Exactly...they are feeding you knowledge. I read a lot of nonfiction for the purpose of learning. I want to know more about life in the Bronze Age, for example, or about daily life in the Middle Ages, or perhaps the memoirs of a Sudanese child soldier, or a debate about whether math is discovered or created, etc.

Jr. High: I remember A Separate Peace, The House on Mango Street, and Diary of Anne Frank.

High School: Great Expectations (yuck), Count of Monte Cristo (fantastic!), lots of Shakespeare, The Sea Wolf (loved), Alas, Babylon (loved), Lost Horizon (loved), To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm, Cold Mountain (yuck), Grapes of Wrath (yuck), All Quiet on the Western Front, Scarlet Letter, Wuthering Heights, Beowulf, various Ancient Greek epics and plays, etc.

I majored in English so I can't even begin to list everything. But standouts were from my courses on Arthurian Literature (everything from History of the Kings of Britain to The Once and Future King) and Tolkien (Silmarillion, LOTR, Hobbit, a biography, The Tolkien Reader).

That's all that I can remember with great clarity, apart from poems and short stories.