Required Reading

Today in a Barnes and Noble on the Upper West Side, I had an amazing conversation with a woman who is writing about social justice and education and needed to interview teachers who considered themselves to be social justice educators.  While that is a whole other conversation, it did get me thinking a lot about how much of what I am required to teach is relevant and engaging for students.

After we spoke, I was left thinking about relevant versus irrelevant curriculum and books that I enjoyed (or at least still remember) reading in high school.  The list is pathetically short, especially considering how much I both read and loved books.  But anyway, at risk of wandering down memory lane, the books I remember reading for school that I enjoyed were:
Elie Wiesel's Night--I still remember tearing when I read the part about the violin music playing as people marched to their deaths...

When I went to Dachau years later; I felt a surge of emotion emerge from the images left by Wiesel's account of his experiences there.
William Shakespeare Hamlet--the whining, sniveling, indecisive Hamlet really spoke to my adolescent angst-ridden self...

Last year, when I went to see the Jude Law production of Hamlet on Broadway, I fell in love with the book again...or wait...maybe that was just Jude Law!

And the final book on my top three of high school reading? The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Beyond the fact that I have somewhat of an obsession with the 1920s, there is something that is still refreshing about Fitzgerald's look at the illusion of the "American dream."

And can I just say that I am DYING to see the Baz Luhrmann film?! Though the 1974 film will always have a place in my heart...

What did you read in high school that you actually read, or better yet, actually enjoyed?!