Hester Prynne, Jay Gatsby, Ethan Frome. Oh My!

Ahh yes. September. It’s time to go back to school! Fresh pencils, crisp loose leaf paper, immaculate folders and binders, and of course… new books! I’m sure many kids (current and former) had a love/hate relationship with back-to-school time like I did. You get to see all your friends, but you have homework, you aren’t bored, but you do have to sit through that one class where you don’t know anyone, you get to goof off in study hall, but you have to run laps for gym class. Summer reading was behind you… and a whole year of new reading material was ahead… wait. Who am I kidding? I LOVED both of those things!

While many of my classmates were still recovering from the near fatal speed-reading of the summer reading selection I was eager to crack open the first book of the school year, whether it was a novel or a textbook, it didn’t matter to me!

Each year there was always something I was looking forward to reading.
My biology textbook (yes, I was THAT nerd).
The Scarlet Letter.
The Great Gatsby.
Ethan Frome. ….What the eff?

Because of my epic nerdiness I never truly understood why many of my classmates hated school reading. But then I was forced to read Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton in 10th grade English. Oh. My. Gosh. All I could think about during class discussions was “What have I done to deserve this?” And if I was struggling with boredom how were my normally bored classmates still breathing?  Why would anyone think it was a good idea to make teenagers read this book in high school? Not only that but the teacher dragged it out for two weeks! I’m pretty sure we watched a movie adaptation starring Liam Neeson, but the details are fuzzy...

Thankfully To Kill A Mockingbird was next…

Which required reading books did you love? Hate? Which ones did you just totally skip out on? Have you gone back to reread any of them to see if they were really as good/bad as you remember?