I should add, there needs to be an American emphasis, hence why I have Moby Dick, not Anna Karnenina (though that would be a marvellous choice for the 17 year olds)
In Ireland, we have what's called a "transition year" at 15/16, where students are off an exam-based curriculum, do lots of personal development work, have no homework etc. I spent part of mine reading War and Peace, Anna Karenina and Vanity Fair. On that basis, I would definitely recommend Anna Karenina as a possibility. I liked the idea from the poster of giving students a choice of books to select.
That’s so interesting about the transition year, I’ve never heard that before, what a fantastic idea. That would have been heavenly at that age. Although I do remember that when it came time to choose our own book for an extended essay we write in Scotland at that age (which forms a large part of your Higher grade and is the only text you choose yourself), the school had to announce that Trainspotting was off the table because the film had just come out and half the year had chosen it.
You can definitely read Middlemarch as a teen (I did).
If this is a program the kids would commit to for four years, I'd probably do it chronologically. In which case I think, it would go like this for the first three years…
I second this approach. The whole point of a Great Books curriculum is for the works to build on each other. I’d add the Odyssey to Year 1, switch around some of the Plato— I like Meno as a first Plato since the kids are probably in or recently had geometry class, no complaints about the Apology. Year 2 might be a good time for Paradise Lost and The Prince, Year 3 for Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment or Notes from Underground). For a more American-centric Year 4: Moby-Dick, The Sound and the Fury, Go Tell it on the Mountain, maybe selections from Marx? Obviously in a school setting in ‘Murica that would be controversial, but I feel it’s impossible to meaningfully engage with modernity without reading some Marx. Somewhere in there should be a Holocaust survivor memoir, possibly paired with Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. For memoirs I’m partial to Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz because I just read/reviewed it and am still broken by it.
hard agree on the "building on each other" point, was trying to give one or two core American classics and then some of the influences/precursors, so they can get a sense of how those books work in the tradition, as they would if they became literature students at university, for example. I assume they are at least introduced to those memoirs when they study history? (I hope!)
if it needed to be something students didn't have to commit to from year one, I've been wondering (after reading Henry's comment) if maybe the best thing would be to pick four American texts that feel like "the" texts and then three other texts per year you can see that that book is clearly drawing off of or in conversation with. The problem is that it's somehow harder for me to pick four American texts lol.
Or, I feel like this could be a unit (desire / doubleness)—more than four texts bc of all the poems—
Symposium, Plato
Sappho fragments
Holy Sonnets
Wuthering Heights
selected poems and letters of Emily Dickinson
Henry James, The Bostonians
Nella Larsen, Passing
it's very fun to do this when you don't have to actually commit to it lol
This is exactly the approach I took. They want some American classics, and I want to push the conversational canon with that, but as you say, it is oddly hard to pick the American books... I don't know why!
I wanted one South American book, and one Canadian, as well as one sci fi (detective fiction would be nice also), alongside the US classics.
For a Canadian book I think I'd pick Robertson Davies's Fifth Business personally. It is his best book and I think has a lot for high school students to like, and if you get into Davies he will lead you into a lot of other interests. For a detective story I'd probably say… The Big Sleep or The Glass Key.
But yes it's sort of hard! I think it's partly that even if we limit ourselves to novels there are just kind of a lot of exceptional novels and they all seem to exist in their own little narrative strands. And then you do have American genre writers who are incredibly influential but not really in the mix generally like Lovecraft, but I don't know that he really needs to be taught this way, because… people find Lovecraft on their own.
I also sometimes think teaching the not-as-big-books might be a good approach (but I Am Not A Teacher), like I read Toni Morrison's Beloved (not for class) as a teenager but I would have gotten more out of Sula at the time I think.
I taught the Communist Manifesto to 15 year olds (England 1970s) went down well. And it's short. I'd also include Vonnegut. Seen from UK your selection is oppressively Bible heavy. How about Bhagavad Gita instead of Job?
