Given that I am still in school I don't know if my judgment will still be fair when I eventually graduate many years from now. On top of this I like a lot of the books we've read so I do have a partial bias. However, being the indecisive person I am, I've split it into three categories: assignments I had no choice in, assignments I could pick from a certain category for, and assignments I had free reign in.

Assignments I had no choice in:
The Great Gatsby is probably my favorite. While Huck Finn, Scarlet Letter, and the Crucible were all great too, this stuck out to me for two reasons. First, the redone movie came out the same time I had to read this so I got the double experience. Second, I've always liked the 1920s. On retro day my freshmen year of high school I came to school dressed as a flapper (the fact they let me do that is a bit shocking but eh). It's one of my favorite times in history because it's a time of freedom and scandal, which means writing stories about it is all the more fun. And it's not scandal like during Grant's presidency. It's scandal like smoking, drinking, and other sorts of things. It's just fun to right about so seeing I wasn't the only one interested in it made me find it all the more entertaining. I like the whole plot around the story as well and the fact that they make several historical references in it gives it points too. The movie also gets points because the name of the insane asylum is my family's name.

Assignments I could pick from a category:
Really until this year I never encountered this assignment except for like summer reading, so when my teacher assigned me it, I took as many liberties as possible. I have to say out of all the ones I chose to read, it's a tie between The Grapes of Wrath and Wait Till Next Year. Now, I love banned books in general because they all relate to history in some way (which in case you couldn't tell, I like). Given that the Dust Bowl is one of the time periods all of my history classes have skipped over, it was an eye opener to see what the migrants were going through at the time. I ended up having to write a paper on it later and that just added to the shock factor. I loved how accurate it was and how much research Steinbeck had put behind it. Now, Wait Till Next Year, while somewhat of a historical novel, is more a memoir than anything else. I've never been a fan of memoirs or biographies, but something about this book drew me in. Maybe it was because it took place around the time my parents, aunts, and uncles grew up. Or maybe it was because it could be paralleled to my own life in way. But it was probably the fact that it involved baseball. I've always been a fan of baseball and actually if you look on ESPN today at the Clemson baseball you'll more than likely see me sitting not too far behind home plate. I grew up around the sport and while I'm still learning about it constantly, I still love it. So the fact that this memoir was heavily influenced by baseball probably helped tremendously. On top of that, it showed me the perspective of a game I had never seen before. I've heard of the famous Giants-Dodgers game with the shot heard round the world, but from a Giants fan's perspective. Hearing it from a Dodgers fan's perspective was very interesting and I could almost feel my heart breaking inside when the game was lost. The memoir did very well in keeping the reader involved, which is what I need for most books, which is why I like it so much.

Assignments I had free reign on:
I've only had this assignment once this year, and four times my freshmen year of high school. This is probably my favorite type of assignment because it allows me to roam free with my creativity. As a result, it was hard to decide in this category. However, I think I'm siding with The Young Elites for this one. Yes I know, the classic dystopia. While I've read enough of the dystopian genre to be able to tell you the main idea behind all of them (I actually opened with the idea for the paper I wrote for this book), something about Marie Lu's stories keeps me in. It's probably because, while she follows the main idea, it's very little of the time that she falls into the common stereotype. Sure she has the whole dead parents classic and the whole love interest thing, but unlike most books, Marie Lu isn't afraid to throw you unheard of plot twists with her books and she rarely introduces second love interests. Her second books aren't romantic conflict like most second books. Hers may have a second love interest and some romantic conflict, but they aren't the main focus and the characters never really deviate from who they're supposed to fall in love with (the Legend Trilogy is a perfect example of this). So, having fallen in love with her last year, I was ready for this book and Marie Lu did not let me down. She was throwing in curve balls without restraint and it was hard to tell where she was going most of the time. She recognized the fatal flaws of her characters and embraced them in such a way that it was influential to the plot. On top of that, having not read anything from her since Champion I had forgotten Marie Lu's notorious trend for last minute plot twists. I can recall in Champion she threw us one in the last ten pages and The Young Elites had two in the last like thirty. Needless to say, I was very impressed with her handy work and I can't wait for The Rose Society to come out this October.