I grew up in CA and the books I remember are “The Great Gatsby” (enjoyed it as a teenager, but one of my favorite books ever as an adult), “Things Fall Apart” (need to reread), “The Kite Runner” (beautifully devastating), and “The Catcher in the Rye” (didn’t like it then, and still don’t).
I am a middle school teacher and I read “Brown Girl Dreaming,” “House on Mango Street,” “An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian,” and “Holes” with my students. All incredible books in my opinion.
by IEatIReadIGoOutside
9 Comments
I was forced to read The Grapes of Wrath. My opinion then is the same now: one person says in so many words “You know what? Life sucks.”
The next few pages basically translate another person saying “Yep. It sure does.”.
I read Grapes of Wrath in high school. I liked it at the time, but I think i enjoyed it more when I re read it in my 50s.
The S E Hinton books, The Outsiders and RumbleFish! They were pretty popular with our group of juvenile delinquents in the early to mid 80s! I was encouraged to read in my family and I was reading Stephen King and true crime novels before I was a teenager! I got them out of the city library, not the school library! Lol
Of the assigned reading my favorites were Of Mice & Men, 1984, The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time and Never Let Me Go, all of which I still love. Catcher in the Rye was one I hated as a teen but have warmed up to a lot as an adult, still not a favorite of mine but I get the appeal now and I respect it. Scarlett Letter I hated then and I still hate now
Wrote a [blog post] ( https://rowanrabe.ink/bildungsroman/) on this couple months back; this is the relevant big:
>I read Demian around this age and it absolutely blew my mind inside-out. I thought it was the deepest most true shit in the entire universe. And I realize that age at which I read it is one of the key reasons it is a favorite book; the things you are obsessed with in those early myelinating ages, 11-14 or so, stick with you, become integrated into your scaffolding. I’ve recommended it over the years to people of a progressively older age, pacing with my own age, and they did not see the brilliance I did. I recently re-read it (well into my 30s) and to me it now holds up as one of those books that articulates truths that you already know but did not have the words to express. So it now comes to me as a time-travel piece, a window back into my thinking as an adolescent, and in that, there is brilliance, the clarity with which those childish thought processes were recorded.
Great Gasbty for me. One of my favorites reading in highschool. Today still one of my favorites books
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai.
oh my goodness I hated reading “Heart of Darkness” but loved “House on Mango Street,” 1984″ and “Lord of the Flies”
My favorite was *The Chrysalids* by John Wyndham. My librarian in elementary gave me *Soul Catcher* by Frank Herbert which stretched my little mind to the limits.