I am from the UK and it is not oppressive to me. Moby Dick has a lot more to do with the bible than the Bhagavad Gita and I prioritise showing them a sense of literary tradition and influence. At some point we have to accept that being an ambitious reader means reading some Bible, as the authors we admire all did.
This is amazing. I think it needs to be a bit more American for their purposes. My thought was to have one or two US classics and then other works from the tradition that informed it or are somehow relevant to it.
maybe what I'd do is just delete year two except for Christine and maybe delete Eliot and Austen (sob). I think City of Ladies is useful because it's a clear moment where women enter into debates about political philosophy and you don't need to like, read The Romance of the Rose to get what's going on. But you could maybe have her + Rousseau + Douglass + The Federalist Papers form a kind of "what is a free and equal society" year
then you'd have two years to dedicate to ~AMERICA~ 🇺🇸
Maybe the move here is to have a list of ~10 varied good books per year so that the students can pick ~5. Would feel less chore-y if the kids had some choice in what they read. Eg I only picked up Dostoyevsky because it was present in a bookcase I had access too & was recommended to me by adults, I probably wouldn’t otherwise
People might disagree here, I am pro reading your first Dostoyevsky in high school. Ambitious would correlate with smart and/or interested enough to appreciate him in some capacity (no need to understand every line in the book) and he is probably among the authors most fun to re-visit later in adulthood and build up on your high school memories of his writing. Maybe a short one like Notes from the Underground, although crime and punishment is about as long as moby dick if I recall correctly?
Anything on this list. These are the top 1% of books I’ve read in my life and they are all approachable in their own way: https://www.tomwhitenoise.com/bookshelf
American SF classics: try Ursula Le Guin. The short story collections are underrated and very teen friendly. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" has stayed with me more than almost anything else I read at that age. Dispossessed is excellent as well and good background if you want to then read Marx. Left Hand of Darkness is great too and very timely though liable these days to get you investigated for "gender ideology".
You could also do a series of dystopias. Canticle for Leibowitz, Fahrenheit 451, Neuromancer: there is a very accessible set to hold attention and spark big discussions.
American 19th C literature: Hawthorne's stories and novellas grabbed me as a teen where little else from that period did. And perhaps needless to say, Huckleberry Finn paired with the recent "James" by Percival Everett would make for a heck of a class discussion for a brave teacher.
The Hemingway Nick Adams stories were very compelling to me as a teen, and I would have loved the blunt transgressiveness of The Garden of Eden as well. From later in the century, I would try Joan Didion's essays.
Finally, historical novels set in "exotic" cultures could be of interest. Say Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games, or Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, or to bring it back to SF, Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin would be on my list.
I actually think biographies can be good at that age and can be driven by interest. Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, Ron Chernow’s Titan: the Life of John D. Rockefeller or his Hamilton. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, perhaps; The Lyndon Johnson biography by Robert Caro’s probably a bit of a lift, but that first volume is great.
Thanks for the effort. Not sure what a 17 year old is supposed to make of Moby Dick. My worry would be box ticked, I’ve read it, no reason to pick it up again. IMO, Moby Dick is a book for people who have lived enough to see how Ahab manifests in the world.
I am wondering which of these I would've found interesting at 14, and it's not easy ... Any case I'd add - Zelazny prob lord of light, LOTR at least one part, great gatsby, terry pratchett prob small gods, dostoyevsky prob crime and punishment though its complex, hundred years of solitude, wind up bird chronicle from murakami, the prince, the black swan, the wizard of earthsea, great expectations, a brief history of time, the name of the rose, hitchhiker's guide, and godel escher bach.
A selection of Emerson's essays (or just the first or second series minus a couple essays here and there) has to be on there somewhere. It used to be fashionable to read him because his essays were regarded as the best available American expressions of the English language. He once wrote, "young men are my parish," which seems to me to mean that his work would be at least intended for ambitious teenagers (I'd wager his work would land best at the older end).
In late high school, I read a few books that ended up being important to me: Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Clockwork Orange, Hamlet, The Orthodox Way, Jane Eyre.
