The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls: In Jeannette Walls’ memoir readers will find themselves thrust into the unconventional childhood of the author. This book is an account of growing up devoid of basic stability because of parents who choose to live off of the grid. Jeannette’s father suffers from alcoholism and possesses a deep paranoia of the government. Jeannette’s mother prioritizes her own nomadic-spirit above the safety and well-being of her children. The story follows Jeannette and her siblings as they struggle to find their own place in society, while processing that their childhood was possibly more than just unconventional. This memoir will leave you reflecting on snap-judgments made about people raised differently than you. The story will make you think about what it really means to have a healthy childhood and if people have as much control over their own destinies as you may have previously thought.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: The book is set in the future, where firemen are supposed to start fires and not manage them. People in this society watch hours of television and do not leave time for self-reflection or for reading books. Montag is the main character in the story and he is a fireman who has always blindly-followed the ban on books in society. He has never questioned the way society operates until he comes into contact with a girl who questions the emptiness of a life without deeper thinking. Then several disturbing experiences in a row befall Montag, prompting him to try and find answers to his confliction in a pile of banned books. Montag seeks out a retired English professor, Faber, to help him understand what he’s reading and they end up concocting a plan to overturn society and repeal censorship. This book is a haunting representation of what can happen when we try to blunt analysis and reflection in pursuit of a superficial world.
Night by Elie Wiesel: This book contains the experience of the author during the Holocaust weaved throughout the narrated story of Eliezer the main character in the novel. Eliezer is a Jewish teenager growing up in Hungarian Transylvania under the Nazi regime. During the spring of 1944 he is taken, along with his mother, sisters, and father, to Birkenau. Then begins the horrific and moving tale of what happened to Eliezer and his family during the Holocaust. This story is so important because it is an unwavering demonstration of the need to revisit history and acknowledge the horrible acts society is capable of. I think this is an especially worthy read due to the prejudice, hate crimes, and genocide that occur every day around the world. This story will stay with you forever as you absorb events that transpired less than a century ago, and that are still with us today.
Animal Farm by George Orwell: This story uniquely combines political ideology with the animal kingdom. The story begins with Old Major, a boar, gathering all of the other animals of Manor Farm to tell them his dream of living free from oppression. When Old Major passes away shortly after sharing his fantastical plan with the other animals, three of the younger pigs come up with the name Animalism to embody Major’s ideas. As the story continues the animals carry out the ideals of Animalism and become more and more human-like in form. This novel is an interesting critique of the Russian Revolution and tells the story of the emergence of Soviet Communism using the animals of Manor farm. The story is not a critique of only communism, but of all hypocritical tyrannies whose foundations are supposedly set upon an ideology of equality. The novel is a worthwhile read and an important critique of ideas that may begin as irrefutable but end up corrupted by the foible human spirit.
