A few weeks ago, it was announced that there was going to be a school wide event called: Apex on the Same Page. On the morning of Tuesday, November 26th during 2nd period, every student in the school had to put down whatever they were doing at the time, and read for 15-ish minutes. Teachers were able to:

• Read to their students
• Have their students read silently
• Bring in a guest reader
• Have their students read to each other from their favorite book 

(or just really anything reading related.)

Students were also able to go to the library during the time of the event as well.

I wanted to know more, so I went around and asked what books some of the students were reading as of now. I found that people’s interest in which books they were reading varied largely here at Apex High School. Markus Keeter said that he was re-reading “Ready Player One”, which was written by Ernest Cline is a science fiction novel set in a dystopian world where the protagonist starts  a quest within a virtual reality universe to find something that will give wealth and control of the OASIS, the global virtual world. Another student, Eli Ooka is reading a book called “Starless Night” which was written by R.A. Salvatore. This book is a fantasy novel following a dark elf as he confronts new challenges and fights dangerous enemies finding his place in a world of conflict. Overall, both of these books seem very interesting, and based on what I heard, I would highly recommend them. 

But I still wanted to learn more about what students were reading so I headed to the library to try to find what the most popular pieces of literature being checked out were…

According to the librarians at our school library, the top genres for books were:

1. “As Seen on TV” (Books with TV/Movie adaptations)
2. Horror/Thriller
3. True Crime
4. Romance
5. “Comfort reads” (Books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or Dog Man)

I believe this list curated by the librarians here at Apex High is both thoughtful and it really does make sense. It helps give a deeper understanding of our school’s reading preferences overall. It’s interesting to see how diverse the selection of books is within the Apex High community.

In a world full of distractions, taking just 15 minutes to pause and read can help remind us to just relax from time to time. Whether it’s a story about a dystopian world, or a story about a fantasy world, who knows what we’ll discover next time we pick up a book!