Books I was made to read at US public school in the 1970s, listed in order of publication, rated from 1 to 5 stars like on Goodreads:
Shakespeare: Hamlet (1601) – I had to read this over Christmas Break. Ugh: 1 star.
Shakespeare: Macbeth (1606) – my English teacher adored Lady Macbeth, but she seemed like a terrible person to me. 1 star.
Voltaire: Candide (1759) – this is the only book I can remember reading in World Lit, though there must have been others. Right? 3 stars.
Herman Melville: Moby-Dick (1851) – I only got halfway through this. NR.
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (1861) – I hated this!!! My introduction to the dreary Victorians that my teachers seemed to so love. 1 star.
Thomas Hardy: The Return of the Native (1878) – I hated this too. All my friends read the Cliffs Notes version and went to parties and laughed while I slogged through the Original Text at 60 wpm (= 45 hours). Back then I subvocalized and read at a third of the average speed. Now I do not and read at half speed. 1 star.
L. Frank Baum: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) – I liked this, though it is one of the few books where the movie is better. 4 stars.
Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows (1908) – I liked this too even though I was kind of shaky on English wildlife. 4 stars.
Agatha Christie: Ten Little Niggers (1939) – a murder mystery, then known as “And Then There Were None”. 4 stars.
Esther Forbes: Johnny Tremain (1943) – the history of the American Revolution painlessly learned by way of its boy hero. Unlike at Catholic school, the Revolution was pounded into our heads. 3 stars.
Arthur Miller: The Crucible (1953) – also set in colonial times. About the McCarthy Hearings by way of the Salem Witch Trials. I would probably love this book now. I should reread it to see. 2 stars.
Pat Frank: Alas, Babylon (1959) – the world after a nuclear war. Not exactly science fiction in the 1970s during the Cold War. My father said the Eastern Seaboard would be vaporized – there was no “after” for us. I remember looking out the window at school and thinking, “All this could be gone in 45 minutes.” 5 stars.
William Gibson: The Miracle Worker (1959) – Helen Keller, born deaf and blind, is taught to speak. Teachers loved it. I did not. 2 stars.
Elizabeth Kata: A Patch of Blue (1965) – also about a blind girl. This one is White and falls in love with a sighted Black man. I remember asking my mother what “whore” meant. She told me to look it up. 3 stars.
By century:
- From Gilgamesh to 1600 AD: 0
- 1600s: 2
- 1700s: 1
- 1800s: 3
- 1900s: 8
By nation:
- France: 1 – “World Lit”!!
- UK: 6
- US: 6
- Australia: 1 (Elizabeth Kata)
No Black authors. One of my English teachers gushed about “Roots” (1976) by Alex Haley but she never assigned it.
Even back then I understood what a terrible list this is – because my parents and four siblings had hundreds of books and my mother took us to the library every Saturday.
The cynic in me whispers that my teachers wanted me to hate reading.
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- books
- lost book covers, part I and part II – mostly from this same period
- The best American writers live north of 110th Street – also makes reference to my English teachers
- My favourite Greek books – way better than the Anglo books I was supposed to like
- My 1970s media diet
- school:
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Abagond 
@ Abagond
“I would probably love this book now. I should reread it to see.”
It would be interesting to see if that was true of not just The Crucible.
Personally I find both Hardy and Dickens to be what I call “slow reads.” I enjoy them both as long as I don’t have to read large chunks in one sitting.
I read Tess of d’Urbervilles on my own in high school, averaging less than a chapter a day. Took about two months to read it, but I absolutely loved it.
A few years later in college I had to read Tess for a class. We were supposed to read it in a week, and I thought I was going to die slogging my way through it.
I felt lucky that I’d read Tess once before and was therefore able to resort to skimming when I couldn’t keep up with the syllabus otherwise. I did really enjoy the analysis we did in class; I’d missed a lot reading the novel the first time without any guidance. But if I hadn’t already had an enjoyable experience reading it on my own, I probably would have written off Hardy completely after that class.
Tolkien is another slow read for me. I’ve known people who ripped right through the Rings trilogy, but I can’t unless I’m skimming and jumping over the long descriptive passages.
(This may sound like I’m generally a slow reader, but I’m not. I tend to have multiple books going at the same time, so I will read several “fast” books concurrently with one “slow” book. I’ve read plenty of books in one sitting. Certain authors just take me more time, for some reason I can’t pinpoint.)
