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/lit/ - Literature

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7265761 No.7265761 [Reply] [Original]

If you could select one book, and it would be required reading for high school students in every high school in the US (including private schools), you pick which grade, what would it be?

If you want, select a serious answer and a funny/troll answer. Multiple answers are fine too if you can't decide. The point is to get discussion going about what books it would be interesting or funny to have the public at large reading.

>Serious answer: A Man in Full; Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
I just think they're both worth reading and it would be better if more people had read them.

>Funny answer: The Qur'an; The Coming Insurrection
Can you imagine how pissed off parents would get?

>> No.7265775

The Crying of Lot 49 would be a great junior or senior read.

>> No.7265784

why do people keep making this thread. it's fucking stupid

>> No.7265790

>>7265761

I'll just pick one for each year of high school

9th -- all of Dante

10th -- all of Dickens

11th -- all of Shakespeare

12th -- Moby-Dick and Confidence-Man

>> No.7265796

>>7265775
Good choice.
>>7265784
I'd never seen it before.
>>7265790
>all of Dante
If I had read all of Dante in ninth grade, I would have lost interest in reading.

>> No.7265812

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

>> No.7265821

>>7265761
The Book of Disquiet every year.

>> No.7265828

Are we assuming they'll actually read it?

Mein Kampf.

>> No.7265853

>Kipling's Kim
Great text to read against itself, and one which raises a lot of meaningful questions about education as a institution

>> No.7265875
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7265875

>> No.7265895
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7265895

We never got to read Hemingway in high school and I thought that was quite fucked up. His books are very accessible and they are a phenomenal tool for teaching students about underlying themes.

The Old Man and the Sea is good freshman level book and then maybe sophmore/junior year students could read The Sun Also Rises

>> No.7265900
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7265900

>Serious
Watership Down

Light enough to draw you in, literary enough to change lives

>half joking
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Imagine an entire nation of barely educated, hormonal, angst-ridden teenagers all reading Nietzche at the same time. Western society as we know it would be over, man

>> No.7265909

>>7265895
Isn't Hemingway essential American high school tier? To the point where I remember sitcoms from the 90s/early 2000s making jokes about kids being bored with The Old Man and The Sea (something to the effect of "it's just an old guy doing nothing on a boat for what feels like forever, I don't get it")

If you're American then I'm obviously sorely mistaken but that was the impression I was under

>> No.7265924

Serious answer: Siddhartha
Its message is pretty blatant and can be a valuable introduction to Eastern philosophy

Troll answers are lame

>> No.7265937
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7265937

>>7265828
Another vote for 'Dolf.

>> No.7265990

>>7265790
Dante is too much for most fourteen year olds

>> No.7266048

>>7265924
Reroll for that, Siddhartha is a great read.
Troll answer: A First Course in String Theory
Just fuck the kids up fam.