Have you seen the trailer for the new movie adaptation of On the Road? It looks pretty awesome. It’s hard to believe that Jack Kerouac’s iconic book hasn’t been made into a movie yet. The novel is an emblem of the Beat generation. It’s a travel story and coming-of-age tale, both of which make very popular movies. Even though one of the stars is Kristen Stewart, the movie looks like it could be great. And who knows, maybe K Stew will be awesome and totally redeem herself for Twilight. Maybe.

The hype surrounding the movie got us thinking about books we read in school. There’s nothing that kills a great book quite as much as a boring high school English class. But it turns out that lots of the books your high school teachers made you read were pretty awesome. On the Road is one of them. For most people, it’s a love-it-or-hate-it novel, but it’s definitely worth a read whatever your experience happens to be. Here are 8 more books you probably got assigned in school that are worth a second look if you skipped over them the first time.

Full disclosure: I’m an English major and book nerd, but I promise that these books really are awesome. I have a million more books I could add to the list, but I did my best to narrow it down. Read More »

It is still shocking to me that in 2009, when freedom of speech is as widely practiced as brushing your teeth every morning, books are still being challenged, placed in restricted sections of the library, or banned all together. But we are sadly reminded, as another Banned Books Week comes around, that censorship is still in full swing (or at least trying to be).

When considering books that should be banned, I think perhaps “How to Make a Bomb” could have a logical reason for not being permitted in school libraries. But when I took a look at the 2008-2009 list, I seriously think I felt my jaw hit the floor. Most of these books are top selling, award winning novels that have secured a permanent spot in our present day pop culture.

So, these books are being “challenged”, which suggests that there is a group of people somewhere that is wagging their finger at us as we sit curled up in our bed drooling over every page.

But do we college students ever follow the rules? To be honest, we have a little too much fun breaking them.

So let’s do what we do best and rebel, people!

Here are a few of the books from the list that should most definitely be read, if not held out our dorm room windows in an act of defiance (if your lucky enough to see daylight in that cell of yours, that is).

Read More »