The Gryphon Gazette has been catching upper-school English teachers off-guard and asking them their top five favorite books. One of the upper school teacher’s picks will be released every day this week leading up to the break.

Mr. Roszel, the new 9th and 10^th grade English teacher, was excited to answer the question of his top five favorite books as soon as I asked it. He first noted that it was “a big question,” but he quickly dived into his choices in a quite confident fashion.

1. “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger

• “One of my all-time favorites as a kid was The Catcher in the Rye. It really had an impact on me when I was younger to see a male protagonist who was struggling to find where he was in the world. It was such a raw narration, and to see something that was just completely unfiltered has made it [the book] one that has always stuck with me.”

2. “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• “[What I love about] the story is how sad it is. I love sad stories, and I like the writing of it, but more importantly I like the idea of Jay Gatsby trying to reinvent himself and, ultimately, not really making it. It’s a tragic element to the story. I love the idea of the roaring 20’s, so I love the setting of it as well.”

3. “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry

• “I’m not really a western guy, but I really, really, really love Larry McMurtry. This one is great because, if you’ve ever watched Game of Thrones, there are main characters but there is no main protagonist because anyone might not make it through the rest of the book. It’s beautiful writing but it’s tragically sad because your favorite character may not make it. For me, that really changes how you read it.”

4. “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time” by Mark Haddon

• “It’s the story of a boy who, in the book they call it Asperger’s, but now we would call it autism. It’s him trying to figure out the murder of a dog next door, but it’s really him trying to face his own demons and trying to grow. You really realize what it would be like to have a condition like that and how scary the world would be around you. It was really impactful to me.”

5. “A River Runs Through It” by Norman Maclean

• “This is one of the few [novels] where I think the movie is as good as the book. It’s a really powerful story of two brothers who grow up in Montana fly-fishing. Unfortunately it’s kind of like the rest of my books in that it’s really tragic at the end, and you really want to like the characters, but in the same way you realize that they’re not perfect. Even if you look up to them, they’re not perfect. Even if you love them, they’re not perfect. One of the most important lines in the whole book is ‘life is not a work of art,’ and I like that line because it shows that in stories there’s usually this narrative arc that you can trace, but in life that doesn’t happen. In life, a lot of times, things just end and it’s really tragic and sad, but it’s also kind of beautiful.”