You Mean Some Reading Isn't Mandatory?

                I’ve read my fair share of books throughout high school and have enjoyed a lot of them, even the books that were mandatory to be read. Among my favorites are To Kill a Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, and The Great Gatsby. These novels have deepened my love of reading and introduced me to different styles and themes that I hold very close to my heart.

                To Kill a Mockingbird was first introduced to me in my sophomore year of high school. We were on the split block schedule then, so I only had English for half the year, but we met every day. Because of this we weren’t able to get through an entire year’s worth of novels, so they split it up. Students taking English in the first half read Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and Harper Lee’s only novel To Kill a Mockingbird. People in the last half of the year read Julius Caesar by Shakespeare and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. My class was in the last half of the year, so we weren’t supposed to read To Kill a Mockingbird in the first place, but my teacher was convinced that we could learn a lot from it and praised the book so highly that we ended up reading it anyway in addition to what we could have read. I really do love this book not just for the story or the cultural insight to the time period which it provides but for the experiences that it provided and the final realization that not everyone in this world views children as beings that are not worthy of knowledge until it is almost too late to use it. I loved Atticus’ take on maturity and knowledge, and it was a refreshing experience to be able to see someone actively pursuing this belief, even if they were fictitious.

                Fahrenheit 451 was taught to me in my eleventh grade year of high school. We had changed the schedule so that I had English every other day, so everyone learned the same thing. My teacher did give us a choice though. For one of our final class projects we were to analyze one work of literature. There were two options provided so we could choose. The two books were The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I had already read The Hunger Games before and considered it a good read, but was still irritated by the idea of such a book being read in class. It’s not that it was bad, but I considered the classroom to be the one place where I could be free from the fandom that has accumulated around the series. I was wrong, and chose to read Fahrenheit so that I would not be forced to listen to people talk about characters’ antics or feelings about the movie that had just been released. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I made that year. My reading group was small; only four of us had chosen to read Fahrenheit. I worked best in small groups anyway, so it made no difference to me. I grew in my knowledge about the way that the world worked and the impact people can have on each other, but I also grew to become slightly more afraid of the world, especially where the government is concerned. Censorship and book burning, man… It’s scary.

                Reading has more than shaped me and my life. It has DEFINED my life, and has been doing so for at least fourteen years. And I know one thing for certain. I don’t ever. Ever. EVER. Want to stop.
                Gatsby? What Gatsby…?