Retitled: What High School Required Reading Books Should Have Been Called, According To My 17-Year-Old Self

If you reach into the shadowy recesses of your memory, brush off the cobwebs, and are over the age of 22 or so, you probably remember taking class notes longhand. If so, you are lucky, because there’s a good chance that some of your high school musings have made it into this millennium. Unless you are one of those people who actually backs up all of their work on a flash drive or has had the same computer for a very long time, your electronic files probably haven’t survived so long.

I recently came across a notebook I kept in high school English. I was preparing for the AP Lit exam, and made a list of books I’d read that I could discuss in the essays. In brackets, I wrote a short summary (maybe 5-10 words) to jog my memory of the book. I can’t help but think that these would make excellent alternate titles.

I got a 5 on that AP, making this the best study method ever.

Here are some of my favorites:

The Great Gatsby: [Good Parties and Car Crashes]

The Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man: [Run-On Sentences That Don’t Make Sense (Irish)]

The Once And Future King: [Probably Interesting If You’re Into D&D]

The Catcher In The Rye: [Whiney Bitch Gets Kicked Out Of School]

The Bell Jar: [Mad Electroshock]

Something Wicked This Way Comes: [Watched The Movie Instead]

The Crucible: [I Saw Goody __ With The Devil! (POPPETS)]

Great Expectations: [Cobwebbed Wedding Cake & Unrequited Love]

Wuthering Heights: [Moors (Geographic)]

Othello: [Moors (Ethnic)]