Your Ideal Reading List ... or Take Note Mr Gove

It’s in the UK news today, and apparently all across Twitter, that the Secretary of Education has rejigged what can be on the official examinations for GCSE English Literature (taken between 14 and 16 years of age).

His aim is to bring education back to the basics, which is an extremely laudable aim.  But on this particular subject, he seems to have it wrong.

“The new GCSE course will include at least one play by Shakespeare, at least one 19th century novel, a selection of poetry since 1789 including representative Romantic poetry and ‘fiction or drama from the British Isles from 1914 onwards’.”

As you can see, whilst he’s trying to bring back traditional literature, and remove some of the junk that’s seeped into the reading lists of late, he has actually ended up effectively making it impossible for a wide swathe of modern classics … think Steinbeck, Miller et al … to be taught.  Why on earth should our children only be able to read British authors from the last 100 years, when there have been so many beautifully crafted works produced all over the globe (tut tut Mr Gove, D-, go back and rework that piece).

Also, isn’t it just a little bit jingoistic, especially in this modern global world?

For me, I loved studying Steinbeck and Miller (and I’ve recently begun to reread them again, a quarter of a century later), Wilfred Owen’s poems were haunting, and I even enjoyed Macbeth. 

But on the whole, English Lit at school turned an avid reader into a reluctant reader, with its insistence that every text be ripped apart and analysed for meanings that even many authors deny exist.  And some of the modern texts we were given to study were atrociously poor and instantly forgettable.  But the teachers liked them, because they were simple to teach.  On the one occasion we were allowed an open choice essay, I recall asking to write mine on Pride and Prejudice, to be told that it was too advanced for my age (I’d read it three times at home by that point).  And yet, another teacher that same term gave us Tess of The D’Ubervilles (which in terms of content was far more advanced) to read, not for English, but for RE/Moral Studies.

So, on to the aim of this blog … the article got me thinking, and so should you.

What were the books you loved back when you were 14, 15, 16?

Did you read something at school that stuck with you, or was school having the exact opposite effect and your pleasure reading done independently?

What would you recommend as ‘necessary’ reading to a teen of today, or anyone for that matter, both the willing and unwilling reader?

And which of those titles or authors would/have you carried through life with you?