This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is about books we were assigned to read in school. I’ve always loved to read, but I didn’t love most of the books I was assigned in school. It wasn’t that the books weren’t challenging, but they rarely inspired me. I grew up in 70’s and 80’s, and there was little diversity in what we were asked to read. Here are five school-assigned books I loved, and five I didn’t. These cover elementary school through college, and I tried to pick books I specifically remember being assigned.
Five Favorite Books I Was Assigned in School:
Animal Farm by George Orwell: This book always feels relevant to me, particularly the ending. I’ve always been fascinated by civil rights struggles and revolutions. The idea that you can fight for freedom and then devolve back into the exact same class and power conflicts disturbed me, and I’ve always wondered how inevitable that is. In the last thirty years, we’ve watched great gains in freedom happen (like gay marriage) but also seen freedoms taken away. I think when I was young I thought progress was a straight upward line, and this was the book that told me it wasn’t. But are corruption and power imbalances inevitable?
Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank: This was a world-changing book for me. My father escaped the Holocaust but as a child it was hard to understand what that meant. Anne Frank made that real for me.
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: I was assigned this book in high school and I think it was the first assigned book that I absolutely loved. Nothing about it felt like work. I’ve always gravitated towards female characters that aren’t “nice”, and Eustacia felt like she was trying to figure out her world, just as I was. She remains one of my favorite literary characters.
Emma by Jane Austen: This was my first Austen, assigned in my freshman college literature class, and I fell in love with Emma’s independence. Emma is another “not-so-nice” character, though she means well. She doesn’t have to follow the rules, so she doesn’t — but she has to figure out where the line is between being independent and being a good person.
Othello by William Shakespeare: I don’t think there are any Shakespeare plays I regretted being assigned, but this is one of my favorites and one I’m glad I had the opportunity to study in college. Shakespeare’s exploration of race, jealousy and insecurity felt incredibly modern to me, and Othello’s character very sympathetic.
Five Books I Was Assigned in School I Didn’t Care For:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: Sorry Jane Eyre fans, I know this is controversial, but I hated this book when I had to read it, and when I reread it recently I didn’t feel much differently. Though a strong character, Jane just doesn’t have the life and spirit I like to see in heroines.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: I’ve never understood the love for this book. Catherine and Heathcliff’s story disturbed me, but maybe that’s the point? It doesn’t seem like love, but control and violence and sadness. Which all sounds more interesting than this book actually is. I found it tedious.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: While I’m sympathetic to Hester Prynne’s situation, this book (even in high school) felt like shame told from a male perspective rather than a female one. It’s like we’re supposed to sympathize with the tortured preacher rather than Hester. And the creepy baby – no thanks. No wonder this story gets redone so often. It’s a very modern issue but a very dated telling.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: My least favorite Dickens, I didn’t hate this book but Pip, Estrella, and Miss Haversham all feel like caricatures in this book.
For the last one I came up with a tie for The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Neither of these resonated with me, they all felt like uber-male stories. Maybe they’d be more interesting if I read them today. What do you think?
As I was making this list, there were some books that fell squarely in the middle — books I appreciated and learned from, but that didn’t resonate with me as much as the other ones I listed. Some of those were A Tale of Two Cities, The Great Gatsby, and The Grapes of Wrath. And then there are the classics that I loved but I’m pretty sure I read them on my own rather than for an assignment, like The Bell Jar, Beloved, Fahrenheit 451, and To Kill a Mockingbird.