It’s interesting that your public school experience as described in this post was so different than mine. My English teachers barely assigned any novels, and only one or two that would be considered classic literature. I did most of that type of reading on my own instead, and I generally enjoyed it.
I didn’t read everything on your list here, but all those I did, I read on my own, including Shakespeare. I also looked at your lists of Greek authors and authors from north of 110th Street, and I read a bunch of those on my own in high school, too.
I wonder if what made the difference is that I was reading all those books for myself and could put one down if I found it boring? Or that I could read it at my own pace instead of slogging through for class?
I definitely agree that your teachers should have had a racially diverse reading list. That seems to have been a common failing in U.S. schools of our generation, and I’m not sure things have improved all that much.
“I remember asking my mother what “whore” meant. She told me to look it up.”
This was my mother’s entire approach to sex ed! And looking it up in my house meant a 1950s-era Webster’s, where the definition would almost always be more confusing than enlightening. Usually I had look up multiple words in the definition itself!
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I also enjoyed reading Voltaire in my school years. As for Melville, I guess not reading it as a compulsory book is one of few perks of not being a non-native English speaker.
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Having once been an aspiring actress I loved reading Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. I played Tituba. I still love this character.
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I remember Jonathan Light Tremaine for 6th grade watching the Disney movie Johnny Tramine. I remember we watched this in the visual aids room of my elementary school. I remember the song The Sons of Liberty.
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I’m trying to remember the books I had to read at school; king Lear which I hated and Romeo and Juliet which I didn’t mind. Lord Jim, hated that book so much. Animal farm I liked and charlottes web when I was younger I also liked.
There would be loads more but I don’t remember. I’m pretty impressed that you remember all the books you read at school.
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The film A Patch of Blue with Sidney Poitier and Sandy Dennis, and Shelly Winters was good. I was not aware there was a book. Great performances from those three actors.
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Correction: Elizabeth Hartman was Selina.
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I didn’t think much about the absence of Black authors when I was growing up. I never thought of the people who wrote the books as Black or white; it was the story that captured me, and I was innocent regarding race. Growing up in the military was a blessing because we grew up in neighborhoods that included military families made up of people from different cultures. Our large family included every shade of skin imaginable and different cultures. I still see the Hawaiian bride atop the roof of their military housing unit. The amazing thing was seeing a woman walking up the incline of a roof. I was in the fifth grade and to my wondering eyes, she was something amazing. She was drying fish on the roof. A classmate, Arlene Lugo was from Brazil. She had the most beautiful hair and skin. My first crush was Chico, a Puerto Rican friend of my father’s. His bald head and skin impressed me beyond measure. They were just some of the people I read about in the books I devoted. They were in our encyclopedia–which I read when there were no books left to read on a weekend.
I got my first library card in Lawton, Oklahoma. I got on every time we moved. Soldier of Fortune Magazine lit up my imagination, as did any of the paperbacks soldiers left behind when they moved. Anyone who knew us gave me books because they knew I’d read it, no matter what. LOL. My father’s cousin worked as a maid in a private home. The woman she worked for gave her books to pass on to me.
I didn’t “discover” all the amazing Black authors who changed my life and enriched it until college. They blew my mind. Gordon Parks made me believe I could be a photographer too. Angelou made me a poet. I was a young woman before I learned The Three Musketeers was authored by a man of color. I think I read everything he’d written and was translated. I loved Great Expectations. Never liked Wuthering Heights. Shakespeare made me weep with joy and pain. My brain lit up the first time I read the bard–so could never understand why most of my classmates hated it. Surely they read the Bible? LOL.
Here is a link to an amazing list that I never knew existed. Who knew there were this many? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_writers. I plan to make a list of those I recognize and a list of those I have read. I love a great storyteller; skin color doesn’t matter. (Much.)
You give us such food for thought. Thank you.
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Lady Macbeth was a terrible person, but your teacher probably liked her because she was one of the few well fleshed out interesting female Shakespearean characters. A good character doesn’t always have to be a good person.
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The Folger Shakespeare Books are great. I loved that book when I read McBeth. Lady McBeth was a juicy character. I loved her monologue. She reminded me of Cersei Lannister of Game of Thrones. She is a great villainess.
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