Required Reading

This week's Top 5 Wednesday post is about Required Reading. This is looking at the books we were all forced to read at school. Some of them were great, others were not as great but we knew we had to read them and in many cases, we hated them because we were forced to read them. So in this post, I am going to list my Top 5 Favourite Required Reading Books. These are most specifically the required books of secondary school between year 9 and year 11 the GCSE years. As you can see, we have quite the collection with the majority of them either currently on the GCSE English Literature syllabus or previously on it.

1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

This list was quite hard to put together but I finally came to the conclusion that the first book to be featured should be this one. It is a book I had the pleasure of reading in my Year 9 English class which was great. I enjoyed every moment of this book. The mystery element is highly interesting and how Christopher Boone goes about it. I also loved how Christopher clearly has a learning disability but the author purposely does not name it, so we can see the world through Christopher's eyes and look at his behaviour. This is a book currently on the AQA GCSE English Literature syllabus which sadly I am not studying but I enjoyed it so much I have brought my own copy of the book. There is even a bonus A-Level maths question in the appendix!
Furthermore, after we read this book we had the pleasure of travelling to London to watch a performance of it which was great. We had a rather fabulous meal at Planet Hollywood before going to watch the play. A truly great day!

2. Of Mice and Men

This is another book I read in my English class from year 9, and it was once again another great book. We studied this before we started GCSE English Literature to get us ready for the challenge of English Literature. I loved learning about the themes and lessons of the book and seeing how it was relevant both today and when it was originally written. This was also my first American Literature book I read and I loved it. Who said required reads had to be bad?

3. An Inspector Calls

This text is one I have studied continuously and in-depth during my GCSE years of Year 10 and 11 and I very much have enjoyed reading this play. About the social classes and dynamics of 1912 Britain; this is the text that turned me from a young child into a young adult once again in the same English class as all of these books. This book had really introduced all my class to politics and really got me involved in the society we live in and how it works. I really think this should be text everyone should read to help them grow up.
I also got to watch this play in Birmingham which was great. We had takeaway pizzas at school before travelling to Birmingham for the performance which was good.

4. Stone Cold

This book is a book we read in my year 9 English class which was another interesting book. This book is about a young man who moves to London looking for a job but rather ends up homeless and there is even murder in this book. This book gave all us students an insight into how there are different reasons why people may be homeless and that it may not always be their fault; there are a variety of reasons. I am also sure that homelessness may also increase as a result of this Coronavirus pandemic and the mass unemployment which has started and which will follow.

5. Macbeth

Finally, on this top 5 list, we have William Shakespeare's Macbeth. If I was still studying for GCSE English Literature then this would most likely be replaced with the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde but because I am in the 2021 cohort sadly it was Jekyll and Hyde that my English teacher of three years had dropped. I have read and studied Macbeth over two times in and for my English class during my GCSE English Literature studies. To be honest, I have still enjoyed this book and that is because although at the base it may be very boring and seen as 'out of date' by some; when you dig deeper and look at the play in-depth there is much more to it which makes the play much more enjoyable. These analysis' include the idea that Macbeth the play is the equivalent of a modern-day soap opera for the Jacobean audience and also the idea of maybe Macbeth the brave fighter and Tragic Hero was possibly infertile to name a few.

On top of the in-class studying of this play, I also got to watch a live performance at Derby Theatre in 2020 which was ok. I then literally a week or two before the first national Coronavirus lockdown in March 2020, went to London to see another performance of Macbeth this time at the rebuilt Globe Theatre. We had lunch at Pizza express before walking along the river Thames to watch the performance which was great before walking back along the river Thames to our coach.

Anyway, that is my list of top 5 required reads, please feel free to comment below what your favourite or least favourite required reads were. Also, please consider subscribing to my blog and share this post to help this Blog grow and get the word out there. Thank you for all your continued support and let's keep this blog growing!

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