The Mensa Reading List for Grades 9-12

I hate reading lists like this, it is so prescriptive it will take the pleasure away. Even worse asking for an adult sign off and making it part of an &quot;excellence program&quot;.<p>Read what you like, not what is on a list. There is room to guide and suggest, but fixed lists to tick off are absolutely horrible.

Though the blog post is more thoughtful and reflective, here&#x27;s the actual reading list (PDF warning): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mensaforkids.org&#x2F;achieve&#x2F;excellence-in-reading&#x2F;excellence-in-reading-9-12-list&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mensaforkids.org&#x2F;achieve&#x2F;excellence-in-reading&#x2F;e...</a><p>Appallingly, it&#x27;s alphabetized by title.

I was surprised to see how many of these were already assigned high school reading at my public high school. We went through maybe a quarter of the list? I do disagree with making it a checklist. Some of these books will end up being an absolute slog with no value to their reader, and kill progress in the list. Great Expectations was like that for me, and later Pride and Prejudice.

The article made this reading list seem like a good thing, but I looked at the reading list itself and it has a weird vibe. It is literally a checklist: &quot;Check off the books as you read them.&quot; You&#x27;re also supposed to rate each book from 1 to 5 stars, which is a weird way to engage with the books. At the end, you have to make a tax-form-like attestation that you have read &quot;a complete and unabridged version of <i>all</i> the books and that this record is true&quot;, co-signed by an adult.<p>As for the list, it&#x27;s basically a &quot;Great works of Western literature&quot; list that you&#x27;d expect to see in the 1970s. The concept seems to be that you must slog through the official important books (including <i>The Fountainhead</i>!) to prove your Mensan superiority, rather than encouraging a joy of reading.<p>The list: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mensaforkids.org&#x2F;achieve&#x2F;excellence-in-reading&#x2F;excellence-in-reading-9-12-list&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mensaforkids.org&#x2F;achieve&#x2F;excellence-in-reading&#x2F;e...</a>

<i>Night</i> is important, but I really don&#x27;t recommend it for emotionally volatile teenagers. I was already mildly depressed when I was assigned it, and borderline suicidal after I finished it. Maybe read it in college when you have easier access to alcohol.

Most of these books require the person to be 30+ years old to make them appealing.<p>Forcing kids to read stuff only makes them hate reading.

Maybe just purchase a large quantity of books, or better, give free access to a library and let them pick anything they wish to read.<p>I&#x27;m picking up some SF and fantasy in my 40s but I feel the fire is gone somehow. There are few books that I&#x27;m willing to burn candles. It would be a lot more fun to read them when I was young.

Link to the actual reading list: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mensaforkids.org&#x2F;achieve&#x2F;excellence-in-reading&#x2F;excellence-in-reading-9-12-list&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mensaforkids.org&#x2F;achieve&#x2F;excellence-in-reading&#x2F;e...</a>

All great books but missing some important items:<p>- Candide<p>- A Peoples History...<p>- Manufacturing Consent<p>- Dharma Bums<p>- Naked Lunch&#x2F;Western Lands<p>- Infinite Jest<p>- Something Thompson, Campaign Trail &#x27;72 maybe.

Reminds me of the &quot;Great Books&quot; program that Liberal Arts colleges like St. Johns have adopted. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sjc.edu&#x2F;academic-programs&#x2F;undergraduate&#x2F;great-books-reading-list" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sjc.edu&#x2F;academic-programs&#x2F;undergraduate&#x2F;great-bo...</a>.<p>Also reminds me of philosopher John Senior&#x27;s &quot;Thousand Good Books&quot; as a counter to the &quot;Great books&quot; -- heuristic that if you&#x27;ve heard of the book and it&#x27;s old enough, then it&#x27;s probably worth reading and studying. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thelifetimereader.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;the-thousand-good-books" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thelifetimereader.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;the-thousand-good-b...</a>

All reading lists will have books you don&#x27;t care for (Moby-Dick) and books you think should have been included (Flowers for Algernon).<p>Just peruse the ones that look interesting to you, then move on to the next list.

I think it&#x27;d be healthier to recommend teenagers read science fiction.<p>It actually gets them to <i>enjoy</i> reading -- while thinking about society (and technology), and stoking their ambition.

While the reading list as a thing in itself seem to be criticized, I agree with the point of developing stamina and to become more capable of critical thinking. If the story element comes easier to some people, its a great approach. The point being to push the reader outside simplistic but comfortable thinking and build qualities able to confront the evident but often subtle complexities.

Far better to be creating things during grades 9-12 than reading these tired old books.<p>I learn so many more things so much faster today because of the new AI tools.<p>The big divide among students in the future will be between those who use AI to learn faster and accomplish more, vs those who use AI to avoid working or thinking

Here is the full list [pdf]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mensaforkids.org&#x2F;achieve&#x2F;excellence-in-reading&#x2F;excellence-in-reading-9-12-list" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mensaforkids.org&#x2F;achieve&#x2F;excellence-in-reading&#x2F;e...</a>

OT: can anybody recommend a book for a gifted kid (mathematics)? He knows prime numbers, square roots, exponents and can read. Isn&#x27;t even in school yet (5 years old).

