This was a list of books that NPR listeners/readers felt were influential for them during their teenage years. It was particularly interesting to read the various comments about each book. One question that always comes to mind for me is which books here were assigned by teachers, and which ones did students of the time come to by themselves? Some like Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, and 1984 have been fairly reliably assigned by teachers over the years and despite being assigned reading it’s clear that they’ve had significant impacts regardless.
Personally, the only book on this list that I came to by myself was the Lord of the Rings. Extremely hard to read (unreadable) in grade school, but by the time I was halfway through high school it had transformed into this amazing new world.
The list of books that readers felt students should read today was also pretty interesting:
– James by Percival Everett
– The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
– Night by Elie Wiesel
To this I would add perhaps Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower as well.
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This was a list of books that NPR listeners/readers felt were influential for them during their teenage years. It was particularly interesting to read the various comments about each book. One question that always comes to mind for me is which books here were assigned by teachers, and which ones did students of the time come to by themselves? Some like Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, and 1984 have been fairly reliably assigned by teachers over the years and despite being assigned reading it’s clear that they’ve had significant impacts regardless.
Personally, the only book on this list that I came to by myself was the Lord of the Rings. Extremely hard to read (unreadable) in grade school, but by the time I was halfway through high school it had transformed into this amazing new world.
The list of books that readers felt students should read today was also pretty interesting:
– James by Percival Everett
– The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
– Night by Elie Wiesel
To this I would add perhaps Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower as well.