The Five Best Pieces of Literature I Read in High School

Luis Ruuska at the Huffington Post has an article on the five best pieces of literature he was forced to read in high school.


He chose:

Dante Alighieri's Inferno

J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

Elie Wiesel's Night

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment




How I hate required reading.  Of all the things we have to do of necessity in this world, being made to read something boring or awful is right up there on the BAD scale.

For myself I secretly appreciate being introduced to:

Evangeline: a tale of Acadie  by Longfellow which we not only read but acted out.

A Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank   I think it was the first book I read in diary form and the story it told was so compelling, and about someone my age.

A Midsummer Nights Dream  which we not only read through in class but had a trip to the Guthrie to see the play performed.  This experience and my college Shakespeare professor made me a huge fan of all things William.

Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck  which we also read aloud with everyone getting a chance to read a part.  I thought the story was terribly sad but very interesting.  I hated hated the Red Pony and The Pearl by Steinbeck, two others we read along the way.  Why why couldn't we have done the Grapes of Wrath or Travels with Charly?

The House of Seven Gables by Hawthorne.  We read it and saw a cheesy yet entertaining movie version.  Anytime class time included a diversion such as a movie or even a filmstrip, it was like a FREE DAY.

Picking your own assigned reading: the Reading Workshop approach to literature

From the New York Times, The Future of Reading: a new assignment: pick books you like

In a novel approach to teaching literature, educators are allowing kids to read books they like for credit rather than having the entire class read and discuss the same set of books for coursework.

I think this is a great idea. We all have books and authors who we were required to read in school which we now despise. For readers and non-readers alike, having this school experience of reading literature and having had a bad experience of it does noone any favors. The non-readers come to hate reading even more, and the readers suffer silently.

Avid reader though I have always been, never mention Bartleby the Scrivener or The Red Pony to me.

Teaching method does play into this hugely, of course. A really excellent teacher might have made even Bartleby bearable...Nah! I would prefer not to even think of it!



They are talking about middle grade level readers in the article, so do not think high school or college students are what is being discussed. This age is one where kids can just abandon reading for the many other activities available. If you can let them read fun and engaging material, but require the same literary analysis that you would expect if they were reading more traditional texts, you might just hang onto alot more readers.