My Ten Best & Worst Required Reading Books

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's theme: Back to School Freebie!

It's almost time to go back to school! I don't actually start for a couple more weeks, but it's certainly starting to feel like that time again. And a new school year with new classes means new required reading books - so what better time to look back on required reading of the past?

I have a hugely complicated relationship with required reading. I've already written two discussion posts about that, which you can find here and here. But between those two posts, I've talked about relatively few examples, so that's what I'm going to be doing here. And since I couldn't come up with enough amazing books or enough awful books for a whole list of ten, I'm splitting this one in half.

THE BEST

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald: I've been required to read this twice now, once for my AP Lang class in high school and once for my America in 1925 class last year. It was incredible the first time and even better the second. I feel like I could read it a million times and discover something new with every reread.

MACBETH by William Shakespeare: I made myself only include one Shakespeare play on this list, and it was a tough decision between this and ROMEO AND JULIET, but this one won out. I didn't really appreciate that this was required - I've heard much more about birds and bodily fluids in this play than I ever care to - but the fact that nothing could spoil how much I enjoyed reading this really speaks to how great it was.

THE OUTSIDERS by S.E. Hinton: I really need to reread this book! It was required reading for me in 7th grade, which was just about seven years ago now, and it's still stuck with me. The story was that gripping.

OF MICE AND MEN by John Steinbeck: The fact that such a tiny book could pack such an emotional punch still amazes me. This is a book that I doubt I would have picked up if it hadn't been required, so I'm really happy that it was assigned.

A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING by Ruth Ozeki: My experience reading this was very interesting, because it wasn't for a class; it was one of those things where everyone is required to read the same book over the summer. So even though it was required, I got to read it as if it wasn't. I still have mixed feelings about the ending, but I loved the rest of the book so much that looking back, I'm able to overlook that a bit.

THE WORST

DEATH OF A SALESMAN by Arthur Miller: This is my least favorite thing that I've ever been required to read. And after I read it, I had to watch the movie, which I also hated. I have absolutely no regrets about never going back to this play.

HAMLET: POEM UNLIMITED by Harold Bloom: This entire reading experience was awful. Firstly, I was told to just read the entire thing in a weekend. Secondly, there was the assumption that I'd read a lot more than just HAMLET, which I hadn't. Thirdly, there were multiple times when I'd read a sentence, read it aloud, and then read it to my mom, and neither of us would have any idea what it actually said. Would not recommend.

MILKWEED by Jerry Spinelli: This book takes "unlikable narrator" to a whole new level. I think half of the time I spent reading was actually just staring at the page, not believing that the character was making the decisions he did.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: I still think I could have liked this book...if it were about 300 pages shorter and had a different ending. There was so much repetition that I ended up skimming chunks of it, and if the class discussions were anything to go by, I didn't miss much. And the ending was just ridiculously preachy.

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? by Edward Albee: This was quite an adventure. It definitely had its moments, but I had no idea what the point was for about two thirds of the book. And for most of the time that I did know what was going on, I had no interest in it. This was a "it's not the play it's me" thing.

What are some of your favorite or least favorite books that you've been required to read? Did we have to read any of the same things? Do we have any of the same opinions? Tell me in the comments!