I would give anything to experience "that doesn't mean I wouldn't blow you" for the very first time again

12 for the book asks

12) did you enjoy any compulsory high school readings?

there were a few that i liked!!!

this was a LONG time ago but i remember in 8th grade i read the outsiders by s.e. hinton for my english class. at the time, it really changed me and tbh was in my little gay collection of non-gay books (ironic considering the author is homophobic i think) i don't think as fondly of it now (it's just okay) but i still have a soft spot for it bc of how much i loved it when i was 13.

in 11th grade which was american lit i adored the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald i just. really loved it. there was a lot of symbolism in it and i always liked that. in my class ppl tended to love or hate that book and i do understand why ppl wouldn't like it since it literally is supposed to be about ppl who are assholes, but i liked it anyway bc it was very interesting. kind of like watching a car crash in slow motion.

for the summer before i took ap lit in 12th grade we had 3 books which was required reading and one of them was the awakening by kate choping. i actually was really surprised by how much i like it bc i tend not to like anything feminist created by white people, but for some reason it really resonated with me. i think it was bc it was such pure unadulterated emotion. i know a few people who hated the book for the ending bc [spoiler alert, tho i dont think anyone cares if they were spoiled for this book lol] [also tw: suicide for the rest of this paragraph] they felt they felt like it was very hopeless that the "awakened" woman killed herself in the end. i understand the criticism and i would NEVER tell somebody they were wrong for disliking an ending involving the protagonist killing themselves, but imo it was just a very moving ending. i dont think the protagonist was supposed to be the model for the awakened woman, i think it was just one person's life and experience. it wasnt really abt morality or abt her being a symbol of feministic awakening, she was just a single example of a woman who had an internal awakening abt herself... it was just very raw... sort of had an appeal to me similar to the handmaid's tale by margarat atwood bc in that book, offred wasn't a symbol of liberation and trying to revolutionize the system, she was just one woman who was living in an oppressive situation. she doesn't have to be the revolution, she simply exists and deserves the right to be free. that said, i think i might have liked this book even more if the protagonist got to live.. it did make me very depressed for a good while after i read it.

sorry i went off on that a lot i just have a lot of feelings abt the awakening that i havent processed since reading it in 2019 bc nobody ever wants to hear me talk abt it lol.

i think i read more books that i hated than loved in school (ex. of books i hated that i read in school - tess of the d'ubervilles by thomas hardy, gulliver's travels by jonathan swift, a lesson before dying by ernest j. gaines, lord of the flies by william golding, the crucible by arthur miller) but i'm glad i read the above books that i loved. i think there are more short stories i read in class that i loved than novels, but unfortunately i never saved the titles for a lot of them so i cant really look them up again :/

HONORABLE MENTIONS - books that other people read in school that i was never assigned in class but liked a lot when i read them outside of school - the handmaid's tale by margret atwood, beloved by toni morrison, never let me go by kazuo ishiguro (???) (this isn't a common school book as far as i know, but i only read it bc somebody rec'd it to me, and they originally found/read it bc it was assigned to them in class)