The four years you spend wandering around between the walls of your high school are inevitably going to seem like the longest years of your life. It's no joke that high school is a lot of work, and its tough on all of us for different reasons. There are some small perks, though (at least to an English geek like myself). While in high school thus far, I've had the experience to read some of the best books I've ever read that I don't know if I would have picked up otherwise. While at first glance, assigned reading seems like a drudging task. However, I can't even begin to explain the pay off when you trudge onward through one of the classics and will grow to love it by the end. Even if you don't love it, there are so many great lessons that you can learn through literature. There's so much to gain from reading. So without further ado, here are the five best books you read in high school.
5. 1984 by George Orwell
While I must admit, I did not actually care for the style and the monotony I found in the novel, the tone and the voice it projects was definitely there. And that, as I interpreted it, was that the power is with the people. Corruption will always weed its way in, but things can never change until you decide to do something about it. This novel is the classic dystopian—
arguably the dystopian to begin all dystopians— and it still scares people every year as more lines can be drawn from Orwell's terrifying world of Big Brother, and our world today.4. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
I will never understand how people don't love this book. What better way to embody the raw, animalistic side of human nature than through children? This novel is one of those where when you ask a person what they think of it they either love it or they hate it; there is no in between. And I think that's because it's hard for some people to fully immerse themselves in the concept of it. It's difficult for one to imagine that when the rules are no longer in play, humanity is no longer civilized. We all like to believe we are a structured species, but we must also remember that we are, in the most basic sense, still animals. This novel shows the most wild, uncut version of that.
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
With these last three books on the list, it's very hard to rank them. I almost don't like seeing this one in third place. The only reason I put it here is because I didn't like it the first time I read it as an 8th grader. But my freshman year English teacher told me, "This is a book you get something new out of every time you read it," and I can't help but believe it. There are themes in this book I wasn't ready to handle at fourteen, but I'm so glad I read it again at seventeen after I had lived a little longer to fully grasp the concepts. It plays on the idea that evil things plague the innocent, and what it feels like not to experience that oneself, but how to show compassion when watching it happen to others.
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Not only is this one of the best books I've read in high school, but it's one of the best books I've read, period. Dealing with the idea of romanticizing people and how reputations don't do them justice, this novel spoke volumes to me as I read it just last year and even now, still. The era in which the book takes place (the wild, glorious, roarin' twenties) only adds to the story, and I don't think I knew a person who read it who didn't like it (no matter how infuriating and unsatisfactory the ending may be).
1. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
I have never loved a book I've read while in school more than I love this one. This novel is my favorite classic, and it has taught me so many things. The writing doesn't just relate to being human, it relates more specifically to being a teenager. One with depression, at that, which is something I can personally understand. Holden Caulfield embodies the little piece of "want to save the world" in all of us, and he hurts for humanity for the rest of the human population. This, to me, is the most detrimental book a high schooler reads. It is meant to be their saving grace, their sign. It is meant to be something that tells them, "You are not alone. There are other people that struggle in the same way you do. Growing up is not an easy thing to do." And so many kids need to hear that.
In short, literature speaks to people. That's why we've kept it around for all these years. So, before you moan and groan about reading for school (though I can't say much because I still do it, too) just take a second to breathe and walk into it with an open mind and make the commitment to stick it out. You never know what you might get out of it.
