Lost in My Library

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 ...

Last year, I did a post about my thoughts on required reading. This is a rough follow-up to that. It's that time of year again - the start of a new semester! I know my school starts later than most, so if you're a student, you've probably already started. But I just started my classes a couple of days ago...which explains why my Friday post is going up on a day that's definitely not Friday. (Oh, well.) It also means that it's the perfect time to talk about required reading again. Quick recap of the last post: I was required to reread PRIDE AND PREJUDICE , which I'd originally read on my own and loved, and hated it. Update: last semester, I was required to reread THE GREAT GATSBY , another book that I'd originally loved. But this time, the required reread made me love the book even more. But I can't put my finger on anything that made rereading the two books different, except for the fact that I already knew I wanted to reread Gatsby at some p...

This blog post is brought to you by Pride and Prejudice and my AP Lit class. I've been thinking a lot about required reading, probably because I'm having to do so much of it. School comes with many types of required reading. Today, I won't be talking about reading excerpts from textbooks on various subjects, because I think everyone agrees that unless the subject is of particular interest, those readings are boring at best and painful at worst. Instead, I'm talking about being required to read entire works of literature (or, less often, nonfiction). During winter break this year, I was required to read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice . I thought that this would be one of my easiest assignments ever. I LOVE that book. I read it for fun two summers ago and could barely put it down! I was expecting wonderful days curled up on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate, enjoying the chance to revisit one of my favorite novels while still being productive. Best of all...