I liked how in some of the Discworld novels, injuries do hinder a character or previous injuries are at least acknowledged and may even hinder a character. In the Watch novels especially, the effects of not getting enough rest tend to come into play.
In all honesty, Cry the Beloved Country
I’m sure it’s a good book and even reading the synopsis sounds interesting. However, when we read it in my high school english class, I found I could not get into it at all. Nor could the rest of my classmates. I don’t think there was a single student that actually read the whole book. For tests and such, most of the class looked up the cliff notes (this was in 2003 so this was a relatively new thing) I refused to cheat in this way.
What really gets to me though is that we pissed around with this book for so long that it was the only book we got to during the entire class. We were supposed to read Lord of the Flies and a few others but never got around to starting them.