This week, Booking Through Thursday asks,
We all had to read lots of different things in school—some of which we liked, some of which we didn’t. Are there any authors that you’ve grown to love because you were introduced to them in your English Lit class? Or—the contrary. Are there any you hate because you were forced to read them? Did you ever go back to try them again?
In my school, we weren’t really introduced into any of the English classics. We focused more on our local classics. Each high school year, we focused on one book, namely:
- First year: Ibong Adarna
- Second year: Florante at Laura by Francisco Balagtas
- Third year: Noli me Tángere by Jose Rizal
- Fourth year: El filibusterismo by Jose Rizal
These are books we studied, committed to memory, and even made routine performances out of—my favorite bit of the whole thing, really. And I highly enjoyed my third and fourth year, because we had a very passionate teacher and I don’t think I would’ve learned more about Rizal’s famous works if it were anyone else.
If we wanted to read English Literature classics, we had to find it for ourselves if we really wanted to use it for a book report. So school discoveries were actually diverse and pretty nifty. There were also required reading in my English classes in college, but that was a completely different story.
What I did discover in school was what my classmate did for her own book report once. It was the first book in Christopher Pike’s The Last Vampire series. It may have not been classic literature, but it was a very engaging story about modern-day vampires and their origins. Even if the book report was long done, I asked to borrow the rest of the series, since I was hooked.
I now just wonder if I’d still like the series when I do a reread. And I wonder how his more recent spin-off Thirst series compares.
