English classes are not known for cultivating a love of reading. Mandatory reading comprehension tests, assignments that disrupt the experience of immersing oneself in the text, and out-of-touch curriculum can all pose a risk to would-be readers. The issue is no laughing matter: both children and adults in the United States lack basic literacy skills and its only getting worse.1 Competition for attention against video games, social media, and television only makes it harder for crucial reading skills to be developed. Reading, especially deep reading, is a learned skill. Good books make that easier.
With that said, here are five books to develop a love of reading outside of the syllabus without sacrificing literary merit:
1. Stoner by John Williams
The famous-for-not-being-famous campus novel about English professor William Stoner and his tumultuous life by John Williams is a masterpiece in understatement. Each character is as complex as any living person, and Williams cleverly avoids smothering them with excess characterization. Not only a compelling fictional biography of domesticity, Stoner also demonstrates well-constructed sentences and prose styles that can be applied to academic and professional writing.
2. Passing by Nella Larsen
Larsen sets her novel in 1920s Harlem. Amid the milieu of the changes sweeping American society after The Great War, Larsen expertly considers the complexities of identity from the inside. At just over 200 pages, Passing will be a great starting point for readers looking to explore interwar American fiction.
3. The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt
What would happen if an Italian found a lost transcript of a long-dead Roman scholar? Would it have the power to shape modernity as we know it? These questions and more are the framework for Greenblatt’s Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning non-fiction work on the rise of humanism. He centers his history around the discovery of Of The Nature of Things, a work by Lucretius almost lost to time, by an intrepid manuscript hunter from Italy named Poggio Bracciolini. The result is a magisterial analysis of how the world as we know it came to be, tracing its many forms back to Bracciolini and the Renaissance he helped ignite. Greenblatt, the world’s leading scholar on Shakespeare, uses his wide-ranging knowledge and excellent writing technique to develop an unforgettable account of discovery, society, and the nature of life.
4. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
Nothing could be farther from a stuffy, outdated novel than Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. Drawing on her roots in New Zealand, Catton creates a plot that unwinds at breakneck speed, yet manages to probe the paradoxes of modern life. Billionaire investors meet student activists, the old clashes with the new, and technological conflicts with nature are shown throughout. Catton intentionally centers a novel’s plot as a guiding focus of her craft. For those bored by longwinded books with no action, this is for you.
5. The Red and The Black by Stendahl
Stendahl’s timeless story about a provincial youth catapulted into urbanity in post-Napoleonic France remains as engaging now as it did when it was first released in 1830. Julian Sorrel is one of literature’s most memorable characters and Stendahl’s psychological insight heightens his wonderful prose.
1 https://edtrust.org/blog/the-literacy-crisis-in-the-u-s-is-deeply-concerning-and-totally-preventable/ https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2024/03/25/addressing-the-literacy-crisis-a-call-to-action-fo r-district-leaders/
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