High School Reading Lists!

Ok, so I've come to the sad realization that although I've read a lot of books, I've not even skimmed the surface of the milk pan of books classified as classics! Did that even make sense?

In high school, we didn't have reading lists or any compulsory reading, which I now find to be very sad. There were no essays on my interpretation of Shakespeare or Keats or any of the others. We just had text books, with lessons in them, like articles and stories and poems. We had to study these, and answer questions based on them in the exams. That was it.

Well, that's the Goa Board of Education for you! I know I'm complaining now, but I guess I should be happy that I had it easy for English at least. I don't know if I would have been able to cope up with the rest of the subjects like Maths, Bio and all, with all this extra reading and writing. Who knows, I might have only concentrated on English then. Wow! How different would my life be!! I'd probably be a professor or something, that's the only legitimate occupation I can think of right now for a Literature graduate!

Anyway, my point is, I missed out on a lot of important reading, and its time to rectify this, starting today.
So, I've got the list, all I now need is the time and patience to deal with Shakespeare.

I'll just keep adding the titles and checking them as and when I finish them, in this post.

The List:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird By Harper Lee
2. Romeo and Juliet By William Shakespeare   -   WIP
3. The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. Lord of the Flies By William Golding
5. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 By Travis Bradberry
6. The Catcher in the Rye By J. D. Salinger
7. The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne
8. Macbeth By William Shakespeare
9. Animal Farm By George Orwell
10. Of Mice and Men By John Steinbeck
11. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn By Mark Twain
12. Hamlet By William Shakespeare
13. The Odyssey By Homer
14. 1984 By George Orwell
15. The Diary of a Young Girl By Anne Frank 
16. Julius Caesar By William Shakespeare
17. Night By Elie Wiesel 
18. Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen
19. Jane Eyre By Charlotte Bronte
20. Brave New World By Aldous Huxley
21. Fahrenheit 451 By  Ray Bradbury
22. The Crucible By Arthur Miller
23. Wuthering Heights By Emily Bronte
24. The Grapes of Wrath By John Steinbeck
25. A Midsummer Night's Dream By William Shakespeare
26. Frankenstein By Mary Shelley
27. Great Expectations By Charles Dickens
28. A Tale of Two Cities By Charles Dickens
29. The Giver By Lois Lowry
30. Beowulf By Seamus Heaney
31. The Outsiders By S. E. Hinton
32. Othello By William Shakespeare
33. A Separate Peace By John Knowles
34. The Old Man and the Sea By Ernest Hemingway
35. The Canterbury Tales By Geoffrey Chauce
36. The Taming of the Shrew By William Shakespeare
37. Flowers for Algernon By Daniel Keys
38. Mythology By Edith Hamilton
39. The Little Prince By Antoine de Saint-Exupery
40. The Hobbit By J. R. R. Tolkein