High School Novels

Novels appeal to me so much since high school, where I started reading this genre as a part of the home reading assignment (HRA). And to my amazement, through the text-heavy and almost non-existent pictures in the novels lie a wonderfully crafted story.

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Saying my favorite book(s) will reveal part of my identity, as I like the two novels of Jose Rizal. Yes, I am a Filipino, and the wonderful story and connections presented between Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) and El Filibusterismo (The Filibuster) is what motivates me to read those books.

They were required to be read during my second and third (which is where I am today) year of high school. When I first read Noli Me Tangere, I didn't understand it much because of its text-heavy pages, together with the deep usage of Filipino.

But with my teacher's help and an app he uses to teach it, I understood the novel little by little until I finished it in the 63rd chapter. Since I borrowed a copy of El Filibusterismo this quarantine, I had read it until I also finished it in the 39th chapter.

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El Filibusterismo is actually a sequel of Noli Me Tangere, where Crisostomo Ibarra, who lost his riches and his sweetheart Maria Clara after a false accusation of rebellion in Noli Me Tangere, returns to the Philippines under the identity of Simoun.

As a rich jeweler and a close friend of the Captain-General, he helped "rotten" the government to the core and plans to get revenge to those who made him lost everything years before. However, his plan fails, and he dies in the house of a Filipino priest.

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Well, there you have it. Thanks to high school, I had enjoyed the well-crafted stories that hid under those text-heavy books.