School Books

[aokoye]

After looking at the GR list, I might have underestimated high school. Anyway by contrast my nephew in "honors English" read 0 books last year. His whole class was composed of essays, short stories and excerpts read on a tablet from an app through the school.

That's likely less than my one of my professor's 13 year old is doing in her 8th grade accelerated reading class. I do appreciate that they're writing essays (which I think is very important) but unless they're reading massive amounts of short stories and comparing and contrasting them....
That said, for all I know your nephew's honors English class this year could actually be focused on short stories (which in reality it's perfectly fine) and next year's honor's Eng class shift the focus to a different style of writing.

The vast majority of the books I listed were read in my 10th grade honors English class.

[Ani]

After looking at the GR list, I might have underestimated high school. Anyway by contrast my nephew in "honors English" read 0 books last year. His whole class was composed of essays, short stories and excerpts read on a tablet from an app through the school.

That's likely less than my one of my professor's 13 year old is doing in her 8th grade accelerated reading class. I do appreciate that they're writing essays (which I think is very important) but unless they're reading massive amounts of short stories and comparing and contrasting them....
That said, for all I know your nephew's honors English class this year could actually be focused on short stories (which in reality it's perfectly fine) and next year's honor's Eng class shift the focus to a different style of writing.

The vast majority of the books I listed were read in my 10th grade honors English class.

I wish it was writing essays! I meant reading essays. I don't know what their output was but it couldn't have been very impressive. I only know about it because my SIL was so furious at the lack of real content in what should have been the highest level class. I doubt she would have been upset by a thorough study (or perhaps a global survey) of short stories.

[reineke]

Essays are great reading, though... Rilke's essay on Rodin springs to mind as do a few others. Of course, I doubt they were reading Rilke.

[Luso]

It was a long time ago, but this is what I can remember:

Portuguese:
Medieval literature, such as the Cancioneiros
Gil Vicente - Auto da Barca do Inferno
Luís de Camões - Os Lusíadas, Sonetos
Bocage - Several poems
Almeida Garrett - Viagens na Minha Terra
Eça de Queirós - Os Maias
O Livro de Cesário Verde
Fernando Pessoa - Several poems

French:
Vercors - Le Silence de la Mer

Philosophy:
Plato - Apology of Socrates
Descartes - Discours de la Méthode


This was the required reading, even though in certain cases we only had to study excerpts. Nowadays, there's a "Plano Nacional de Leitura", with a very large number of books.

[aokoye]

After looking at the GR list, I might have underestimated high school. Anyway by contrast my nephew in "honors English" read 0 books last year. His whole class was composed of essays, short stories and excerpts read on a tablet from an app through the school.

That's likely less than my one of my professor's 13 year old is doing in her 8th grade accelerated reading class. I do appreciate that they're writing essays (which I think is very important) but unless they're reading massive amounts of short stories and comparing and contrasting them....
That said, for all I know your nephew's honors English class this year could actually be focused on short stories (which in reality it's perfectly fine) and next year's honor's Eng class shift the focus to a different style of writing.

The vast majority of the books I listed were read in my 10th grade honors English class.

I wish it was writing essays! I meant reading essays. I don't know what their output was but it couldn't have been very impressive. I only know about it because my SIL was so furious at the lack of real content in what should have been the highest level class. I doubt she would have been upset by a thorough study (or perhaps a global survey) of short stories.

Ugh - your SIL has my sympathy. It's hard watching parents coming up against roadblocks in getting the best education for their kids (and of course I realize that "the best education" is going to be different for every kid - it would be much easier if it was just a cookie cutter mold situtation).