To draw a student into medieval lit, offer a ~14-year-old Stephen R. Lawhead's books 'Taliesin,' 'Merlin,' and 'Arthur' (in that order). These are a good gateway to 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,' Monmouth's 'History of the Kings of Britain,' Chretien's 'Arthurian Romances,' etc.
My daughter is about to turn 14 and she’s reading “A Farewell to Arms” because of some WWI interest sparked in history. They don’t even assign full novels in advanced “English Language Arts” anymore, so thrilled she’s become a reader on her own (with hardcore familial encouragement). Don’t assume people are reading “Little Women” either lol
She’s in the 8th grade, and the only full novel they read this year was “The Outsiders”. They focus on reading much more fragmentary stuff. It’s a big step down. I remember reading Romeo and Juliet and Anthem (the teacher was a bit nuts) in the 8th grade. It’s a big step down - which is why I encourage her reading on her own (beyond the YA stuff she reads as well)
I should add, there needs to be an American emphasis, hence why I have Moby Dick, not Anna Karnenina (though that would be a marvellous choice for the 17 year olds)
In Ireland, we have what's called a "transition year" at 15/16, where students are off an exam-based curriculum, do lots of personal development work, have no homework etc. I spent part of mine reading War and Peace, Anna Karenina and Vanity Fair. On that basis, I would definitely recommend Anna Karenina as a possibility. I liked the idea from the poster of giving students a choice of books to select.
That’s so interesting about the transition year, I’ve never heard that before, what a fantastic idea. That would have been heavenly at that age. Although I do remember that when it came time to choose our own book for an extended essay we write in Scotland at that age (which forms a large part of your Higher grade and is the only text you choose yourself), the school had to announce that Trainspotting was off the table because the film had just come out and half the year had chosen it.
AK for sure, I loved it at that age, I was trying to go American
You can definitely read Middlemarch as a teen (I did).
If this is a program the kids would commit to for four years, I'd probably do it chronologically. In which case I think, it would go like this for the first three years…
Year 1
—Iliad
—the "Socrates trial and death" sequence (Euthyphro + Apology + Crito)
—The Oresteia
eta: probably this is where we would stick the Bible lol
Year 2
—selections from Chaucer (the Knight -> Miller -> Reeve sequence would be my choice I think)
—Winter's Tale
—selections from Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies
—Francis Bacon essays or Montaigne essays
Year 3
—maybe Rousseau, Second Discourse?
—Sense & Sensibility or Emma
—Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
—Middlemarch or Mill on the Floss
…but year four is a bit harder for me to figure lol.
I second this approach. The whole point of a Great Books curriculum is for the works to build on each other. I’d add the Odyssey to Year 1, switch around some of the Plato— I like Meno as a first Plato since the kids are probably in or recently had geometry class, no complaints about the Apology. Year 2 might be a good time for Paradise Lost and The Prince, Year 3 for Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment or Notes from Underground). For a more American-centric Year 4: Moby-Dick, The Sound and the Fury, Go Tell it on the Mountain, maybe selections from Marx? Obviously in a school setting in ‘Murica that would be controversial, but I feel it’s impossible to meaningfully engage with modernity without reading some Marx. Somewhere in there should be a Holocaust survivor memoir, possibly paired with Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. For memoirs I’m partial to Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz because I just read/reviewed it and am still broken by it.
hard agree on the "building on each other" point, was trying to give one or two core American classics and then some of the influences/precursors, so they can get a sense of how those books work in the tradition, as they would if they became literature students at university, for example. I assume they are at least introduced to those memoirs when they study history? (I hope!)
if it needed to be something students didn't have to commit to from year one, I've been wondering (after reading Henry's comment) if maybe the best thing would be to pick four American texts that feel like "the" texts and then three other texts per year you can see that that book is clearly drawing off of or in conversation with. The problem is that it's somehow harder for me to pick four American texts lol.
