By Mia Hanuska
For some reason, ex-honors students make out the Sophomore year books as horrid novels that never should have been written. However, the storylines and characters of the eight books we read weren’t that bad. Excluding Brave New World, I actually enjoyed many of the books we read (crazy concept, I know). Here I’ll give my ranking and 100% unbiased, objective opinions about these very peculiar stories.
Animal Farm
I know this might be controversial, but I loved this book. It’s about the Russian Revolution… but all the people are animals. The irony is hilarious, the symbolism is fun to uncover, and the characters are extremely likable. I found the projects we did fun, and learning about propaganda translated well over to AP World History. The test for this wasn’t too bad either. 9.5/10
Night
This book is incredibly important for remembrance. Telling the real story of a 16 year-old Holocaust survivor, Night remains one of the most significant books, bringing deep conversations and understanding of the atrocities from the era. Although sad, it’s important to recognize and memorialize stories like this. Aside from the actual book, Tighe’s class didn’t write an essay, so that’s an automatic win in my book. 9/10
Lord of the Flies
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. A tale of a cluster of crazed, marauded young boys on a tropical island, the story has countless likable characters and a great storyline. My favorite character was Ralph, as his thought process seemed the most coherent (rescue then hunting). The in-class work was okay, and the essay prompts were pretty easy. 7/10
Born a Crime
Born a Crime is good because it’s funny. In Born a Crime, Trevor Noah tells the story of growing up under South Africa’s Apartheid. He’s humorous, and the story is easy to read. Reading this around the same time as House on Mango Street made it a great palette cleanser. We only had a test, no essay, which as it should, improves the score. 6/10
House on Mango Street
To be honest, I don’t remember much about this book. It follows a young Mexican-American girl living in Chicago who yearns to leave her house on Mango Street. This book contains so much symbolism, it’s truly insane. However, although it’s an easy read, paying attention to so many of the details was time-consuming and made the book less enjoyable. I feel like this book was just meh for me, not great, but definitely not as bad as the next two books. Additionally, the vignette project we did for this was tons of fun and I had a great time writing them. 5/10
Things Fall Apart
Oh my god. UGHHHHH is the only way to describe reading this book. It was the first one we read as Sophomores, and a terrible choice. The story is hard to follow, or maybe I just didn’t understand it enough because I felt so confused while reading. None of the actions of the characters make sense, the protagonist beats his wives, disowns one son and kills the other…yeah. The test was one of the most annoying things ever, and while the essay wasn’t horrific, I don’t think people did well. 1/10
Brave New World
I have a feeling that my opinion as a Tighe student will differ slightly from a Hadley student, but this book was so, so weird. After reading the ending I felt the need to bleach my eyes out. I don’t even want to describe the story—besides, I don’t think The Shield will allow me to detail what happened in the later chapters… that’s how you know it was bad. Exactly none of the characters are likable, the storyline is wack, and the message is jumbled up with all the weird events that occur. I get the whole “consumerism and addiction is bad” thing, but please, there’s other ways to convey it. The only redeeming quality was that we didn’t write an essay for it because it was right before SHARP was due. 1/10