Tuesday Top Ten

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. Book bloggers create their own lists based on the chosen topics and post links to our lists. It’s a way of all sharing our thoughts and our love of books.  And who doesn’t love lists?? So this week’s challenge was to list the top ten books we were “forced” to read – either for class, a book club, or because some friend insisted that it was the best book ever!  All of mine come from coursework, whether during high school, undergrad classes, or my MLIS classes.  These are the books that I probably never would’ve read on my own, but ended up being favorites because someone forced me to read them! Great books I was forced to read in high school:

1. East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck – I had an English teacher when I was a sophomore who was a huge fan of Steinbeck, and now I am too!
2. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – Probably my favorite of all of Dickens’s novels.
3. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare – My first attempt at Shakespeare when I was a freshman in high school, and the first time that I realized how wonderful his stories are, and how readable they can be.
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – Didn’t everybody read it in high school?  And didn’t everyone love it?
5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – Still one of my all time favorites!

Great books I was forced to read in my college:

1. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf – The writing is so beautiful and lyrical.
2. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison – My first exposure to Toni Morrison’s powerful work.
3. The Giver by Lois Lowry – This was required reading for my young adult literature course, and became one of my YA favorites.
4. Maus I & II by Art Spiegelman – I’ve never been into graphic novels, but this was also part of my YA literature course and I was captivated.
5. America by E.R. Frank  – Another book from my YA lit class, and also the most difficult book I have every read, but also one of the most powerful.

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