we had done more traditional dance like that".
I hated school discos too.
Dance is not for me !

Lots and lots, but for O level, The nuns priests tale, Chaucer, in its original old English, The mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy, HenryIV part 1, distinctly remember reading Of mice and men, Grapes of Wrath, Wuthering Heights

Tom's Midnight Garden in year eight. The first book that captured most of the class

Romeo and Juliet
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Gregory's Girl
Across the Barricades

No set books in the Dutch system. I read loads, consequences of 4 language A levels, but my top 5 in terms of enjoyment (across everything except German, I hated German literature): De komst van Joachim Stiller, Phedre, Le Diable et le Bon Dieu, Slaughterhouse 5.

No translations allowed, but we could range widely, so English literature included American stuff, and French included novels from writers from former colonies. I ended up having to read about 45 novels/plays over 2 years.