I’m sure we can all remember being reading in school.

One of my earliest school memories is the teacher reading out loud classics novels such as The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I’d recently been given the book for my birthday, so I enjoyed following along in my own copy as the teacher read aloud from the school copy.

Later, in intermediate and high school, we’d have to read assigned books. This never bothered me—I was always a keen reader—but a lot of the books weren’t novels I’d have chosen to read myself. Yes, expanding our literary horizons was probably the point.

I think my favourite English reading assignment wasn’t a book at all, but a poem: The Man from Snowy River by Banjo Patterson.

I’m not a big poetry fan, but I loved the rhythm of the poem, the way I could almost feel the horse galloping along beside me as I read the words.

We read this in fifth form (our equivalent of sophomore year), in preparation for School Certificate. School C (as we called it) was the set of national examinations we sat at the end of the year. If we didn’t pass, we couldn’t progress to sixth form in that subject. It was a big deal.

One of the School Certificate questions was always to compare and contrast a piece of literature with the movie version. This meant we got to watch the movie version of The Man from Snowy River, starring Kirk Douglas and Tom Burlinson.

I remember reading The Great Gatsby, although I remember nothing about it. We read Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I loathed it because of the requirement to find theme and symbolism rather than simply reading and appreciating the story. And we read the compulsory Shakespeare: Macbeth and Othello.

What about you? What books do you remember reading in high school? What did you like … or loathe?