I'm sure some of you may recall the sodium-saturated post I wrote last year about the various books we'd read in my AP English class. Although I feel kind of bad about it now, I can't bear to delete it--that's some of my best (and funniest) writing.
Tonight, we investigate the books I read in my AP Literature class. I can assure you, it will not be as salty.
The first book we read was Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. Wowzers, what a novel. A Brahmin's son gets sick of his good fortune and runs off to find out the true meaning of life. After narrowly avoiding giving into physical desire when he encounters a beautiful woman, he tosses himself at a beautiful woman and spends quite a bit of his life living in greed and lust. But then, he figures himself out and turns his whole life around after finally finding the answer he's been looking for.
I was unimpressed with the title character. I thought he was a bit of an imbecile, and he was fairly useless in any and every situation. My absolute favorite character was Govinda: the loyal friend who always did what he believed was right, even when it went against what his role model, Siddhartha, was doing.
However, I thought the imagery was stunning. There were some very beautiful descriptions throughout the entire book, a couple that very nearly took my breath away. I liked the message, more or less. Out of the seven books I read this year, this ranks as number five.
Next, we read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Be still, my heart. I had my hesitations when it came to this novel. I didn't think I'd like it very much, and as I read it, it seemed like every other novel I've ever read for school.
But I found myself talking about it with the utmost fondness during our group discussions in class, and even though I often stayed up far too late to finish reading a section, there was never a moment that I despised the book. My annotations grew increasingly more intense, intimate, and emotional. I found myself nearly weeping at the thought that Raskolnikov's punishment might be death. I very nearly prayed for Razumikhin and Dunya to marry. Nearly everything Sonya did pierced my heart, and her interactions with Raskolnikov melted my heart. I felt a deep and tender affection for one of the quotes, and to this day, it brings a special sort of peace to my mind. It truly almost made me cry.
I was so invested in this story, and I admitted early on that I'd developed an attachment to it. But it wasn't until I'd finished it and we started reading something else that I realized what a hole in my heart it had filled. I don't know why or how, but that book spoke to my soul. I'm even rereading it, and I've only done that once before with a school book.
Definitely my favorite book of the year, and my favorite book of my entire school experience.
Next was The Piano Lesson by August Wilson, which is actually a play. For this one, we were split into groups and had to choose a book to read. This was the one my group chose. It sounded intriguing, but even better, it was pretty short.
Basically, it's an African-American brother and sister arguing about whether or not they should sell their family piano: the brother claims that no one plays it, and it would be put to better use being sold so that he can have enough money to buy the land their family worked on as slaves while the sister adamantly refuses, saying that it's their family heritage.
And that's it.
None of us liked it. All four of us were bored and bothered by it before we were even halfway done. All of us hated Boy Willie with a burning passion, and we all had very mixed emotions about Berniece. Doaker was fine, Lyman was okay, and Avery was more or less likable. It was just so boring, and it was the exact same thing over and over again. I don't think Boy Willie and Berniece had a single conversation that wasn't about the piano.
Oh yeah, and then there's a ghost for some weird reason. Sutter, who used to own the land that Boy Willie's trying to buy, is haunting the house, and even though he's explicitly mentioned in the cue notes, literally no one ever notices him, except for maybe three times.
And then Boy Willie challenges him as if that's going to work out in his favor, Avery gives up trying to cleanse the house out of nowhere, and Berniece has a sudden flash of inspiration to play the piano to get the ghost to leave. It works, and then Boy Willie basically says, "You know what, you keep that piano, Berniece," and leaves. And that's literally the end of the play.
Thinking about it makes me want to vomit.
Needless to say, this was number seven out of seven for this year's books, and it ranks down there with The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye.
Next was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which was absolutely nothing like I was expecting it to be. I knew that Frankenstein was the scientist and not the monster, but I thought pop culture had gotten everything else mostly accurate.
Turns out, it's so different, it's like whoever created the pop culture monster just gathered a bunch of fragments and experimented with them until they made a whole new creature.
I crack myself up.
I know that I really shouldn't, because he's a bit of an idiot, but I actually rather liked Frankenstein. He made a lot of stupid decisions that I couldn't get behind, but as a person, there was just something that drew me to him.
I wanted to feel bad for the monster, but his logic was a little bit skewed sometimes, so I ended up being horrified more than sympathetic.
I can't tell you how surprised I was when the monster talked for the first time. He was so eloquent, it blew my mind. And when Frankenstein first brings him to life, I admit I found it a little funny that the triumphant "It's alive!" usually displayed in films was based on an extremely terrified "It's alive!" in the book.
Fam, that was literally your goal.
The imagery was stunning, and the diction throughout the whole novel was just astounding to read, especially considering how young Shelley was when she wrote it. It's truly incredible--number three out of seven.
The next one was Hamlet by none other than William Shakespeare, and it is by far my favorite of his.
