Is there a book you were required to read in school that you loved? one you hated?

@originnone I really liked Northanger Abbey. It's hilarious. I can't believe that it hasn't been made into a movie yet.

@LeopoldBloom I read it years ago...honestly don't remember it.

@LeopoldBloom I have read the whole Austen oeuvre. What I didn't mention is that my high school friend became an English professor. He told me that [i]Northanger Abbey[/i] is partly a parody of [i]The Mysteries of Udolpho[/i] by Ann Radcliffe. So I read U[i]dolpho[/i] prior to [i]Northanger[/i] just to increase the pleasures of [i]Northanger.[/i] But I just didn't find any characters as pleasing as Lizzie or Emma. I'll re-read it, and I'll re-read [i]Persuasion[/i] and [i]Sense and Sensibility,[/i] but I expect [i]Pride and Prejudice[/i] and [i]Emma[/i] will still please me the most.

@originnone Lucky them !
Could never quite figure out why dystopian novels were so 'popular' with exam boards of the time.

@Picklebobble2 We had to read that one for science class, along with 1984 at the same time. Double bleak.

@Picklebobble2 oop we surely won't get along

@Sunstone Yes, it's a tough one to get through....

@SW-User My wife loved CS Lewis....I loved Madame Bovary...I applaud you for understanding Sound and the Fury. I had to read the Cliff Notes to figure it out! LOL

@RileyLandS I'll have to read it. I haven't.

@hunkalove I didn't love Shakespeare either.

@Jorgillo What kind of things do you like to read for example....

@originnone philosophy and psychology things mostly, but also love world religions text and poetry

@Jorgillo interesting....I was really interesting in philosophy but lost interest when the classes I took were about basically summarizing what some guy said a long time ago....except for philosophy of logic....I did go back and get a masters in psych which I only practiced for a year or so part time....religions - I'm really interested in cults and studied christianity a lot, but I never understood poetry....

@originnone Here is a section where he is talking to his infant daughter.

I have heard you tell the sun, don't go down,
I have stood by as you told the flower, don't grow old, don't die.
Little Maud,

I would blow the flame out of your silver cup,
I would suck the rot from your fingernail,
I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light,
I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones,
I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body,
I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood,
I would let nothing of you go, ever,

until washerwomen
feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands,
and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades,
and rats walk away from the cultures of the plague,
and iron twists weapons toward the true north,
and grease refuses to slide in the machinery of progress,
and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men,
and lovers no longer whisper to the presence beside them in the dark, O corpse-to-be . . .

And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry, this the nightmare you wake screaming from: being forever
in the pre-trembling of a house that falls.

@LeopoldBloom I'm sold. I added it to my amazon list.

@originnone

On the path,
by this wet site
of old fires -
black ashes, black stones, where tramps
must have squatted down,
gnawing on stream water,
unhouseling themselves on cursed bread, failing to get warm at a twigfire -

I stop,
gather wet wood,
cut dry shavings, and for her,
whose face
I held in my hands
a few hours, whom I gave back
only to keep holding the space where she was

I light
a small fire in the rain.

The black
wood reddens, the deathwatches inside
begin running out of time, I can see
the dead, crossed limbs
longing again for the universe, I can hear
in the wet wood the snap
and re-snap of the same embrace being torn.

The raindrops trying
to put the fire out
fall into it and are
changed: the oath broken,
the oath sworn between earth and water, flesh and spirit, broken,
to be sworn again,
over and over, in the clouds, and to be broken again,
over and over, on earth.

@ChipmunkErnie hmmmmm....I'll look it up...

@woodyemma2013 My Son HATED English lessons in school. And never read.
Until one day he came home with Magorian's Goodnight Mr.Tom.
Don't know why but it just appealed to him.

@Picklebobble2 it's an excellent book. The film is good too.

@woodyemma2013 I'm not familiar with Mr. Tom. The others are great...and...I appreciate Shakespeare but don't prefer it.

@Starcrossed I read it a while back and loved it.

@assemblingaknob Oddly.....years ago I wanted to read something by Hardy. I decided on either the mayor of caster bridge and the Tess of Deuberville. I picked the second.

@originnone never read Tess. The opening chapter was so boringgggg pffftftttt I hate old times books. My dad says they probably wrote reallyyyyy slow because many times these were published in newspapers and the writers would get paid for each time, so they'd intentionally write lengthy paragraphs xD. But maybe my dad and I just aren't classic lovers and he just made it up.

@assemblingaknob Your dad is a wise man.

@foldedunfolding Jayne Eyre was awesome. Not so fond of the other two.

@originnone when it talks about the weeping odorous balms of eden in paradise lost..it was gorgeous to me

@DearAmbellina2113 I'm surprised "Of mice and men" was on the list; "the great Gatsby" I get.

@GuyWithOpinions I've not heard of the second one....

@originnone its about a little boy in an auswitz enternment camp

@GuyWithOpinions Ugh...I've been trying to avoid those type of books. I did read one by Victor Frankle recently....

@ImpeccablyImperfect I never read Island, but I bought it for my wife last year when she could still read. To Kill a Mockingbird is a wonderful book. I loved Lord, but I can see why someone wouldn't.

@bijouxbroussard I hated A Separate Peace in high school but read it again later and loved it.

@V00doo agreed on hardy