How to get high schoolers to fall in love with books - part 2

"How to get high schoolers to fall in love with books" continues with a list of what I would consider adding to the curriculum if I were a high school English teacher. Read part 1 here.

Classics

Some of my favorite books are classics. I will likely always call Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice one of my favorite novels. I also loved George Eliot’s Middlemarch almost beyond reason. I love Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, too. And I will likely always call Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird one of the best books of the English language.

 

Mystery/Thriller

The king of sleuthing, Sherlock Holmes, and the Queen of Mystery, Agatha Christie, are always good bets. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is wonderful. My suggestion for a Christie novel is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which has a nice twist students might love (or be outraged by). I also highly recommend Daphne de Maurier’s Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel. The creepy feel of both books is wonderful. For something a little newer, I’d suggest Jane Harper’s The Dry, a wonderful mystery/thriller set in Australia.

 

Nonfiction

I love adventure stories, and In the Kingdom of Ice is the best I’ve ever read. The true story of a failed expedition to the North Pole, it is gripping and expertly written. Also, the first true crime book, In Cold Blood, is an amazing work of nonfiction.

 

Memoir

Memoir is one of my very favorite genres. There’s so much to choose from. One of the absolute best is Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes about his poverty-stricken childhood in Ireland. It is so beautifully written, witty, and poignant. I recently read West with the Night, Beryl Markham’s memoir about growing up in Africa. The writing is superb. One of the most charming and unconventional memoirs I’ve ever read is Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, which is her life written in encyclopedia form. I dare any teenager to read this and not immediately start writing their own encyclopedic memoir. A celebrity memoir that just blew me away (and I sincerely hope he wrote it himself) is Andre Agassi’s Open about his life in tennis. It’s the most honest memoir I think I’ve ever read. And by “honest” I don’t mean tell-all. I also think Following Atticus is a beautiful memoir of author Tom Ryan’s life with his hiking companion, miniature Schnauzer, Atticus. A bonus is that the dog doesn’t die at the end of the book! And I love Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country about his travels in Australia. Bryson grew up in America, then spent a large chunk of his life in England only to return to America later. I’m unsure where he is now. He writes a lot of travel memoirs which are hilarious and exhaustively researched. He should be a go-to when teaching about good narrative.

Biography

My favorite biographies are easy to choose. First, there’s Madam Curie, about the female chemist who discovered radium and was awarded two Nobel prizes. And then there’s the queen of the biography, Laura Hillenbrand with Unbroken, the amazing true story of the American P.O.W. captured (and tortured) by the Japanese in World War II. As amazing as I think Unbroken is, I love Seabiscuit even more. The story of the underdog race horse, this is the finest work of nonfiction I think I’ve ever read. The race scenes are so well-written they made my heart pound.

 

American History

I love books about history, especially when they bring it vividly to life. There aren’t a lot that fall in this category, but I can think of a couple. The Spirit of St. Louis, the memoir of Charles Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic flight, is wonderful. I also love Bill Bryson’s One Summer: American 1927 which tells the biography of that summer, weaving Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, historic Mississippi River flooding, and many other events. It’s riveting. I highly recommend the books in Bill O’Reilly’s Killing… series which read like thrillers. My favorites are probably Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln. I also love Mrs. Kennedy and Me, a memoir of Secret Service Agent Clint Hill’s time guarding Jacqueline Kennedy, including the day JFK was assassinated. An amazing piece of investigative journalism is Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial. It’s the story of a failed hospital in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Lastly, one of my very favorite books is Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic, the story of President Garfield’s assassination.

 

Kid and teen characters

A book I think high school English classes would love to read and discuss is Fredrik Backman’s Beartown. It’s the story of a small town kept alive only by its hockey program, the hockey star’s rape of a classmate, and the way the town deals with the crime. If they cover it up, they do an injustice to his victim, but if they reveal it, their town will be ruined. It’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read. There’s so much to discuss here, and it’s so well-written it almost hurt to read it. Another good book about teens is Eleanor & Park, about a teen romance, abuse, and being who you are. A very real story. The Rocket Boys is a memoir by Homer Hickam (the movie version of the book is called October Sky) about a group of high school boys in a coal-mining town of West Virginia in the 1950s who decide to build and launch rockets. Ms. Marvel is a comic series about a Muslim Jersey City teen who rights wrongs. Books with younger characters that are worth discussing in high school and college classes are Wonder (likely today’s high school students have already read it, though) and The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the first in the Flavia de Luce mystery series which are just a whole lot of fun. This is a rare case of a book with a child main character (Flavia is 11, I believe) that’s written for adults.

 

Historical Fiction

I read a lot of historical fiction, but three recent reads really stand out as extraordinary. Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow, about a man put under house arrest in a Moscow hotel by the Bolsheviks. It’s charming and sparkles with humor and character. I love this novel. One of the best character novels I’ve read recently is Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk. This would be a fantastic study of writing fully-fleshed characters. Very good. The Poisonwood Bible is so beautifully written it almost doesn’t matter what it’s about. The story is a Baptist missionary family living in to the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s, “written” by the four Price daughters. It is so. Well. Done. There’s a lot to talk about here including race, injustice, religion, family dynamics.

 

More…

In addition to all of these, I would recommend anything nonfiction by Michael Perry. His Population: 485 (about a small-town fire and rescue team) gets a lot of attention, but I loved his Coop (about raising his daughters, as well as pigs and chickens, in rural Wisconsin) and Visiting Tom, about his neighbor Tom who makes his own canons. The books are full of self-deprecating small-town humor and humility that’s never trite. Very well-written.

 

I’d also suggest (almost) anything by A.J. Jacobs. I love his The Know-it-All about his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and A Year of Living Biblically, his quest to live by every command of the Old Testament. He’s very funny, and he takes these harebrained ideas very seriously.

 

I love Elizabeth Gilbert’s work. She’s best known for her huge hit Eat, Pray, Love, but I’d love to see a high school English class read her Big Magic about the importance and power of creativity.

 

I’d also suggest Alice McDermott’s work. I loved her Charming Billy years ago, about an Irish family coming together after the death of their relative, Billy. It won the 1998 National Book Award. Her most recent novel, The Ninth Hour, was one of my favorite books of 2017. (It was also on many Best Of lists much more important than mine last year.) It’s the story of a young widow, her daughter, and the nuns that take care of them in the next several decades.