Follow Friday - Fave Required Reading

Follow Friday is a feature created by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read.  It's a fun blog hop where you meet other book bloggers and find people to follow.

Question: Summer Reading.  What was your favorite book that you were REQUIRED to read when you were in school?

I've actually enjoyed a LOT of required reading.  However the answer is probably going to be the classic answer: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  I'm not a particularly girly girl, romance just isn't my thing. Yet I love this book.  At first I found the writing style frustrating to adjust to, especially the unattributed quotes.  Then suddenly, halfway through (I think it's when Darcy and Elizabeth were at Lady Catherine de Bourgh's home) I couldn't put the book down.  I was completely enthralled.  By some weird twist of luck I've read it at least 3 times for different classes.

I actually like a lot of books I read for college.  I majored in journalism, but that was a smaller major at my college and left me loads of time to take different classes.  Most of my extra classes were English classes and I loved picking and choosing whatever I wanted.  I could take American Novel or Multi-ethnic American literature, without taking the more difficult classes that were required for English majors (hence why I didn't minor in English). So I have a few honorable mentions.

A Lesson before Dying by Ernest Gaines
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Also I want to add that I was required to read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for a math class. But since it was already a favorite before that class it seems unfair to use.  If you're wondering why we read that, I think it was a way to help non-math people grades-wise in a required college class. I should probably mention that I loved that professor.

There are probably more books that I could list but unfortunately I didn't use Goodreads back in college.  When you read as many books as I have, sometimes it's hard to remember.  I also feel obligated to mention that college made me fall in love with Robert Frost poetry.  When I was younger I thought it was just pretty words about nature. But when I studied his technique I was blown away and very annoyed at how most people oversimplify and trivialize his poems.

Also, in case you still haven't seen this series I wanted to share (again for my blog followers).



As long as you're in a following mood why don't you follow me on twitter! Though I'm going to warn you: I'm going to be talking a lot about the Olympics for the next couple of weeks.