Must Reads

"HIT" (+) or "MISS" (-)
(My own personal opinion) for each book that I was required to read in high school, which is considered a "must read" with very, very brief comments.

I remember in freshman and sophomore year, I was required to read these books:

All Classics
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - HIT
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - HIT
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - HIT
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller - HIT
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence - HIT
Night by Elie Wiesel - HIT

Great!
Muckraker by Billy Callahan - HIT
(Couldn't put it down)

Huh?
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros - MISS
(The story is good but either I don't like vignettes or I just don't care for her style of writing on top of the vignettes)

I remember in junior year, I was required to read:

Black Boy by Richard T. Wright - HIT
(I only read Part 1. I want to read Part 2 badly.)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain - HIT
(I enjoyed this lots more than I thought I would)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - ?
(Classic that I was glad I read but did not enjoy as much as I would have thought, given the props it's been given. I'm going to read this again when I'll be able to appreciate it more.)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - N/A
(I'll admit it, by the time we got to reading this I was tapped. Sparknotes all the way. I have to read this one day.)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - HIT/MISS
(The story is good but hard to follow if you are not paying attention and do not understand the writing style)
The Crucible by Arthur Miller - HIT
(A favorite of mine, no doubt)
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger - HIT
(Brilliant and yet I still believe that it is over rated.)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - HIT/MISS
(Classic although not of interest to me)
(Excerpts) Beowulf - HIT
(The excerpts I read were really interesting. I want to read it all.)
(Excerpts) The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - HIT
(I want to read all of the tales!)
(Excerpts) Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift - HIT/MISS
(This is overall a funny hit even if you don't understand the satire but it is just not of my interest in the end)

Let's not forget the great poets (All HITS):
Shakespeare (Macbeth, Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar)
Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, etc...

I was also required to read and write reports on certain books, one of which:
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank - HIT
(This really is a Must Read)