Required Reading Tag

As I've mentioned before, I'm participating in a reading challenge and I have been reading a lot. So far this year, I've read 9 books and I'm currently just about 50 pages away from finishing the 10th. Although for the challenge, I have to read a certain number of books, it does not tell me what books to read. That is, thank goodness, completely up to me.

So I've been going onto YouTube to find book review and book recommendation videos. In doing so, I've also found some interesting book tags, like The Book Sacrifice Tag, which I find very fun and hilarious. But I also found the Required Reading Tag and I thought that since I'm doing a lot of reading and reflecting on old books that I've read, that I should do one. I mean, why not?

1. Did you like required reading? Most of the time, hell no! I don't like being told what to read. Once a book has been assigned to me, it becomes work and reading should be fun, not work.

2. What is the first book that you remember being required to read? Number the Stars by Lois Lowry in the 5th grade.

3. What is the last book that you remember being required to read? Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

4. What was your favorite summer reading book? This is going to sound really weird but the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school, I was assigned to read How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. I had to read it before I took A.P. English and I surprised myself when I fell in love with it. It was so well-written and thought-provoking, I couldn't help but enjoy it.

5. What was your least favorite required reading book? Oh my gosh, this is the hardest question so far. I hate to say this because I'm a bookworm but I really didn't enjoy 95 percent of my required reading. But if I had to pick just one, I'd say Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I know that this book is a classic and super popular, but I just don't get it.

6. What was your favorite required reading book? The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I know that you're only supposed to pick one but I actually loved these books a lot.

7. What was the best non-fiction book that you read in school? The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

8. Did you not finish any of your required reading books? If so, which ones? I'm ashamed to admit to you that this list is too long to write them all down. Oops?

9. Did you ever use SparkNotes? Let's be honest, most students do and I unfortunately, have as well.

10. What book do you wish you were required to read in school? Any of the Harry Potter books! I read them multiple times and would've been able to ace all of those tests with ease!

11. What is your favorite Shakespeare play? I've only read 3 of them but my favorite is Romeo and Juliet. Is that cliche? Maybe, but I don't care. I'm a hopeless romantic.

12. What was your favorite book-to-movie adaptation that you had to watch in class? The Outsiders. It stayed so true to the book that there were hardly any differences at all! Plus, it had people like Patrick Swayze and Matt Dillon in the cast. Swoon!

13. What is the fastest that you've ever read a book for school? 2-3 days I think.

So that was the Required Reading Tag! It was kind of fun to take a trip down memory lane and think back to my middle and high school days! But I think I'm going to go back to finish book 10 now!

-Chelsea