“Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare – The language that plays from this era is so hard to comprehend. These novels can’t be enjoyed the way they were supposed to because we don’t understand them the ways they should be.  I love the way they sound so proper and full of fanciful words.  It really is a work of art because the words resonate in your ears.  However, I can’t quite figure out what any of the words mean. It’s torture to read the book and it’s probably torture to Shakespeare to have them butchered in schools.

“Lord of the Flies” by William Golding – This is a disturbing book that quite frankly left me questioning the sanity of William Golding. This book is a piece of work that I didn’t understand nor did I want to. I guess there are some ideas that one can gain from reading the book. It sparks some awareness that might not have been there before.  I just felt like this was an especially dark book for 9th graders to read.  Welcome to high school, I guess.

“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck – This book was actually quite pleasant to read.  At the beginning I thought it was going to be a typical school book anti-climatic and reveal something deep at the end with some literary meaning.  It surprised me by being interesting and super eventful.  I would recommend this to anyone.  Warning: it’s a tearjerker.

“On the Road” by Jack Kerouac – Any book written by Jack Kerouac is a book that should not be discussed in school. This is simply because there is nothing to gain from reading these books. No literary merit and no entertainment value.  I cannot count the amount of times I fell asleep while I was reading his books.  Why these made the bestsellers list, I’ll never know.

“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë – I absolutely loved this book. This was a love story long before Nicholas Sparks ever came along. Sure it has some of the language that makes books of it time difficult to read.  We do read books in school to get smarter though. This book is the perfect mix of entertainment with tough but not too strenuous vocab and syntax.