Top Ten Tuesday: Back To School Freebie

by - August 22, 2017



Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week will be a different Top Ten list. Everyone is welcome to join and link up. 

This week is: Back To School Freebie  . . 10 books I read in high school

It’s been a while since I was in high school I won’t tell you how long but a long time. I picked 10 books I read in high school, these books are the ones that stuck with me for some reason Half of them I liked and the other half I didn’t really care for. Not that they aren’t good books because they are but personally at that time in my life they weren’t books that did anything for me. Who knows I might go back read them again.

*This list is no specific order*
*Click book title or series for Goodreads link
  


1.      The Kite Runner (Link)
“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime."
Amir is the son of a wealthy Kabul merchant, a member of the ruling caste of Pashtuns. Hassan, his servant and constant companion, is a Hazara, a despised and impoverished caste. Their uncommon bond is torn by Amir's choice to abandon his friend amidst the increasing ethnic, religious, and political tensions of the dying years of the Afghan monarchy, wrenching them far apart. But so strong is the bond between the two boys that Amir journeys back to a distant world, to try to right past wrongs against the only true friend he ever had.
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.
A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic.

2.     Woman Hollering Creek (Link).
A collection of stories, whose characters give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border. The women in these stories offer tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom.

3.      If Beale Street Could Talk (Link).
Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions-affection, despair, and hope. 
In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.

4.     Othello (Link).
The love that the play presents between Othello and Desdemona is so strong that it would have overcome all these differences were it not for the words and actions of Othello's standard-bearer, Iago, who hates Othello and sets out to destroy him by destroying his love for Desdemona.
As Othello succumbs to Iago's insinuations that Desdemona is unfaithful, fascination—which dominates the early acts of the play—turns to horror, especially for the audience. We are confronted by spectacles of a generous and trusting Othello in the grip of Iago's schemes; of an innocent Desdemona, who has given herself up entirely to her love for Othello only to be subjected to his horrifying verbal and physical assaults, the outcome of Othello's mistaken convictions about her faithlessness.

5.     Romeo and Juliet (Link)
She is only fourteen, he is only a few years older. Their families are bitter enemies, sworn to hatred. Yet Romeo and Juliet meet and fall passionately in love. Defying their parents' wishes, they are secretly married, but their brief happiness is shattered by fate.



6.     Dracula (Link)
A 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. It introduced Count Dracula, and established many conventions of subsequent vampire fantasy. The novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England so that he may find new blood and spread the undead curse, and of the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

‘Alone with the dead! I dare not go out, for I can hear the low howl of the wolf through the broken window’

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries about his client and his castle. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman’s neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the imminent arrival of his ‘Master’.
In the ensuing battle of wits between the sinister Count Dracula and a determined group of adversaries, Bram Stoker created a masterpiece of the horror genre, probing deeply into questions of human identity and sanity, and illuminating dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.

7.      Fences (Link)
Troy Maxson, is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be to survive. Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black is to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s, a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can, a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less.


8.     Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Link)
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings.

9.     Their Eyes Were Watching God (Link)
Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny. As a young woman, who is fair-skinned with long hair, she expects more out of life, but comes to realize she has to find out about life 'fuh theyselves' (for herself), just as people can only go-to-God for themselves.
An enduring Southern love story sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose.

10.   The Bluest Eye (Link) 
The centers the story around a young African American girl named Pecola who grows up during the years following the Great Depression in Lorain, Ohio. Due to her dark skin color, Pecola gets taunted for her appearance as the members of her community associate beauty with "whiteness". She ultimately develops an inferiority complex, which fuels her desire for blue eyes.
Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change- in painful, devastating ways.
What its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Tony Morrisons's most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.

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4 comments

  1. I like what you said about the books not necessarily being bad, but that they didn't do anything for you at the time you read them. I feel that way too about a lot of the books that didn't stand out for me or I didn't care for when I first read them. Heck, just thinking of Pride and Prejudice. I didn't care for it when I first read it, but years later I loved it. I loved The Kite Runner. It wasn't around when I was in high school, but it's definitely deserving of a modern classic label.

    Great list! Thank you for sharing!

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  2. I feel like a lot of the books I read at school weren't as enjoyable as they should have been! I have enjoyed them more since re-reading!

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  3. I had to read "Uncle Tom`s Cabin" when I was 11 or 12 and I kinda hated it. If I were to reread it now I`d probably love it, but back then I was too young to properly enjoy it.

    Carmen / Carmen`s Reading Corner

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  4. I read The Bluest Eye and Romeo and Julie in high school as well.

    I may have read Dracula, too. I can't quite remember if I read it or watched a very old movie based on that story. Haha!

    Here is our TTT

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