Or, I feel like this could be a unit (desire / doubleness)—more than four texts bc of all the poems—
Symposium, Plato
Sappho fragments
Holy Sonnets
Wuthering Heights
selected poems and letters of Emily Dickinson
Henry James, The Bostonians
Nella Larsen, Passing
it's very fun to do this when you don't have to actually commit to it lol
This is exactly the approach I took. They want some American classics, and I want to push the conversational canon with that, but as you say, it is oddly hard to pick the American books... I don't know why!
I wanted one South American book, and one Canadian, as well as one sci fi (detective fiction would be nice also), alongside the US classics.
For a Canadian book I think I'd pick Robertson Davies's Fifth Business personally. It is his best book and I think has a lot for high school students to like, and if you get into Davies he will lead you into a lot of other interests. For a detective story I'd probably say… The Big Sleep or The Glass Key.
But yes it's sort of hard! I think it's partly that even if we limit ourselves to novels there are just kind of a lot of exceptional novels and they all seem to exist in their own little narrative strands. And then you do have American genre writers who are incredibly influential but not really in the mix generally like Lovecraft, but I don't know that he really needs to be taught this way, because… people find Lovecraft on their own.
I also sometimes think teaching the not-as-big-books might be a good approach (but I Am Not A Teacher), like I read Toni Morrison's Beloved (not for class) as a teenager but I would have gotten more out of Sula at the time I think.
I taught the Communist Manifesto to 15 year olds (England 1970s) went down well. And it's short. I'd also include Vonnegut. Seen from UK your selection is oppressively Bible heavy. How about Bhagavad Gita instead of Job?
I am from the UK and it is not oppressive to me. Moby Dick has a lot more to do with the bible than the Bhagavad Gita and I prioritise showing them a sense of literary tradition and influence. At some point we have to accept that being an ambitious reader means reading some Bible, as the authors we admire all did.
This is amazing. I think it needs to be a bit more American for their purposes. My thought was to have one or two US classics and then other works from the tradition that informed it or are somehow relevant to it.
maybe what I'd do is just delete year two except for Christine and maybe delete Eliot and Austen (sob). I think City of Ladies is useful because it's a clear moment where women enter into debates about political philosophy and you don't need to like, read The Romance of the Rose to get what's going on. But you could maybe have her + Rousseau + Douglass + The Federalist Papers form a kind of "what is a free and equal society" year
then you'd have two years to dedicate to ~AMERICA~ 🇺🇸
(also I read Book of the City of Ladies on my own when I was 17 I think)
Maybe the move here is to have a list of ~10 varied good books per year so that the students can pick ~5. Would feel less chore-y if the kids had some choice in what they read. Eg I only picked up Dostoyevsky because it was present in a bookcase I had access too & was recommended to me by adults, I probably wouldn’t otherwise
People might disagree here, I am pro reading your first Dostoyevsky in high school. Ambitious would correlate with smart and/or interested enough to appreciate him in some capacity (no need to understand every line in the book) and he is probably among the authors most fun to re-visit later in adulthood and build up on your high school memories of his writing. Maybe a short one like Notes from the Underground, although crime and punishment is about as long as moby dick if I recall correctly?
Notes from the underground is a good call
gosh quite a heavy reading list
i am a teacher of literature
look at plays also
shakespeares Romeo and Juliet
the students prefer this to Macbeth although Macbeth is interesting i have found they prefer this also The Tempest is wonderful
The Romantics in my opinion are a must
Shelley Keats and Coleridge also try Mary Shelleys Frankenstein
Thomas Hardy
DH Lawrence
more contemporary writers Ursula le Guin is a must wonderful imaginative writing . i love Tolkiens writings also
this is just a short list others will have
more
so much more
frankenstein is the book that stuck with me most from high school. great read.
Anything on this list. These are the top 1% of books I’ve read in my life and they are all approachable in their own way: https://www.tomwhitenoise.com/bookshelf
American SF classics: try Ursula Le Guin. The short story collections are underrated and very teen friendly. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" has stayed with me more than almost anything else I read at that age. Dispossessed is excellent as well and good background if you want to then read Marx. Left Hand of Darkness is great too and very timely though liable these days to get you investigated for "gender ideology".
