Now, I am a self-proclaimed book lover, but even I didn’t read every book assigned to me in school. While I read most of them, there were several I did not even crack the cover of. Whoops! Here is a list of a mere seven that I had to pretend to be on top of until we finished that unit in school...and not just high school either.

1. Animal Farm by George Orwell

George Orwell’s iconic 1945 allegory of the Russian Revolution is a novel that was assigned to every person I know at some point during their high school career. My freshman year of high school, my English teacher assigned the book to us pretty early on and it was a big part of our final exam--alongside John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (which I actually did read). I attempted to read Animal Farm, but not very passionately. I did remarkably well faking my way through this book--good thing I had English 5th period and could ask my friends what was going on in the book. I even got an A on the final that was about 75% this book.

2. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

Junior year I took AP English Language and Composition, so we read very few books that year. We mostly analyzed essays and speeches for their schemes and tropes (I’m still slightly unsure of what exactly those are). But, we were given the option over winter and spring break to read a book and take a short test to get extra credit. Winter break was The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of my favorite works of American Literature. Over Spring Break, we were given the choice of either The Things They Carried, or Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. I chose Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam War autobiography and just couldn’t get into it. I took the test anyway and got adequate extra credit, so I’m not complaining.

3. Beloved by Toni Morrison

The summer before my senior year in high school, I was assigned three books for AP English Literature & Composition--The King James version of The Bible, How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I was on a beach in New York attempting to understand what in the world was going on in this book. Up until that point, it was one of the strangest novels I had ever picked up to read. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it, and within the first week of school, I had a quiz on that book. My period was given the easy quiz prompt from the first chapter of the book and we were able to use our book for the quiz. I was so happy to retire that one to my bookshelf.

4. Othello by William Shakespeare

I’d actually read two Shakespearean tragedies before I was assigned this one spring semester of senior year. I was so prepared to read this, but I kept getting lost and confused because it had been so long since I had studied Shakespeare. We had group quizzes on this play, and thank God for those. I have no clue how I managed to fake my way through those, but I certainly did and managed to make it through this tragic play unit without my teacher knowing I had no idea what was going on. What I got out of those quizzes though was that this tragedy sounded like a juicy one--wrought with jealousy, revenge, and good, old-fashioned racism.

5. The Epic of Gilgamesh

This past semester, I took a class on European Civilization. It literally began with the first humans and Mesopotamia and finished with post-WWII times. The Epic of Gilgamesh is exactly what it sounds like, the world’s oldest epic poem straight out of Mesopotamia translated from ancient Babylonian into multiple languages about this king called Gilgamesh. Pieces are missing, the English is more confusing than Shakespeare and I swear, whoever wrote this must’ve been high on fumes because I have no idea what was going on in that first act. Even talking about it in class gave me a headache from confusion.

6. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

I was also assigned this novel this past semester. I had grand intentions of reading what is hailed as the best novel to come out of the Great War, even brought it home with me over Thanksgiving break. I read the back cover of the book, and that’s it. It showed up on one of my exams, and I think I did alright from context clues and what I know about WWI. I passed the class, so that’s what counts, right?

7. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Senior year, I was told to choose a novel of literary merit to write what was lovingly called “The Beast” essay on that had to be 10-15 pages. At the same time, my teacher expected me to read One Hundred Years of Solitude. That didn’t happen. I really, really tried to read this novel, but my goodness. It was impossible! Literally everyone has the same name, or a variation of the exact. Same. Name. And I’m not kidding. Everyone was either Aureliano or José Arcadio or just Arcadio. It’s a multi-generational story of this family living in this town that existed for one hundred years in solitude from the outside world and it was all-around weird. There were banana massacres no one remembered, never-ending fatalism, and obsession with some inscription no one could decode. I made an executive decision to fake my way through that book because it was just too odd.

Maybe one day I’ll go back and read them all, until then, here’s to faking it ‘til you make it.