I loved most of the books I read in high school, including Thomas Hardy! But I was a big reader by the time I got to hs and I had great teachers there.

There's so much great non-fiction, including long-form journalism, that I think would appeal to teens and teach all the things Sophia listed. Plus! graphic novels!

The last couple of years we've been doing a periodic cull of our books and passing appropriate books on to our friend who is a Baltimore City hs English teacher for her classroom library. It's so amazing to hear about which ones the kids really respond to. This year they've been loving the Sweettooth series. [link]

We just finished Pygmalion and The Importance of Being Ernest.

Nice. I love The Importance of Being Ernest SO HARD.

I've been told that many of the great editors natural reading speed was a slow one. I wonder what modern editors think of calling reading slowly "the editor's gift".

My natural reading speed is mach 10. But reading is not editing. It's entirely different. When I edit, it's not even remotely close to the speed at which I read. (Roughly, I edit at about 3 pages per hour -- that's 8 1/2 x 11" typeset journal pages, not manuscript pages; it's probably around 750-850 words an hour.)

(Of course if slow reading speed is the mark of a "great editor", well, it would be a bit presumptuous to call myself a great editor. But, you know, I know my way around a parenthetical, and I wield a mighty semicolon.)

Amy, Jane Eyre does have moments of sadness, but overall it's happy. I think the happiness of a book is not that it is conflict/difficulty/ or ____________-free. But it's that the end leaves you with a sense of contentment and satisfaction that the world of the characters is well.

Ironically, we're teaching a unit on happiness right now which is filled with awesome stuff. We're reading a Dickinson poem, articles about International Happiness Day, part of the Declaration of Independence, a quote from John Locke and one from Samuel Johnson, several NYT articles, including one called "In Pursuit of Unhappiness" and some of the work Daniel Kahneman has done. It's fantastically fun and interesting and thought provoking. Students will also conduct individual research as yet undetermined on happiness.

That is, in many ways, the gift of nonfiction. There's so much out there and it's awesome and diverse and deep (in terms of lots of stuff around a topic).

We will also read Stiff which is a favorite of my students and if I have energy we'll read In Cold Blood which is one of the most page turning books I've encountered.

School-wide, we're also teaching Unbroken, Nickel and Dimed, Botany of Desire, Into the Wild. I'm also trying to get copies of League of Denial but it's only hardback so it's spendy. I'd also love to get the Telling Room but it too is hardback only.

The best units I've seen have paired fiction and non-fiction. I just saw one that paired Of Mice and Men and articles and research on euthanasia. Generally it leads to a lot of richness. I'd like to see Winifred Owen plus All Quiet on the Western Front along with articles on the centennial of WWI.

Ironically, we're teaching a unit on happiness right now which is filled with awesome stuff. We're reading a Dickinson poem, articles about International Happiness Day, part of the Declaration of Independence, a quote from John Locke and one from Samuel Johnson, several NYT articles, including one called "In Pursuit of Unhappiness" and some of the work Daniel Kahneman has done. It's fantastically fun and interesting and thought provoking. Students will also conduct individual research as yet undetermined on happiness.

I love this. Could you send me the deets?

Steph, my students totally enjoyed The Importance of Being Earnest. They wrote papers comparing how the play works thematically with how the movie does (same for Pygmalion ). In the lit class, students are going to read Picture of Dorian Gray independently while we do short stories. I hate short stories, but I can teach the stuff I need to more quickly and thoroughly using short stories. I feel like short stories are usually not plot driven enough for my tastes nor do they have happy endings. Except maybe Margaret Atwood's "Happy Endings" which I can't use because it mentions fucking.

Sure! The only thing I have written up is "In Pursuit of Unhappiness." I have the rest of the articles and the order we are working in. I'm also co-teaching it one period with the psychology teacher (and she teaches AP Lang) so it's super fun. What's your email and I'll just send the link to the google doc.

Pairing fiction and nonfiction sounds great to me. If I remember right, aside from, like, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" et al, we never read any nonfiction in high school.

Amy, Jane Eyre does have moments of sadness, but overall it's happy.

My overall sense of Jane Eyre is very much resilience, so it doesn't automatically *feel* like a happy book to me when I think about it, despite the ending. But I know what you mean.

Great! School email is POOF. This email will self-destruct shortly.

My favorite high school books were Great Expectations, The Grapes of Wrath, and Hamlet. (okay, not a book). I actually didn't love Lord of the Flies but it was popular.

My English teacher wife went to international school and has no particular love for the Canon, so is always arguing for different. Our school does a pretty good job with different, and although there are certainly social message pieces in much of what we read in high school, I think they try to choose more books that are happy than sad, though I think there is sad to be had in lots of good analyzable literature.

I don't like that article though. Nonfiction doesn't make teachers better, it won't improve the word search, it won't create any better discussions than fiction. There should absolutely be some nonfiction in English classes, but the novel is the iconic style of writing in 19th and 20th century English and needs to be explored in any class claiming to explore the written language.

At least it's not Ethan fucking Frome.

Amen. Aside from the above (and Mrs. fucking Dalloway) we read pretty good selections. Moby-Dick, Moll Flanders, The Crucible, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Not "fun" necessarily, but at least not whining whiners who whine (I may be biased)(ETA: also, tipsy).

Plus, Pygmalion and Gulliver's Travels.