You could also do a series of dystopias. Canticle for Leibowitz, Fahrenheit 451, Neuromancer: there is a very accessible set to hold attention and spark big discussions.
American 19th C literature: Hawthorne's stories and novellas grabbed me as a teen where little else from that period did. And perhaps needless to say, Huckleberry Finn paired with the recent "James" by Percival Everett would make for a heck of a class discussion for a brave teacher.
The Hemingway Nick Adams stories were very compelling to me as a teen, and I would have loved the blunt transgressiveness of The Garden of Eden as well. From later in the century, I would try Joan Didion's essays.
Finally, historical novels set in "exotic" cultures could be of interest. Say Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games, or Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, or to bring it back to SF, Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
14 years old
- The Red Pony by Steinbeck
- The Pearl by Steinbeck
15 years old
- The Old Man & the Sea by Hemingway
- Of Mice & Men by Steinbeck
16 years old
- Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
- The Razor's Edge by Maugham
17 years old
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde
- Goodbye, Columbus by Roth
- The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin would be on my list.
I actually think biographies can be good at that age and can be driven by interest. Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, Ron Chernow’s Titan: the Life of John D. Rockefeller or his Hamilton. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, perhaps; The Lyndon Johnson biography by Robert Caro’s probably a bit of a lift, but that first volume is great.
Thanks for the effort. Not sure what a 17 year old is supposed to make of Moby Dick. My worry would be box ticked, I’ve read it, no reason to pick it up again. IMO, Moby Dick is a book for people who have lived enough to see how Ahab manifests in the world.
Somehow so appropriate that this comment is made by someone called Ishmael :) (I agree, by the way.)
Those books are often the ones we are most intrigued by when we are young, which are so deep and rich for us, and then we can come back to them.
I am wondering which of these I would've found interesting at 14, and it's not easy ... Any case I'd add - Zelazny prob lord of light, LOTR at least one part, great gatsby, terry pratchett prob small gods, dostoyevsky prob crime and punishment though its complex, hundred years of solitude, wind up bird chronicle from murakami, the prince, the black swan, the wizard of earthsea, great expectations, a brief history of time, the name of the rose, hitchhiker's guide, and godel escher bach.
many good recommends, though we need some American focus
I’d add Sandman to the list then, and the watchmen. They have to read good graphic novels.
A selection of Emerson's essays (or just the first or second series minus a couple essays here and there) has to be on there somewhere. It used to be fashionable to read him because his essays were regarded as the best available American expressions of the English language. He once wrote, "young men are my parish," which seems to me to mean that his work would be at least intended for ambitious teenagers (I'd wager his work would land best at the older end).
yes true
In late high school, I read a few books that ended up being important to me: Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Clockwork Orange, Hamlet, The Orthodox Way, Jane Eyre.
To draw a student into medieval lit, offer a ~14-year-old Stephen R. Lawhead's books 'Taliesin,' 'Merlin,' and 'Arthur' (in that order). These are a good gateway to 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,' Monmouth's 'History of the Kings of Britain,' Chretien's 'Arthurian Romances,' etc.
(I suspect @Ruth Gaskovsky would agree.)
My 12 year old has just had to read two volumes of Chrétien de Troye for school. We're in France though!
My daughter is about to turn 14 and she’s reading “A Farewell to Arms” because of some WWI interest sparked in history. They don’t even assign full novels in advanced “English Language Arts” anymore, so thrilled she’s become a reader on her own (with hardcore familial encouragement). Don’t assume people are reading “Little Women” either lol
how can they not be reading Little Women.....!
She’s in the 8th grade, and the only full novel they read this year was “The Outsiders”. They focus on reading much more fragmentary stuff. It’s a big step down. I remember reading Romeo and Juliet and Anthem (the teacher was a bit nuts) in the 8th grade. It’s a big step down - which is why I encourage her reading on her own (beyond the YA stuff she reads as well)
What are your arguments for including Atlas Shrugged?
https://www.commonreader.co.uk/p/is-atlas-shrugged-the-new-vibe