RTW: Books from school

Another Wednesday, another Road Trip! Road Trip Wednesday is a blog hop hosted by YA Highway!

This week's RTW comes as the kids of America are heading back to school. So the question - What's your favorite book that you had to read for a class?

This is a tricky one because I did read some amazing books at school. Some classic, some contemporary, some plays like Hamlet, some that I should've loved but found really hard to read like Wuthering Heights and some that I recommended to everyone, like The Tomorrow Series. 

The other reason this is a tricky question, as although it's only been seven years since I left high school, it still feel like a really long time, and I'm having trouble remembering some of the books from the earlier years. However there are some that stick out.

The first is one I would consider to be one of the best books I've ever read. I should say I hated it with a passion when I had to read it. Oh how I hated it. It's long and it's very serious.... it's almost painful. But it was worth the slog. The book is called One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

 

The book is literally that. One day in this man's life. This man, Ivan Denisovich is a prisoner of a Soviet labour camp in the 1950s and the book describes an ordinary day. It's a tough read, because it's pretty close to the truth but it's very moving and insightful. The author of the book was imprisoned in a labour camp from 1945 to 1953 for writing a derogatory comment in letters to friends about the conduct of the war by Joseph Stalin, so obviously had first hand experiences of the hardships. This is one of the best books I read at school simply because of the impact it had on me. Almost ten years later and I still list it as one of the best books I've ever read....

The next book I loved was The Secret Life of Bees

In New Zealand, we don't get taught a lot of American history in school. We may brush over a few aspects like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and we may talk briefly about the Civil War or the Revolution, but we don't really study American history. In one of my classes as a 14 year old, we did, however, study the Civil Rights movement. I am a history geek, you may be able to tell. I became obsessed with learning all about the Civil Rights Movement and so enjoyed this book a lot, which we had to read as a way of getting a feel for the segregation and atmosphere of the time. Anyway, to put it simply, it's a great coming of age story about a young girl who finds herself living among a group of African American women and helping them run their honey business.  It's a great book.

Other books I feel deserve a mention - Mister Pip, The Halfmen of O series (love love love), The Handmaid's Tale (another that I only appreciated later), The Whale Rider - All these are New Zealand books! Oh also To Kill a Mockingbird and The Lovely Bones.

I'm sure there are heaps more but these were definitely some that left a lasting impression! What are yours?