Top Ten Books I Read in College: Number 10

It's finally here. My last year of college. I'm very excited to be so close to the end. However, I've already started missing my favorite classes. I'm an English major with an emphasis on secondary education. Fortunately/unfortunately I've finished all of my English classes. That's a good thing because I can now focus on learning to be a good teacher, but it's a bad thing because I like those classes the best.

However, since I don't have anymore English classes, I can now officially say what books I most enjoyed reading in college. It's funny. When I was in high school, I hated being "forced" to read a book, so I don't consider myself to have "read" anything during those years; while in college, I consider the books I've been required to read to be the among the best parts of the last four years.

I was going to try to do this in two posts, but after typing up the first entry I've decided one post per book per day will make things a lot easier. Who knows I might even get some homework done. I'm also thinking that the more posts I do, the more discussion (comments) I'm liable to generate. So, here goes:

In descending order, my favorite books (and by books I mean fiction-novels) from four years of study at Dixie State College:

10. The Big Heat by William P. McGivern.

A classic hard-boiled crime story: Policeman dumps his badge in search of justice/vengeance for his murdered wife. The novel features everything you would expect from the genre: Tough bad-guys, tougher good-guys, and even the hooker with a heart of gold.

The novel itself probably wouldn't be on my top ten list, but the novel is representing one of my favorite classes: Crime Fiction and Film Noir. I loved the class. I had so much fun reading books like this and then watching the movies that they inspired, including one of my favorite films of all time: Double Indemnity. Yes, we learned stuff in the class, too. Officially the class was "Period Studies," and in class we studied how literature was affected by the post-war/post-depression culture.

For reminding me of how fun college classes can be, The Big Heat busts the door down at number 10.