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Which books should every teenager have read before they leave secondary school?
The Times Educational Supplement has compiled a list of novels for students to read before leaving school, voted for by teachers.
The majority of the top 20 will sound all too familiar for anyone who has done GCSE English Literature in the past 20 years, but how many of them have you read?
The Top 20 books you should have read by the time you finish school
1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell
4. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
5. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
6. The Harry Potter Series by JK Rowling
7. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
8. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
9. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
10. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
11. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
12. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
13. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
14. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
15. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
16. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
17. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
18. A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines
19. The Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien
20. Danny, Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
The 15 best opening lines in literatureShow all 15 1 /15The 15 best opening lines in literature The 15 best opening lines in literature Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
chipkidd.com
The 15 best opening lines in literature Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy “All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.”
npr.org
The 15 best opening lines in literature A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”
The 15 best opening lines in literature Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë “I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with", which pitches you straight into the story.”
Penguin Books
The 15 best opening lines in literature Middlemarch, by George Eliot “Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.”
Penguin Books
The 15 best opening lines in literature Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
AP
The 15 best opening lines in literature The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticising any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
cracked.com
The 15 best opening lines in literature Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie "All children, except one, grow up."
read.gov
The 15 best opening lines in literature One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey “They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.”
listed.com
The 15 best opening lines in literature Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day."
rarebookschool.org
The 15 best opening lines in literature One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
Harper Collins
The 15 best opening lines in literature The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”
minabach.com
The 15 best opening lines in literature The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”
Penguin Books
The 15 best opening lines in literature The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”
npr.org
The 15 best opening lines in literature Catch 22, by Joseph Heller "It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."
gonereading.com
Click here to see the full list of the top 100 books to read before you leave school .
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