As a senior in college who is double majoring in English, I look back to when I was in high school and reminisce over all the required texts we had to read in our four years of English classes and see them as a blessing. Some of the texts were unbearable back then, which caused us to look up the summary of each chapter on SparkNotes. *Gasp* I know what you're thinking: you? How could an English Literature lover like myself not read a book all the way through? Blasphemy. Honestly, most of the books we had to read pained my soul. However, there were a few required texts that didn't make me want to gouge my eyes out and most of you will agree with me to some extent.
1. "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger
It’s like Holden Caulfield knew the torture we were all endearing as teens reading these required texts and touched our pubescent hearts through his pessimistic sarcasm.
2. "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee
All the feels are found in this novel. Our empathy really blossomed because of the trial. Our eyes were opened to racial discrimination and social injustices of our world. And come on, we’re all searching for our Arthur "Boo" Radley.
3. "A Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
90% of the time we had no idea what was happening plot-wise. But when we got to class and our teacher explained what was going on we were all like, “whoa.” There was plenty of action that kept us strangely entertained to see what happened in pages later to come. Who doesn't like an intriguing Dystopian novel?
4. "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck
Oh Lennie, you can’t go killing people, but in your defense you had no idea what you were doing.
5. "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding
This book was so messed up in more ways than one but we loved it...maybe even cried a little bit for Piggy. It taught us that little children can be cruel. As they become members of a society, they become even more cruel and greedy. We witness the repercussions of poor leadership and how power can cloud reason and love. More importantly, this book shows how we as human beings can be cruel if we don’t take care to find our compassion for one another.
6. "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
We were dazzled by this book. I think every girl in the class wanted a Jay Gatsby to pine for her the way he did for Daisy. His green light across the bay and his extravagant parties were perfection. However, that kind of infatuation was lethal. This book didn’t leave room for much hope for the hopeless romantics out there. Daisy wanted money more than she wanted love and Jay couldn’t live without her so he committed suicide. Not very happy, but the bright side is the 1920s and high life was glamorous and I wish it was the era I was born into.
7. "The Giver" by Lois Lowry
Dystopians are where it's at. This book was the coolest tattooed slivers of tree ever published and produced. The characters see in black and white because they have no knowledge of anything else. Everyone knows the equal amount of knowledge except a select few. Leave it up to the main hero to change that. This is such a great read.
8. "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton
"Stay golden, Ponyboy." I learned so many life lessons in this book. I also developed a huge crush on the greasers because preppy's couldn't measure up. Matt Dillon is a hottie in the movie adaptation which is a MAJOR plus.
9. "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin
Society will never learn. People need to stop confining women and putting restrictions on them. We are meant to soar, not to live a life of confinement. This book showed, through satire, that freedom for a woman was achieved through death. We need to learn to be better than that.
10. "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickins
At my high school this book was for honors students (which I was not). I read this in college but we're going to pretend that this was a high school required reading because technically, it was, just for smarter people. This book was brilliantly written through Dickens's satire--a genius satirist--that made him become one of my favorite authors of all time. It discusses the ridiculousness of French aristocracy and captures the atrocious treatment of French subjects.
11. "Romeo & Juliet" by William Shakespeare
Even though Shakespeare is incredibly difficult to read (I used SparkNotes's help several times), this is such a classic love story and tragedy. The ultimate "want-of-that-which-you-cannot-have." Leonardo DiCaprio also became our dreamy Romeo in the film adaptation which made it all the more lovable <3
12. "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
This book terrified me because of my love (occasional obsession) with books. The fact that the burning of books could one day happen gave me chills every turn of the page. So not okay. Each book I own and have read is a little piece of me I couldn't let go.
