A common myth among graduates: high school students hate reading. Since the dawn of school, students have procrastinated on their pages, put off essays, and bluffed their way through Socratic Seminars. Along with the heavy integration of technology into classrooms, this has led to the widely spread theory that high schoolers simply despise books in general. However, this isn’t true; many high school students enjoy reading in their free time, only failing to enjoy themselves when they are told exactly what and when to read. With this handbook of the best and worst of assigned reading, hopefully, students and teachers can get a better understanding of how to better appreciate – and create – their reading curricula.

Social/Civil Justice

     A common theme found throughout all English classes is the topic of social and civil justice. In books, this means that, even if their stories are fictitious, the circumstances and characters are based in reality, struggling against systems that are prejudiced against them. This subject is tackled in a wide range of books, like Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and many more.

     “[I choose] books that create windows and doors for students…that they can see themselves in, but also gives them a new perspective,” said Jessica Laurence, the Women’s Literature teacher, who frequently assigns books about social justice and female empowerment in her classes.

     One that stands out is The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, which follows the story of Starr, an African American girl who goes to a white-dominant school, after one of her closest friends is wrongly shot and killed by a police officer. Although it’s on the longer side of English books, it provides a valuable view into how racism operates, and what the world can do about it.

Memoirs

     Memoirs are another common type of book encountered in Monte Vista English classes. Some of these include the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Fredrick Douglass, Educated by Tara Westover, I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, and many more.

     “Sometimes it’s that I can identify with what someone’s experiences, and then, at other times, it’s that it opens my eyes to what other people have endured or experienced,” said Emily Dolim, an AP Language and Composition teacher, on why she likes memoirs. “And it’s just kind of a way to build empathy and learn more about the world through someone else’s eyes and experience.”

     Out of all of them, one that particularly stands out is the book Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, an award-winning comedian who formerly hosted The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Therefore, it’s no surprise that this book is hilarious, despite its focus on Noah’s childhood, growing up poor and biracial during and after the Apartheid in South Africa, a period of systemized racial segregation.

     “I like it a lot because it has a very serious topic to it, but it’s very humorous too,” said Cristiano Testa, a sophomore. “It has a lot of everything in it, so I feel like anyone could read it and they would like it.”

     There’s a lot of good to be said about this book, and it definitely is a good read for even outside of English class. If you’re not in the mood for that, however, it’s also a good thing that this book has an audiobook that, read by Trevor Noah himself, sees the book’s lines delivered terrifically.

Belonging

     Books about finding one’s place are also frequent class assignments, especially to lowerclassmen. Some that one might have read includes Educated by Tara Westover, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sánchez, and many more. These books take a wide range of topics, including race, sexuality, and gender expression, so everybody can find a story to make them feel more comfortable with themselves.

     One of these is Gene Luen Yang’s groundbreaking book American Born Chinese, unique in that it’s one of few graphic novels assigned in English Classes. Somehow beautifully intertwining the storylines of a Chinese folktale, a standard John Hughes-esque high-school story, and a comically racist sitcom, it is a brilliant coming-of-age tale that shows how everything is connected, and there’s always more under the surface to every person.

     “What [American Born Chinese] allows you to see is that kind of internal dialogue that sometimes people have when it comes to trying to navigate your identity,” said AP Seminar and Research teacher Stephen Brooks. “It’s uniquely Asian American, in addition to being very universal in how it deals with that identity struggle.”

Dystopias

     Another notable genre found in English classes is that of dystopias. This includes books like 1984 by George Orwell and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Although sometimes hard to understand, they act as important warnings against allowing authoritarianism and other forms of oppression to persist in society.

     “There’s a lot of violence that shows how people will be struggling in different aspects,” Celine Elwin, a freshman, said on major traits dystopias share. She also mentioned how this made dystopias that draw more on real life events more impactful, since it allows readers to draw allegorical connections to the actual people who died as a result of such systems.

     In English class, this can be seen in Animal Farm, by George Orwell. The book uses the story of animals who took over a farm as an allegory for the Russian Revolution, and the authoritarian government that followed it.

     “I was also not super interested in it when we first started reading, but I also agree on the fact that it did have a good storyline and how it lined up with the Russian Revolutions, [it] matched up very well,” said Annica Hughes, a freshman.

     “It’s a very realistic book…And it shows how the theme of oppression, being uneducated, and other stuff really focuses on what can happen if that [a dystopia] really happens,” Elwin said.

Hardest/Most Tedious Reads

     Reading anything for school instantly makes a book ten times more difficult, but there are some books that make students wish they’d just done the course online. While Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby are worthy contenders, one stands above the rest for the sheer number of times it’s assigned across grade levels: Romeo & Juliet.

     While it’s not the longest book assigned, its seemingly indecipherable language can easily make it the most difficult book someone could be assigned, especially if you also find the story to be boring. However, there are good reasons to attempt to read the book, specifically because of its bewildering passages.

     “Shakespeare’s language is like a word puzzle,” said Carrie Leadingham, an English teacher. “And if you are around it enough, then the language part of your brain gets a really good workout.”

     Furthermore, even if you’re not a fan of the book itself, it’s worth recognizing that both its themes and story have appeared in many other works that we enjoy today, like West Side Story or Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam.

     “Then I think that there’s something very powerful when people, when kids can connect to something that is very old and historical,” said Leadingham. “And I think there’s something very powerful in modern people recognizing that their ancestors have also told those stories and that there’s something about those stories that they can connect with.”

Most Trippy

     This isn’t an official category that one will encounter in their classes, but still a good one to look out for. It includes books that are simply “weird” in how they structure their plot and describe their story’s world, but are somehow able to use these methods to their advantage to create impactful messages.

     There’s quite the spectrum of strangeness for English books that fall under this category, but some of the most peculiar include the likes of Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and, for the title of the most trippy, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.

     Fight Club tells its story before it happens as it’s happening, if that makes any sense. It takes three steps forward, two back, one more forward—there isn’t a particular order, and it will require a lot from your end to fully understand.

Just Watch the Movie

     If you want to dodge a tricky reading assignment but the seminar is 30% of your grade, you might be better off seeing the films that many of these books inspired. Watching the movie is a great way to turn what could be days of your life into a tight 3 hours. While some like Lord of the Rings and Pride and Prejudice have become instant classics, one has flown under the radar and could shave off a significant amount of time that could be better spent procrastinating on the rest of your homework. That magical movie is Spike Lee’s Malcolm X,  adapted from the stunning Autobiography of Malcolm X. Coming in at an initially-daunting 3 ½ hour runtime, Malcolm X is a monumental feat of filmmaking, featuring an all-star performance from Denzel Washington and incredible speech scenes. While the length seems like an obstacle, it flies by, and anyways isn’t it better to spend that time watching the story than trying to read it?

     Assigned reading can be seriously tedious at times, but when all is said and done, it’s a great way to work some reading into your daily life. Maybe you’ll find a new all-time favorite. Or maybe you’ll just read Fahrenheit 451 for the fifth time.