Fall Reading
Fall has always felt like reading time to me. Summer reading gets all the attention, but when the temperature takes a turn as it did this past week here in southern Connecticut, I start feeling ready to hunker down with a good book. It’s not just the temperature, though; it’s also that school’s in session.
For the first time in 21 years, we didn’t send anyone “back to school” this fall. Our younger daughter graduated from college in May, and this year we watched with no small measure of nostalgia as families drove their young adults off in cars packed to the roof or walked their little kids with big backpacks to the neighborhood elementary school.
I was one of those kids who actually read every book assigned to me in high school and college (though, I confess, not in graduate school, where I realized it was literally impossible without a time warp, and I had to make some choices). I have a few reads in mind for myself this fall, including something by Thomas Hardy, as discussed in a recent post. But I thought it might be interesting to look back on some of those school classics and share my favorites with you.
The list of books that high school students read to study for the AP test in English literature is as good a place to start as any. Like the canon itself, this selection is somewhat fluid, and the College Board doesn’t actually publish a list, since the test is based on skills, not book knowledge. However, they do publish sample tests with a big list of suggested books tacked on to the essay question. You can also see which books test prep companies like Princeton Review or Albert have determined are worth studying. Or you can see what Goodreads thinks the list is. Regardless of the source, it’s interesting what’s still hanging on the list from the time I was in high school (though my school, in the 1980s, didn’t even offer APs), what’s missing, and what’s new. Having also taught high school around the turn of the millennium (even that sounds like ancient history now), I’ve experienced many of these books as a teacher, too.
Here’s a sampling of some of my favorites:
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s epic family saga set in the Dust Bowl. Some people get hung up in the first few chapters, one of which literally involves a turtle crossing the road, but Steinbeck is just slowing you down to the pace of life in small town Oklahoma, which you’ll want to do in order to appreciate this novel. I always wanted to teach The Grapes of Wrath, but it’s too long to schedule into a fast-paced Honors English class. Instead, we taught Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, which is also a favorite of mine, with a cast full of quirky characters living near a California cannery.
I’m a big fan of Arthur Miller’s work. Miller’s most famous pieces are plays (though he also wrote some excellent short stories), so they’re meant to be seen and not read, but it’s interesting to read them first, then watch a film version (Daniel Day Lewis’s 1996 The Crucible is excellent) or, if you’re lucky, see a live production. I’m still kicking myself for missing Annette Bening, Tracy Letts and Benjamin Walker on Broadway in All My Sons. My introduction to Miller was All My Sons, which isn’t usually taught in high schools today. The Crucible and Death of a Salesman are the more popular choices, sometimes followed by A View from the Bridge. But All My Sons somehow struck a chord with me in high school. It’s a World War II play about corruption that leads to the deaths of young men fighting for their country. It may have impacted me because it was the first time I’d really thought about why someone might do something so corrupt as risk others’ lives for his own personal gain.
Shakespeare, of course, is on the AP list. Ditto about seeing a production—but reading first always enhances the experience, especially with Shakespeare, because things tend to move fast onstage. Some people are intimidated by the Elizabethan language, but if you let it wash over you as you read, you’ll find you can pick up plenty and just stop once in awhile to consult footnotes or backtrack for comprehension. How to choose what to recommend? A dilemma! I mean, you can’t go wrong with Romeo and Juliet or A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But the more I think about it, the more I want to give you a longer list!
Let’s get some women in here, shall we? I was interested to find Mansfield Park on the AP’s list of suggested texts in one sample exam—not the most popular of Jane Austen’s novels, but it may be my favorite. It’s been a long time since I’ve read it, but what I do remember is how delightful the scenes are in which the visitors to the Park are putting together a theatrical production, with much behind-the-scenes intrigue. I’m going to put this one on a to-read-again list.
For a 21st-century choice, I really enjoyed Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing. Published in 2016, it postdates my high school teaching career, but I’m glad to see it’s risen to the level of the AP list. Homegoing traces the stories of two half-sisters in 18th-century Ghana who, due to the circumstances of their births, live very different lives. The accident of their situations plays out through subsequent generations.
Finally, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is an incredible novel. Of all the books on this list, if you haven’t read it, I encourage you to give it your time. I never taught this one, either, but it is one of the most powerful novels I’ve ever experienced. Morrison’s prose is always good, but here it’s great—so original as to almost become a language of its own—and she tells the story of the post-Civil War South in an entirely unique way that devastates as no other novel I’ve read about that time does.
As a student, I enjoyed a lot of what I read, as I was learning what literature is and how it works. As a high school teacher, I still didn’t have a lot of control over my syllabus. There were books I looked forward to sharing with my students—The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, some Ernest Hemingway short stories, Walden—and, to be honest, some I kind of dreaded. If I never have to read The Red Badge of Courage again, all I can say is, thank God. You may disagree, but don’t expect me to back down.
It’s been several years now since I headed back into my own classroom to teach, but I still miss the energy a good book can generate among enthusiastic readers. And the very best moments happened when a student said something about one of those books I’d read several times over that I’d never considered before.
What were some of your favorite high school reads?