The Heart of Darkness:

How a reignited love of literature helped me appreciate a book I used to hate (review)

In my senior year of high school, I took an AP English Literature class. I believe that class and, by extension, its teacher (shout out to Mrs. Tisdale), was the inception of my love of literature. It opened my eyes to a world I didn’t know existed. Sure, my love of reading began much earlier than this. I read voraciously in middle school. I anticipated ‘library day’ and ‘book fairs’ in elementary school. Even my earliest memories are filled with four-year-old Zach reading a Dr. Seuss book to my preschool class.

If it’s never been clear before, I do in fact be a nerd.

Yet, before that English Literature class, I didn’t realize just how powerful reading a truly great piece of literature could be. This semester practically cultivated what is my current “Favorite books of all time” list. Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and Ralph Elison’s The Invisible Man showed to me the wonderful world of elaborate prose, deep and intense character work, and most importantly, hidden in their themes, were these beautifully written truths about humanity.

Unfortunately, in college, I didn’t read nearly as much. My time was filled with musical…