Books I Had To Read In Secondary School And College

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So I originally saw this post on Faeryreads ( @faeryreads – twitter ) blog titled ‘Books I Had To Read For High School!’ and I thought it would be fun to do my own. Check out Faeryreads post – they read (or didn’t read 😂🤣) a few interesting and popular books!

I am from the UK, hence the term Secondary School rather than High School, so it will be fun to see how much overlap there is in the books chosen for each school! I loved to read and so I would try to read all the books we were set, though we read some during class so they were unavoidable, but at times I too fell pray to the use of SparkNotes if I had fallen behind or forgotten to do the reading. In College/Sixth Form, however, I did read all the books I was set as the essays were not so easy to bluff through 😂.

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Secondary School Reads:

I am not going to split these up by each school year – because it was too long ago for me to remember all of them. So I will split the lower years from my GCSE reads.

✔- Read it.

❌- Did not read it.

➖- DNF

Year 7 + 8 + 9 Books:

Set Reading:	Extra Curricular recommendations:
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens ➖	Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte ✔
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare ✔	Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen ✔
The Tempest, Shakespeare ❌

So, I probably did read more books than I have listed – but I cannot remember them – this was around 9 or so years ago 😅. But, these are the ones I remember so were going to go with it!

Romeo and Juliet was a play we did far too often, as a result it now bores me (despite my slight love for Shakespeare’s works) and it is one I did read because we read it as a class.

I vaguely remember The Tempest, and I certainly did not read it (though I was often absent at this time due to illness).

A Christmas Carol – if you know me then you know I am a sucker for Dickens BUT this is one of his works that I did get bored of simply because I knew the story well already.

Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights we were recommended these from year 7. I read them, did not fully understand them, read them again a few years later, and now I love them. Though P + P is the one I love more.

Year 10 and 11 Books (GCSE):

Set Reading: ✔ – Read All Of Them ✔✔

Lord Of The Flies, by William Golding

Macbeth, by Shakespeare

A View From The Bridge, by Arthur Miller

For all three of these we read them during class, though we also had to read some for homework, and I did read all of them as they were for my GCSE exams. However, I did prefer Lord Of The Flies and Macbeth over A View From The Bridge. I enjoyed their themes and context much more and thought that A View From The Bridge was a little weird and boring in comparison.

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College/Sixth Form Reads (A-Levels):

Set Reading: ✔ – Read All Of Them ✔✔	Extra Curricular/Support:
The Great Gatsby, by Scott F Fitzgerald	Dracula, by Bram Stoker ✔
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens	Jane Eyre, by Bronte ✔
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley	The Catcher In The Rye, by J D Salinger ➖
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote	Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro ✔
Much Ado About Nothing, by Shakespeare	The Remains Of The Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro ✔
Kindertransport, by Diane Samuels	Wuthering Heights (again), by Bronte ✔
The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, by R.L Stevenson

Again, these were all for exams and coursework so I read ALL of the set reading, and quite happily so as I had chosen English as an A-Level! I Also read most of the recommended extra reading, but The Catcher In The Rye I could not finish – the main character bored and annoyed me and eventually I just gave up with it. But, all of my other reads went on to interest me! With Frankenstein, In Cold Blood, Great Expectations, and Jane Eyre becoming some of my all time favourite classic novels! Much Ado is also now one of my favourite Shakespeare comedies.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s books are ones I actually read after finishing my A-Levels as they had no impact on my exams, I enjoyed them both but Never Let Me Go holds preference.

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Our school did teach more books such as Brighton Rock, Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time, but as we were put in classes based on academic ability, I did not read these ones, though out of interest I did read Animal Farm and Of Mice and Men after I finished school!

What did you all read in school? Did you read the same books as me, or completely different ones? Let me know in the comments!

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