100 Books Kids of High School Age Should Read

[Napoleon]

Had an interesting conversation in another thread about a list of 100 books that high school age kids should read. I found that list to be unsophisticated detritus. I’m curious which books other members think should be represented in such a list. What are your top 100?

 

[nvflash]

Had an interesting conversation in another thread about a list of 100 books that high school age kids should read. I found that list to be unsophisticated detritus. I’m curious which books other members think should be represented in such a list. What are your top 100?

High school kids reading books?

It it ain't on Tic-Tok it's not likely to be seen in school. That's just the sad state of affairs, but there is something to be said for interactive media where you can question the assertions being put forth in some way. Better than my generation parked in front of MTV all day.

 

[mrjurrs]

Had an interesting conversation in another thread about a list of 100 books that high school age kids should read. I found that list to be unsophisticated detritus. I’m curious which books other members think should be represented in such a list. What are your top 100?

High school kids are sophisticated? Only a small minority.

 

[Napoleon]

High school kids are sophisticated? Only a small minority.

What books do you think they should have read by the time they finish high school?

 

[nvflash]

What books do you think they should have read by the time they finish high school?

Be serious, with "age promotion" we are lucky if they can read, but to answer your question:

The tassajara bread book.

 

[mrjurrs]

What books do you think they should have read by the time they finish high school?

Too varied a list to compile. I don't see any specific book that a high schooler should read. Books aren't that important in literacy. If a kid won't read a book but will read I don't think there is a specific detriment to them. The world turns, it used to be important to train doctors in the use of leeches.

 

[Napoleon]

Too varied a list to compile. I don't see any specific book that a high schooler should read. Books aren't that important in literacy. If a kid won't read a book but will read I don't think there is a specific detriment to them. The world turns, it used to be important to train doctors in the use of leeches.

Wow. Talk about low expectations. At least aim for mediocrity and give it a shot.

 

[mrjurrs]

Wow. Talk about low expectations. At least aim for mediocrity.

Your expectations are based on a particular source of words? Are you an author or something. How is reading different in a book or an article? And how many books do professionals read for their employment?

 

[Napoleon]

Your expectations are based on a particular source of words? Are you an author or something. How is reading different in a book or an article? And how many books do professionals read for their employment?

You really think reading books is equivalent to using leeches?

 

[longview]

I think Science Fiction helps people think outside the box, for a High school student, Heinlein's tunnel in the sky,
would be a good start. Beyond that Authors like James P. Hogan's Inherit the stars, and throw in Harry Turtledove's alternate history.
Also Richard Bach's Illusions.

 

[gdgyva]

Multipliers by Liz Wiseman & Greg Mckeown
1776 by David McCullough
The Winner Within by Pat Riley
Good to Great by Jim Collins
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie ****** must must must read
The 7 habits of highly Effective people by Stephen Covey
The Snowball by Alice Schroeder

This is my list to every kid if they want to be more successful....and look at things differently

 

[MaryP]

Had an interesting conversation in another thread about a list of 100 books that high school age kids should read. I found that list to be unsophisticated detritus. I’m curious which books other members think should be represented in such a list. What are your top 100?

What thread was that?

 

[Glitch]

Just a brief list, in no particular order:

• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville;
• The Pearl, by John Steinbeck;
• The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde;
• The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane;
• Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, by Edith Hamilton;
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain;
• Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut;
• The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare;
• Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky;
• Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller;
• The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway;
• Othello, by William Shakespeare;
• The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer;
• The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien;
• A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens;
• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck;
• Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley;
• A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare;
• Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens;
• Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare;
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley;
• Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury;
• The Odyssey, by Homer;
• 1984, by George Orwell;
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain;
• The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne;
• Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck;
• Hamlet, by William Shakespeare;
• The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger;
• Animal Farm, by George Orwell;
• Macbeth, by William Shakespeare;
• Lord of the Flies, by William Golding;
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald;
• Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare;
• The Republic, by Plato
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee; and
• Catch-22, by Joseph Heller.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I think Science Fiction helps people think outside the box, for a High school student, Heinlein's tunnel in the sky,
would be a good start. Beyond that Authors like James P. Hogan's Inherit the stars, and throw in Harry Turtledove's alternate history.
Also Richard Bach's Illusions.

