My favorite books in the English curriculum

We’ve all taken English classes and have probably read books we didn’t like. Maybe you didn’t even read some of the assigned books at all. Despite my lack of enthusiasm over the majority of the text choices, I did read most of them, and definitely found some harder to get through than others. It’s safe to say that there have been moments when I truly hated the material and times when I’ve fallen in love with it. 

Looking back at freshman year, I can’t really decide if I didn’t like the selection of texts or if I was impartial towards them. I definitely enjoyed the class and what I learned, but if I had to pick my favorite book from that year, it would be Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 follows the main character, Guy Montag, a firefighter in a dystopian society where information is censored, and books are burned. Bradbury was a very figurative writer, using complex metaphors and long descriptions to describe the most mundane of things. I think that’s what I really enjoyed about his novel: the complexity. The way he was able to use words to truly confuse his readers and paint the most elaborate of pictures was something I could never understand, but admired nonetheless.

Next is sophomore year. Sophomore year was the slowest reading year for me, and I barely finished most of the books we were assigned. I fully read the first novel, which was slow and boring, and I never want to think about it again, but I couldn’t finish the three others. For me, there is beauty in feeling represented in what I’m reading, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t finish all the books that year. And, although I couldn’t exactly finish it, my favorite novel that year was Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, an autobiography of Noah’s life and literary representation of his identity. It was the book I felt most connected to, being able to see my experiences as a mixed kid represented in a totally different way through Noah’s life. It felt freeing in a way and made me feel seen rather than erased and overlooked, a feeling I was all too familiar with throughout my years in English classes. I wanted to read something that held pieces of me, something that made me feel valid in my own skin.

Third is junior year, most likely my favorite year in English, reading-wise. This was the year I felt fully seen in what I was reading. I felt like I had been waiting years to finally read a book by not only a black author, but a black woman author. My favorite book was The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, a novel told in prose. The main character is a young Afro-Latina poet, Xiomara, who writes poetry to get out her feelings and to escape the world around her. As a young black writer myself, this book made me feel more than seen; it made me feel like I mattered.

This year is my senior year, and even though we’ve only read two novels so far, they’ve changed my life. Though it’s a bit of an exaggeration, I really do feel as if they’ve been two of the best novels I’ve ever read. We’ve read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, both of which have themes of identity and discovery, both of which are by authors of color. I love Between the World and Me so much that I wrote my college essay about it. As I said before, the very essence of reading to me is feeling represented and seen, something these novels have excelled at doing.

Even though reading isn’t for everyone and you may sometimes feel as if it’s a chore, giving a book a try may be what leads you to truly fall in love with it. Within books, we can not only find characters’ stories, but also find ways to create our own. Happy reading!