Put Animal Farm on that dystopia list!

I think the more thought-provoking but fast a read, the better. Fall in love with stories, and you'll fall in love with reading.

My husband was just saying that everyone should read Maus in their teens. I'd think it would be terrific fodder for classroom discussion.

Most of my ideas are life skills type things, not for English class. (How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk would be number one-it's good stuff to ponder well before parenthood, but has lessons in communication that would be valuable for any relationship)

Though now that I think of it, I took a bunch of lit classes in college: one which focused on black women writers, and another exclusively on Wright, Baldwin, and Himes. Reading Native Son (again) and Ann Petry's The Street for separate classes at the same time made me foam at the mouth- when we talk about the Harlem Renaissance, women are all but invisible. These two books are so similar, except that they're told from different gender perspectives. I thought it would be cool to read Wright and then Petry and discuss. It was bizarre to me that even in the 90's men and women of literature were kept in their gender slots. I wrote a paper on gender issues in the W/B/H class and got a lot of criticism from the teacher (a black man). He told me that black men don't have power, period, so they can't exert any over black women. I was completely baffled by this, but was too intimidated to discuss it any further.

I read Siddhartha for a class in high school and appreciated it, though I don't remember anything about it now. Also On the Road and As I Lay Dying.
Books I read on my own and enjoyed: Barbara Kingsolver's series about adopting a daughter, Michael Dorris' Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Be Here Now by Ram Dass, Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns...

The worst book I remember having to read for school: Tess of the D'urbervilles. Ugh.

Escape from Childhood by John Holt, or Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto,
would both be compelling reads, but likely wouldn't be popular among your peers & superiors.

I'm glad someone else hated dickens. I was afraid to say anything, because a lot of my comments in this trive are negative. I'll give Twain Puddin' Head Wilson. dickens gets Tale of Two Cities. I've read and enjoyed classics, but now I'm solidly in Science Fiction and Fantasy, when well written. And modern novels sound excruciating.

He he he, this sounds familiar :) I read LOTR when I was similar age, and read it and rereading it several times until I almost knew it by heart :)
And didn't like most of required literature reading either :) H.G.Wells wasn't on our reading list unfortunately or anything so interesting :( I don't even remember most of the books there, except that they were boring - that tells you something, isn't it?

BTW, if you didn't yet, try "Parable of the Sower" from Octavia Butler, it's great after-collapse of US kind of book ... not nuclear, just falling apart of the whole society kind of thing, and main character trying to survive and spread religion that steer people to the stars ... I loved it.

second Tao Te Ching, and the Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet make it more fun.

--and for a REALLY dangerous book, give them
The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education by Grace Llewellyn
(It's good, by the way!)

(and I just corrected some spelling too!)
<Unfortunately, I can't see getting either of my favorite Dicks into high school.>