Today’s “Why I Love Wednesdays . . .” is a Book Assigned in School. Now, I don’t know about you, but we did a ton of assigned reading over the three years I was in high school (I skipped my junior year and graduated early). Even though I love to read, I hated a lot of the books we were assigned. I wanted to read what I wanted to read. I had a Fantasy obsession and the books my school assigned just weren’t cutting it. While the books were well-written (for the most part), they just weren’t for me. In fact, I have very clear memories of an essay I wrote on a short story we assigned to read my sophomore year of high school. In my essay, I stated that I could have written a much better story. I also said that even a three year old could have come up with a much better story. Needless to say, my teacher didn’t like that very much and I got a bad grade on the essay.
But I digress. I’m going to tell you about the book that stood out to me the most in my high school assigned reading: Animal Farm by George Orwell. It seems like an odd choice, I know. For those of you who have never read Animal Farm, it’s about a group of animals who drive the humans out and take over the running of the farm they live on. Why did I like this book? Well, I thought the idea of animals running a farm was pretty funny. But more important is that it’s a satire of the Stalin era in Russia prior to World War II, which we happened to be studying at the same time in my World History class. This book helped me to understand history better and was entertaining at the same time. If you have any interest in history whatsoever (or even if you don’t), I highly recommend this book. It’s a novella, so it’s pretty short. But isn’t the idea of a pig, horse and dog revolt funny?
On a side note: I also really loved reading Hamlet in school. Maybe I’ll talk about that in another post some day.
After all these years I would not read that book but upon your recommendation Im going to five it some thought especially since its short.
ReplyDeletehttp://sidnebkclubreviewz.blogspot.com
I didn't really enjoy Animal Farm but I enjoyed teaching the unit. I know that's probably kind of weird.
ReplyDeleteHamlet was my second choice as well. I was so surprised that I enjoyed it.
I've never read Animal Farm, but I've had it on my list of books to read for a very long time. My high school also had lists of required reading and, like you, most of them didn't fit my tastes in books. Reading the classics and literature is a good thing, but at the time I was too wrapped up in the types of books written by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, etc. That said, my favorite from my list of required reading was 1984 by George Orwell.
ReplyDelete