Books Assigned in School

Books assigned in school evoke strong feelings. You either love em’ or you hate em.’ In this episode, Marlon and Jake discuss the books they wished they were assigned in school and the ones they suffered through. Accompanying the books taught in school, there are, of course, the teachers who taught them. A teacher can make or break a book read in school. As a literature teacher (as well as Booker prize winning author), Marlon acknowledges there are some novels assigned in school that you have to work to understand that are really good, but sometimes those novels are not good and if it weren’t for being assigned in school, we wouldn’t still be reading it.

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• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• The Republic by Plato
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Call of the Wild by Jack London
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• The Warden by Anthony Trollope
• Washington Square by Henry James
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• The Aspern Papers byHenry James
• The Ambassadors by Henry James
• Daisy Miller by Henry James
• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• The Bondsman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts
• Guerillas by VS Naipaul
• Miguel Street by VS Naipaul
• A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul
• A House for Mr. Biswas by VS Naipaul
• Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo
• Shogun by James Clavell
• Tia-pan by James Clavell
• King Rat by James Clavell
• Whirlwind by James Clavell
• Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
• King Lear by William Shakespeare
• The Tempest by William Shakespeare
• King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard
• The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton
• The Discourager of Hesitancy by Frank R. Stockton