One of the things that interested Robert Heinlein was General Semantics by Alfred Korzybski. He mentioned LOGLAN, Logical Language, in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and the profession of Fair Witnesses in Stranger in a Strange Land.

The Tyranny of Words (1938) by Stuart Chase

Covers the subject and wades through a lot of pseudo-intellectual bullshit that schools make money on and waste a lot of people's time on.

Comparing James P Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear to Ursala K Le Guin's The Dispossessed as demonstrations of socio-economic dichotomies would be useful today with all of the blather about economics and Antifa.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Just a brief list, in no particular order:

• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville;
• The Pearl, by John Steinbeck;
• The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde;
• The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane;
• Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, by Edith Hamilton;
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain;
• Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut;
• The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare;
• Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky;
• Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller;
• The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway;
• Othello, by William Shakespeare;
• The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer;
• The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien;
• A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens;
• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck;
• Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley;
• A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare;
• Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens;
• Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare;
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley;
• Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury;
• The Odyssey, by Homer;
• 1984, by George Orwell;
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain;
• The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne;
• Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck;
• Hamlet, by William Shakespeare;
• The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger;
• Animal Farm, by George Orwell;
• Macbeth, by William Shakespeare;
• Lord of the Flies, by William Golding;
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald;
• Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare;
• The Republic, by Plato
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee; and
• Catch-22, by Joseph Heller.

The usual suspects.
I refused to read Catcher in the Rye when I was in high school.

Some people say Heinlein wrote Tunnel in the Sky in response to Lord of the Flies.

Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez

Daemon (novel) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Would be way more up to date than the stuff in that list.

 

[psikeyhackr]

The Literary Intellectuals still have to much influence in education.

An Update on C. P. Snow's "Two Cultures"

A new column that examines the intersection between science and society provides an update on the historic essay

www.scientificamerican.com

It seems lots of so called SF readers don't care about accurate science in their fiction.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

This is a sort of historical fantasy. It is portrayed as a children's book but it shows Victorian England of the 1870s.

Karl Marx could have written a review. That would have been interesting. How much animal cruelty was the result of economic cruelty to humans?

Horses of the world unite!
You have nothing to lose but your reins.

 

[Glitch]

The Literary Intellectuals still have to much influence in education.

An Update on C. P. Snow's "Two Cultures"

A new column that examines the intersection between science and society provides an update on the historic essay

www.scientificamerican.com

It seems lots of so called SF readers don't care about accurate science in their fiction.

It is the ability to suspend disbelief that makes it good science fiction. If it was 100% accurate it would be science, and not fiction. If you can make an idea plausible or seem possible, even when it is not scientifically accurate, then it is good science fiction. People read science fiction for the possibility of what could be, not what is currently understood.

 

[psikeyhackr]

It is the ability to suspend disbelief that makes it good science fiction. If it was 100% accurate it would be science, and not fiction. If you can make an idea plausible or seem possible, even when it is not scientifically accurate, then it is good science fiction. People read science fiction for the possibility of what could be, not what is currently understood.

There is considerable variation in what is called science fiction.

A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C Clarke is one extreme. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is another. I wrote a computer program that counts the science and SF words and computes a density. Moondust has a density of 1.4.

1.000 means 1 science word for 1000 characters. There is nothing to learn other think about from some stuff called science fiction. I think Hitchhikers is junk.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Just a brief list, in no particular order:

• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville;
• The Pearl, by John Steinbeck;
• The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde;
• The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane;
• Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, by Edith Hamilton;
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain;
• Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut;
• The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare;
• Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky;
• Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller;
• The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway;
• Othello, by William Shakespeare;
• The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer;
• The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien;
• A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens;
• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck;
• Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley;
• A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare;
• Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens;
• Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare;
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley;
• Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury;
• The Odyssey, by Homer;
• 1984, by George Orwell;
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain;
• The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne;
• Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck;
• Hamlet, by William Shakespeare;
• The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger;
• Animal Farm, by George Orwell;
• Macbeth, by William Shakespeare;
• Lord of the Flies, by William Golding;
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald;
• Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare;
• The Republic, by Plato
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee; and
• Catch-22, by Joseph Heller.

I have heard of all of those except one, the work about mythology. I have read about 8, some in high school.

