Despite the fact that we have a good two months of steamy temps still ahead of us, summer is quickly coming to a close. School will look very different for many students and teachers this year as families decide how and where learning will occur. What hasn’t changed in my house is that the month of August means it is time to do our required summer reading. This year, my boys were assigned the classic novel 1984. I am thinking about re-reading it along with them, just because it’s been so long.

Generally, I was never a fan of required reading; or maybe I was just not a fan of the books my English teachers chose to assign. I have dedicated a small, yet very real portion of my energy as an adult going back to read some of the classic novels I aggressively avoided reading as a teen. I reached out to a few of my friends from high school, hoping they could remind me what we had to read together al those years ago. Beowulf, Huck Finn, and The Scarlet Letter were all part of our curriculum and included in our textbooks. I remember enjoying the story of Beowulf but struggling with the the Old English. Huck Finn and The Scarlet Letter didn’t fare as well in my young mind.

One aspect I love about my new job at Echo-Lit is that I now read and talk about reading with my friends more than I ever have. When I catch up with friends, one question I’m sure to ask nowadays is “what are you reading?” This week as I got copies of 1984 secured for my boys, I asked my friends what their kids were reading this summer for the upcoming school year. It appears that most school districts decided to move summer reading to the beginning of the school year, in light of the big changes families are facing in light of the COVID pandemic; so I bugged my pals to share their favorite required reads from their school days. I have not read many of these, so I will be quoting summaries from a variety of sources within my list.

My friends Scotty and Jeff fondly remembered reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in high school. Jeff distinctly remembers his sister depicting a scene from the novel in a shoebox diorama. I always loved when teachers offered options for reading responses in school. While I certainly enjoy writing, I always preferred an artistic response such as a poster or diorama. As a visual thinker, it was much easier to distill my response in a visual way. 

SUMMARY: Hobbits, a race of small humanlike creatures, characteristically value peace, simplicity, and cozy homes yet are capable of incredible feats of courage and resourcefulness. The unwilling hero of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, is persuaded to join Thorin and his 12 dwarfs to recover their stolen treasure, which is being guarded by the dragon Smaug. During the expedition, Bilbo finds a magical ring that renders the wearer invisible, which figures prominently in The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbitis the story of Bilbo’s maturing from a seeker of warmth and comforts to a fighter, however humble, for the greater good. (Britannica.com)

I didn’t get around to reading A Brave New World until college; but as a fan of dystopian fiction it was on my must read list. My friend Sidney says she reads it almost yearly and that it gets “more relevant every year.” I love when sci-fi takes a good, hard look at society and warns us of the dangers that lie ahead. Aldous Huxley did exactly that with A Brave New World.

SUMMARY: The novel is an example of dystopian fiction, a story in which a society's attempt to create a perfect world goes wrong. The society in question is set in a futuristic version of London where the government has tried to create a completely stable civilization, one where the people are always happy. Unfortunately, the government has done this by conditioning people to focus solely on physical pleasure. (Study.com)

At first, I was surprised to see so many of my friends cite The Canterbury Tales as a favorite required read; then I remembered that I read a very sanitized, abridged version of The Canterbury Tales in high school. We did not read about The Wife of Bath or The Miller’s Tale, so we didn’t get to read all the stories of sneaking around, affairs, and fornicating in trees. Anyone who has ever met a high schooler knows that stories about sex are going to hold their attention - I’m not sure what to do about all the giggling, however.

SUMMARY: Geoffrey Chaucer’s masterpiece The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories. The tales are mainly written as poems, though some are also in prose. In this collection a group of religious pilgrims travel from London to the Canterbury Cathedral in Kent. The pilgrims tell various tales as part of a story-telling contest. The contest acts as a narrative frame for The Canterbury Tales. Religious pilgrims from all walks of life, including author Geoffrey Chaucer himself, gather at the Tabard Inn in Southwark. They are journeying to Canterbury Cathedral in Kent. The pilgrims are preparing to visit the Shrine of Thomas Becket, an English martyr. (Supersummary.com)

Growing up in West Virginia, the story of Mary Ingles was woven into the landscape around us. Road side signs marked places Ingles travelled as she made her way home through Virginia (much of which would later become West Virginia) after being taken captive by Shawnee raiders. I read James Alexander Thom’s Follow the River after my cousin read it in class and started filling in some of the amazing and occasionally gruesome details the road signs left out.

SUMMARY: Mary Ingles was twenty-three, happily married, and pregnant with her third child when Shawnee Indians invaded her peaceful Virginia settlement in 1755 and kidnapped her, leaving behind a bloody massacre. For months they held her captive; but nothing could imprison her spirit. With the rushing Ohio River as her guide, Mary Ingles walked one thousand miles through an untamed wilderness no white woman had ever seen. Her story lives on—extraordinary testimony to the indomitable strength of one pioneer woman who risked her life to return to her own people. (Penguinrandomhouse.com)

I’ve often wondered if the reason I resisted the required titles from high school was that the group pacers a chapter or two a week was exhausting. I’d much rather just read through and form a response. Even if I read ahead, I had to go back and read the chapters again as we reviewed in class - it just felt so prolonged. Great Expectations seemed to take forever to read; but I love the story. Charles Dickens’ descriptions of Miss Havisham’s decaying home delighted and disgusted me. I simultaneously fell in love with and hated Estella. I shared Pip’s anticipation for a better life, but worried that there was certainly something awful about to happen. I revisited Great Expectations after director Alfonso Cuarón filmed a modern interpretation of the classic (it has one of my favorite soundtracks ever, by the way) and I wanted to see how my memory of the book and the movie contrasted.

SUMMARY: Great Expectations is the story of Pip, an orphan boy adopted by a blacksmith's family, who has good luck and great expectations, and then loses both his luck and his expectations. Through this rise and fall, however, Pip learns how to find happiness. He learns the meaning of friendship and the meaning of love and, of course, becomes a better person for it. (gradesver.com)

I wanted to include a quick listing of some of the other books my friends loved reading as assigned reading. Here they are, in no particular order:

Cry the Beloved Country - Alan Paton

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The Black Cauldron - Lloyd Alexander

Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen

Marjorie Morningstar - Herman Wouk

The Agony and the Ecstasy - Irving Stone

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

The Indian in the Cupboard - Lynne Reid Banks

A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

East of Eden - John Steinbeck

Lysistrata - Aristophanes

The Odyssey - Homer

Animal Farm - George Orwell

1984 - George Orwell

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Cymbeline - William Shakespeare

Wide Sargasso Sea -Jean Rhys

A Midsummer’s Night Dream - William Shakespeare

Go Ask Alice - Anonymous

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank

A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway

The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck

The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

What Jamie Saw - Carolyn Coman