High School Revisited

I was inspired by my friend Paige to reflect on high school...but from a reader's point of view. Here is the tale of the books I read for high school English classes, told through a series of lists (each list is in chronological order):

Books I enjoyed in high school and will certainly reread: 

1. Le Morte d'Arthur (Thomas Malory)
2. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
3. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
4. Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
5. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
6. The Devil in the White City (Erik Lawson)
7. The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell)
8. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
9. Candide (Voltaire)
10. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Tom Stoppard)

Books I wasn't quite sure about in high school and will reread one day:

1. A Separate Peace (John Knowles)
2. Cold Sassy Tree (Olive Ann Burns)
3. The Awakening (Kate Chopin)
4. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce)
5. A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (Michael Dorris)

Books I disliked in high school, but plan to reread: 

1. All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
2. The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
3. The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)
4. Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
5. The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien)

Books I hated in high school and don't plan to ever reread, even though I probably should:

1. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
2. Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
3. Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
4. Grendel (John Gardner)
5. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

My most loved book from high school: A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)

My most hated book from high school: A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)

If you read my last post, you already know how I feel about A Prayer for Owen Meany. So let me just say that I have a real problem with A Farewell to Arms. Which is quite sad, really, because I've been told that I would enjoy other Hemingway books. But nope, you missed your chance, Mr. Hemingway, for writing the lousiest ending in the history of literary lousy endings. It's the type of ending I would expect from a Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks novel. If someone can formulate a really convincing argument, maybe I'll move this book up to the "plan to reread" list, but that has yet to happen.