One might ask, what exactly is the point of a reading list?<p>As a recommendation set between friends (&quot;you must read Borges and Sebald! You&#x27;ll love them&quot;), fine.<p>But lists give the vibe of someone desperately trying to preserve The Culture, whatever that is. And of course once such a list becomes encoded in the school board or university course curriculum, it instantly becomes calcified and a chore, even if some of the entries on the list are appealing to some of the readers. Pity the teacher who has to teach &#x2F;Catcher in the Rye&#x2F; for the tenth year, and pity their students.<p>So the real challenge is how to communicate The Culture through reading, without killing the joy. I wish I knew the answer. Perhaps it boils down to teachers being allowed to innovate. Maybe we need more teachers with big theater kid energy. I dont know. Id be interested to know what happens in non-Western cultures too...is this problem universal?

Looking at the list, I wish that they included more non-Anglosphere authors. Skimming at it, it does seem a tad Anglo-centric with that.

I would have expected a Mensa reading list for Americans to be in non-English languages. Maybe Homer in the original Greek.

I was a member of Mensa briefly but found it boring and so let my membership lapse.<p>My early reading history, in order:<p>- a few childhood stories read by my father, - textbooks from school, - comic books! I didn&#x27;t have money to buy them but found that if I went into the store while the staff were busy (before and after school) serving customers, no one noticed that I was blasting thru the latest Superman.<p>I paid attention in class, made good grades but didn&#x27;t study much, nor did I read books unless absolutely forced to. I probably read fewer than 4 books before college. I was conscripted by my father to assist him in carpentry and auto repair (which taught me a great deal about how the world works).<p>I credit DC Comics for giving me a high reading speed, the ability to concentrate (possibly I should say &quot;to attend&quot;!8-)) and consequently, any &quot;high IQ&quot; that allowed me to score well on tests, win awards, make good grades and join Mensa years later. I also credit being my father&#x27;s apprentice.<p>tl;dr Reading books on a list, even a Mensa list, will not likely make you smart.

On here I recognize Richard Wright. Amazing author.

Interesting how image generation still hasn&#x27;t passed the &#x27;visual turning test&#x27;. It&#x27;s still obvious 4o generated the header image here.

What a mediocre list of material.<p>They all pretty much sit within a European&#x2F;American spectrum of &quot;worthy&quot; works - there is a dominance of caucasian male thinking embodied within this list: it&#x27;s not very broad, even with the odd hat tip to a Bronte sister and Maya Angelou. Nothing from 80% of the World&#x27;s population, all rooted in a classical Western school of writing theory. Dull.<p>I also have a concern that they aren&#x27;t a great foundation for a young person approaching adulthood trying to understand their place in the World and their own beliefs and values about themselves and the World they live in.<p>As you would expect of adult literature, some of them have sex and sexuality as themes that are explored by protagonists, subplots and subtexts. While this is something we should expect literature to play a part in, and it is of course healthy for adults to consider their own feelings relating to sex and sexuality based on their own contexts and needs through art forms like literature, I&#x27;m not sure throwing that at a 9th grader feels <i>quite</i> right. Maybe it is. I think it depends on the child.<p>The worst crime here though, is that this list is composed of books that are only considered good by the &quot;educated&quot; literarti.<p>There aren&#x27;t many page turners that will keep a younger mind engaged and excited. There&#x27;s only a few that stand out as an opportunity to let a curious reader explore their changing selves through the context of an interesting imagined World - the only real point of literature - in a way that will stimulate and excite their curiosity for the World they are actually growing up in.<p>And y&#x27;know, I&#x27;m a huge Shakespeare fan (I live in London, regular attendee of Shakespeare productions from all the usual companies), but this is leaning into some weird material. <i>All 154 sonnets</i>? Much Ado, Hamlet &amp; King Lear, but no Romeo &amp; Juliet or Macbeth? Huh.<p>Also, I see you, Ayn Rand fans. I see you. No. The Fountainhead is not a good book, she isn&#x27;t a good writer, and the philosophy she espoused is not justification for you behaving the way you do. Don&#x27;t try and get grades 9-12 into your little weird cult, you unsympathetic self-absorbed weirdos.

I read, on average, 100 books a year. Anna Karenina was on my list for a long time and I read it back in 2023.<p>With 100 books a year, I’m averaging two books a week. It took me three full months to make it through that slog; hoping to find one fucking redeeming factor for it.<p>Let me tell you: there is absolutely no reason anyone should read that novel unless the intention is to make one hate reading.<p>Can we please stop making kids read books that fucking suck while telling them it’s somehow good for them to do so? We wonder why reading is seen as a slog and few do it; instead focusing on their phones or Netflix watchlist.

Good luck with James Joyce kids.

I can&#x27;t imagine caring what Mensa thinks anybody should read, let alone thinking that anybody should care what I think about what Mensa thinks anybody should read. And between the interminable list of several-sentence-long book reports (...why?), the writing is just one bland, melodramatic, Very Emphatic &quot;not X but Y&quot; after another.