Here at Elder, we’ve all read some great books and some terrible books, or sparknoted them. Either way, most of us recognized the good reads and dreaded the boring ones.

Recently, we both went around and asked some of our fellow students about their most memorable reads at Elder.

First up was Junior Elliot Reiring. When asked about the most memorable book he ever read for class, Elliot replied, “In terms of awfulness, The Old Man and the Sea was by far the worst. The entire plot revolves around some old geezer fishing; literally, that’s all that happens.” Clearly, Elliot is not a fan of Hemingway.

Next up was Junior Adam Gerhardt. Of all his reading assignments, he chose And Then There Were None as his favorite. When asked why he chose that book, Adam responded, “It was a real thriller. The suspense just kept building throughout the course of the novel. It definitely made me want to keep reading it to find out what was next.” And Then There Were None is a book neither of us have personally been assigned to read. However, Adam described the plot to us, saying it’s basically about a group of people who go to an island and are killed off one by one by a mysterious killer.

After interviewing Adam, we realized we needed some perspective on other schools and their reads. Conveniently, we had a recent transfer from St. X, Junior Luke Ruehl, to ask about X’s reading curriculum.

When asked, Luke replied, “I think there were a lot of bad books, but I liked a couple we read there.” When asked which was his favorite, Luke’s reply was “Jurassic Park by far; we read that Freshman year. It really went hand-in-hand with my passionate love for dinosaurs.” 

Once we got Luke’s perspective, we moved back to Elder students. Next on our list was Senior Ryan Bengel. When asked about his favorite read, Bengs replied, “The Student Leadership Challenge was a phenomenal read; I read it cover-to-cover. It’s life lessons have been things in which I have really tried to implement into my everyday life.” We’re both sure that many would agree with Ryan on this one.

During this whole process, we found that many students had some passionate answers to our questions.

When asked about his favorite book, Senior Rocco Salamone’s response was “The Count of Monte Cristo is probably one of my favorite books I’ve ever read. I loved Mr. Alig’s class and the way he taught the novel was really great.”

After Rocco, we shifted our focus towards a passionate reading aficionado, Senior Jarod Frey. When asked about his most disappointing read, Jarod’s response was “Definitiely Lord of the Flies. I would honestly rather clean a port-a-potty with my bare hands than read another page of that book.” We’re glad he was honest with us.

All in all, we’re sure everyone would agree that they’ve read their fair share of great books and horrible books–that’s high school. However, in the end, it’s the bad reads that make the good reads seem even better.