Let me explain.
I've read one Shakespearean play every year since ninth grade: Romeo and Juliet in ninth grade, Macbeth in tenth, and The Tempest in eleventh.
Romeo and Juliet was fine. I didn't love it like some people do, but I also didn't despite it as many others do. Maybe it was just the way my teacher read it, but I found it amusingly ridiculous--I didn't think Shakespeare meant this to be a serious play at all (and to this day, I still kind of believe it). But, as romance tends to do, it wore me out quickly. I didn't really like Romeo, and although Juliet had some pleasant moments, she was obviously severely lacking in common sense. I loved Mercutio, but considering he only exists for about ten seconds, it wasn't enough to hold my heart. In short, it was sickeningly romantic, stress-inducing, and superfluous.
I actually really loved Macbeth. I thought it was so fascinating, and it was rather exciting to be reading something that's supposedly cursed (I know, I'm fully aware I'm sick and twisted). However, it's a very dark play, and even I have some boundaries. I loved it, and up until my senior year, it was my favorite Shakespeare play, but there's just something about it that, deep down, really unsettles me. And besides, Banquo died, which I was not happy about. I almost rioted.
And then The Tempest. If you want to know how I felt about that one, you can go back to last year's book analysis. However, I've made an astonishing discovery since then.
One of the school plays last year was The Tempest, and since it was being performed right around the time we were finishing it up, we were assigned to go see it. I went, and was a little confused. There were several important characters missing, which took out some key plot points. As a whole, the story was the same, but there were enough differences that I wondered why the director had taken so many creative liberties.
I didn't really think anything of it until around the time we were starting second semester of senior year, and I was trying to remember one of the character's names. It was driving me batty, so I looked it up. Nothing. This character apparently did not exist. So, I tried their love interest. Again, nothing.
Shocked, I looked up a plot summary of The Tempest, because I knew I had read about these people. To my bewilderment, the synopsis was basically exactly what the performance had been, and was rather different from the one I had read.
I did a little investigating, and then came to find out that I had not read The Tempest by William Shakespeare. Apparently, a couple guys had rewritten it and added in a few characters and plot points and such, and this had been the one I had unfortunately come upon. It was mostly Shakespeare, but they'd added their own things. My mind exploded.
So, Hamlet had romance, but didn't suffocate me with it; it was just dark enough to be delightful but not dark enough to disturb me; and it was actually Shakespeare. It was the perfect blend, and it stuck with me. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and I actually really liked discussing it as well. I even liked the main character, which hasn't happened in any Shakespeare (or off-brand Shakespeare) I've read.
This was by far my second favorite of the year.
Then, we picked another book as a group, and this time, we chose The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
It hurt.
To be totally honest, I didn't finish it. We read it during the point of the school year where I procrastinated like crazy, and I barely read half.
But what I did read messed with my emotions far too much for me to be happy about it.
It was everything I hate about a novel, and yet, my heart grew so attached to it in such a short amount of time. Even thinking about it now almost makes my chest constrict.
I don't know if it's because it's a contemporary novel or if the author's a black magician or something, but I should not have liked it as much as I did. I had a hard time with Amir most of the time, but for some reason, I can confidently say he's one of my favorite characters. Hassan won me over in less than a paragraph. Assef earned my eternal hatred in the same amount of time.
One day, I'm going to finish it. It may be fourth on the list, but man oh man...that book.
Finally, we read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. If you've been paying attention, you'll recognize him as the author of that confounded Secret Sharer novel from junior year. Thankfully, he redeemed himself from that atrocity masquerading as literature.
It was so stinking difficult to get through, and I can't say that I understood very much of it. As I told my group, I tune out a bit when books get really descriptive. However, since the whole book is like that, I basically tuned out the entire thing, which presented a few problems, but minor issues.
And yet again, there was something within me--pretty deep within me, but still there--that felt a strange attachment to it. I can't even explain it, but there's something about it that I really rather liked. I couldn't tell you what it was, but I know that it's there.
That didn't keep it from sixth place, however.
So, as you can tell, this year's novels were much more successful than last year's, for the most part. Maybe I just had a better attitude, but part of me suspects that the curriculum for AP Literature is much more interesting and applicable than the one for AP English Language.
To sign off for today, I leave you with the quote from Crime and Punishment that nearly reduced me to tears.
"I know you don't believe it--but don't try to be too clever, either; surrender yourself directly to life, without circumspection; don't worry--it will carry you straight to the shore and put you on your feet. What shore? How should I know? I simply believe that you still have a lot of living to do yet...Be of great heart, and fear less. Are you afraid of the great discharge of duty that lies ahead of you? No, at the point you have reached, such fear is shameful. Since you have taken such a step, you must stand firm. You have reached the moment of justice. So discharge the duty that justice requires of you. I know you don't believe it, but I promise you, life will carry you through. You'll even get to like each other afterwards."
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