The first book that changed my life....

OK, I have read a large amount of books in my life. During the last few years in high school and my first year of college I haven’t really read any book that was not assigned by the instructor of the course. I usually stick to magazines, forums, and the television. That’s probably not a good thing and I’m going to try to work on it. But there is a large amount of books that have changed my life and I’m sure yours too. I walked into my Dad’s office and stared at the book shelf looking for memories and good books I have read. I came to one, it struck me! Its small, yellow, and it said Cliff Notes big across the top. In my senior year of high school at Dunlap we had to read The Great Gatsby. Of course I didn’t want to read the book, I mean who wants to read about something that isn’t up to date and might put you to sleep. NOT ME!!! Well that night I drove to Borders Bookstore and got the cliff notes so maybe I could get away with not reading the actually book and still get the grade. Well it came down the large test after we went over all the chapters; it was 200 multiple choice questions. Thinking I had it in the bag, just so cocky I didn’t read the whole thing and I will still get an A was NOT the case. I failed the test, ended the class with a C+ and got yelled at for hours when I got home. Thank you cliff notes. If you ever look at cliff note book, you will see in the first page, “READ THE ENTIRE LITERARY WORK. THESE NOTES ARE NOT INTENDED TO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE TEXT ITSELF AND IT IS ONLY FOR CLASSROOM DISCUSSION.” Well, I know now there is no substitute for the real book and it may suck a lot to read the long actual book, but at the end the grade makes it well worth it.