My mother taught me to read when I was 3 years old but never suggested any books from 5 years old. When I started reading SF in 4th grade she called it "something crazy".

I think we should have a K-12 National Recommend Reading, 100 for kindergarten, 200 for 1st grade, 300 for 2nd grade, etc....
That would come to less than 10,000 books by 12 grade. Every book should have an explanation for why it qualifies.

I had read more than 100 SF books before I started high school. In Fall of Moondust Clarke used Plato's Allegory of the Cave to explain reality viewed through infrared. Good science fiction contains far more concepts than the usual cultural suspects. Fahrenheit 451 was one of my required reading books in high school but I had already read it. I was not impressed. Ray Bradbury was not a very scientific writer.

 

[Josie]

Had an interesting conversation in another thread about a list of 100 books that high school age kids should read. I found that list to be unsophisticated detritus. I’m curious which books other members think should be represented in such a list. What are your top 100?

What was on the list?

 

[psikeyhackr]

Your expectations are based on a particular source of words? Are you an author or something. How is reading different in a book or an article? And how many books do professionals read for their employment?

Plenty of people have the attitude that the only point of education is to get a good job. But plenty of books that are worth reading are not really worth taking a course in because so many teachers are not smart enough.

The Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase

Chase graduated from MIT. How many professional educators are smart enough to get in?

 

[Glitch]

I have heard of all of those except one, the work about mythology. I have read about 8, some in high school.

My mother taught me to read when I was 3 years old but never suggested any books from 5 years old. When I started reading SF in 4th grade she called it "something crazy".

I think we should have a K-12 National Recommend Reading, 100 for kindergarten, 200 for 1st grade, 300 for 2nd grade, etc....
That would come to less than 10,000 books by 12 grade. Every book should have an explanation for why it qualifies.

I had read more than 100 SF books before I started high school. In Fall of Moondust Clarke used Plato's Allegory of the Cave to explain reality viewed through infrared. Good science fiction contains far more concepts than the usual cultural suspects. Fahrenheit 451 was one of my required reading books in high school but I had already read it. I was not impressed. Ray Bradbury was not a very scientific writer.

I don't think there should be just one list, because everyone will have different opinions. However, the overall goal should be to give the reader a well-rounded education by introducing them to different genres. The list I provided were just my opinion of a few of the classics, each with their own lesson or message to convey to the reader. It is like fine art and classical music, you want to introduce them to the different masters to give them an appreciation of what is possible.

Most science fiction writers are not very well versed in science, with Arthur C. Clarke being a notable exception. That is why we end up with things like Faster Than Light travel, and really stupid movies like Interstellar. That was one of the reasons why I appreciated Clarke's work, he at least attempted to use real science to make his stories plausible. When I first heard of the interstellar asteroid Oumuamua, my very first thought was of Clarke's book "Rendezvous with Rama."

 

[psikeyhackr]

People read science fiction for the possibility of what could be, not what is currently understood.

I remember lying on my bed with an open science fiction book and two open encyclopedia to learn about the stuff mentioned in the story.

I do not recall any of my high school science teachers mentioning infrared but Arthur C Clarke used Plato to explain it. SF can make science more interesting than teachers, some of them are bored and boring.

Omnilingual - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[psikeyhackr]

I don't think there should be just one list, because everyone will have different opinions. However, the overall goal should be to give the reader a well-rounded education by introducing them to different genres. The list I provided were just my opinion, of a few of the classics, each with their own lesson or message to convey to the reader. It is like fine art and classical music, you want to introduce them to the different masters to give them an appreciation of what is possible.

Most science fiction writers are not very well versed in science, with Arthur C. Clarke being a notable exception. That is why we end up with things like Faster Than Light travel, and really stupid movies like Interstellar. That was one of the reasons why I appreciated Clarke's work, he at least attempted to use real science to make his stories plausible. When I first heard of the interstellar asteroid Oumuamua, my very first thought was of Clarke's book "Rendezvous with Rama."

That is why I think the list should be so large, kids & parents could select the subset they want.

The Literary Intellectuals want so broad a definition of speculative fiction it is just about worthless. Robert Heinlein started using the term "speculative fiction" in the 1940s but his definition excluded some types of works that were regarded as science fiction at the time.

https://mgherron.com/2016/03/what-is-speculative-fiction/