I know fall doesn’t officially begin until September 22nd, but as I’ve mentioned before, fall begins in my heart on the first of September. I think it also feels like the beginning of fall because school has started. Though I am not a student, nor do I have a child who is one, I do work in a public library so I can see the change in my patrons once the academic year starts. I love the possibility of new beginnings, of freshly sharpened pencils and notebooks that haven’t been scribbled in yet.
The likelihood of me going back to university for a masters degree is very slim (mostly because of the cost involved), but I do like reminiscing about my assigned reading in high school and college. So this week for my newsletter I thought I would share with you seven works of literature I loved and three I wish I had been assigned.
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner — I was assigned this in a college literature class that covered American novels published between 1900-1945, which ended up being one of my all-time favorite courses. I would have been so intimidated to tackle Faulkner without a professor guiding me through it. This Southern novel about the disintegration of a wealthy family is told in four parts, some of which are written in stream of consciousness and have time jumps that the reader has to identify via context clues. I have only read this once, but it made such an impression on me with the structure and sentence craft that I have named it as my favorite book of all-time when pressed to pick one.
1984 by George Orwell — I took a dystopian fiction class my senior year of college where this was one of the main texts we read. At that point it was one of the most challenging books I had read (wading through the history book within a book in the middle was a lot for 17-year-old Hannah). I am grateful this was assigned to me because it pushed me to consider the role of the government in our lives and what really is “fact,” something that has unfortunately become even more pertinent today. There has been a lot of talk about updating the reading lists of high schools to more modern texts, but I think this one should definitely stay on it.
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger — I know this is a divisive title, but I enjoyed it at as a high school sophomore and I enjoyed it even more as an adult when I reread it in my 20s. I do think this is one of the most misunderstood books that is taught in schools. At least in my experience the readers who criticize Holden Caulfield haven’t stopped to consider how much abuse he has endured at the hands of adults he should be able to trust, nor that he is a young person dealing with the grief of a sibling. I would recommend revisiting this one as an adult, even if you were never assigned it in school.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey — This was a text I was assigned in my protest literature class in high school. In the beginning I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy it because it was so different from anything I had ever read before. However, this story of a man who pleads insanity in order to escape jail time and ends up helping his fellow psychiatric patients take on the tyrannical Nurse Ratched has stayed with me for almost twenty years now. I can say I would never have picked this up on my own and I do think it was important for me to be exposed to something so different from my life at such a formative age.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury — This was the first book—a story about a world where firemen start fires to burn books—I read this year for my reread project. I had fond memories of reading it as a freshman in high school, definitely more so than The Good Earth or A Tale of Two Cities, and got even more out of it as an adult reader in our current political climate. It is by no means a perfect book (the women in the story could be treated better, for instance), but one I’m very glad to have read.
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare — This is my favorite Shakespeare play and it’s all thanks to my Shakespeare professor in college assigning me it and starting the first lesson by saying we wouldn’t have Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy without Beatrice and Benedict’s hate to love relationship. We watched the Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson adaptation in class, which is also a favorite of mine.
Othello by William Shakespeare — If “Much Ado” is my favorite comedy, “Othello” is my favorite tragedy. Another play that was assigned in my college Shakespeare class, we talked a lot about the role of race in the play. I also think Iago is one of the greatest villians in all of literature, so reading this play informs so many other characters.
And for those I wish I had been assigned…
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee — I think some other sections of English at my school were assigned this, but unfortunately I wasn’t one of them. However, I did read this on my own when I was a sophomore in high school, but I so wish I had been in a classroom to unpack all it has to say about race and economic class. This is one of my all-time favorites, so I wish more people would read it.
The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson — We would have invent a time machine to make this one possible, since Emily Wilson’s excellent translation was only published in 2017 (ten years after I graduated high school and six years after college), but this story is the bedrock of every hero’s journey, so I think it would be an excellent addition to a syllabus.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver in conjunction with David Copperfield by Charles Dickens — Again another book that would need a time machine to make possible, but the whole time I was reading Demon Copperhead earlier this year I kept wishing I was in a college classroom, reading it in conjunction with David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I know I could do this on my own, and perhaps one day I will, but I think there’s so much that could be gleaned by a tandum read of the two with a professor.
What’s your favorite book you were assigned in school? I’d love to chat about it in the comments. Until then,
I love The Catcher in The Rye. It's one of my most-read books ever. Two of my favorites assigned were The Scarlett Pimpernel and The Joy Luck Club. The older I get the more I appreciate my assigned reading.
I agree about 1984 being so relevant, now more than ever. I had read it years ago but it’s one of those classics you don’t forget. And The Catcher in the Rye is also one of my favorites, it’s one of the first classics I read in HS English along with The Great Gatsby and Huck Finn. I haven’t had the chance to read Demon Copperhead yet but David Copperfield is one of my all time favorites, and definitely my favorite Dickens