Assignment 2- Gaby Rondel

    I am really happy that I don't have to list all the books I have read in the past 12 months. I don't remember most of them. I read many many many feel-good romance books because they're easy reads that I always enjoy. I read Pillars of the Earth for AP World last year- it was a good read that took me quite a bit of time to get through but it wasn't earth-shattering. I reread several series that I have and probably always will love: Harry Potter, The Gallagher Girls Series, The Ruby Red Trilogy, and a few more that I am not going put down here. There was a book I didn't finish, English Spy by Daniel Silva, but it doesn't really stand out. I just think it's one of those books that it takes a while to get to the good part and I haven't yet had the patience to get to that part. However, one book that stood out was Kites by Romain Gary. 

    This book took me a while to actually start reading it. My mom had read Kites in Hebrew while she lived in Israel and she found the English translation over the summer between my freshman and sophomore year. All summer long she tried to convince me to read it but I didn't want to (mostly because it was a holocaust book and I really don't like reading them). But, in about late September, I decided that maybe I should check out what she was talking about. I COULD NOT put the book down. It gave me a new perspective of the war. My whole life I only thought of it as something my grandparents miraculously survived and my parents the aftermath- moving to America so that I didn't have to deal with that. This book almost shined a new light. The way Gary wrote how the main character saw everything was completely innocent and at times oblivious. Even as the character grew up, the storytelling still remained unstained by the horror that occurred throughout Europe. This book didn't necessarily challenge my way of thinking about the holocaust but sort of expanded the lense that I saw it through. 

    Another book that stood out was The Kissing Quotient by Helen Hoang. It was May, NTI had just ended and I was looking for a sappy love story so that I wasn't so bored at home. However, this book was so much more. True its skeleton was a sappy love story, but it was also a story about what it is like to be an adult woman with Asperger's syndrome. Before this book I not only didn't know anything about Asperger's, but I also didn't know that women have to adapt to it differently than men, essentially having to hide it until they are considered "just strange". The character development on both sides was amazing and Helen Hoang is an amazing author. The best part, however, was that the main character, Stella, was an econometrist. I want to study economics in college, but beyond that, I have no clue what that means in terms of a job or the many different paths I can pursue within economics. This book gave me a basic understanding of a job I didn't even know existed, let alone considered as a possible future. Because of that, I don't ever think I'll forget this book.