Reading Lessons

I posted this in my little book review blog a few days ago, but I think it also has relevance here, in a blog about books for young people. And also because I'd just like to get the word out about a book I love.

This is an absolute joy. 

Carol Atherton has taught English for close to 30 years, and what she offers here is a beautifully written, ever-so-readable meditation on what books have always offered her; what they say about the world we live in now; and how she has attempted, in all her years of teaching, to bring the books she teaches to life for her students. 

She uses a poem by Robert Browning, and Of Mice and Men, to discuss attitudes to women and toxic masculinity. Great Expectations illustrates the power of friendship. Alan Bennett’s The History Boys looks at teaching. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is all about belonging, and finding the right place to belong. The Lord of the Flies… well, we probably all know about that one. That said, she does take care to mention Rutger Bregman’s Human Kind, and what that has to say about William Golding’s view of human nature.

She finds a way with every book she writes about – from Macbeth to Death of a Salesman, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to To Kill a Mockingbird - to say something about us all, about the power of stories to help us escape, and to connect. How they can help us make sense of the world, of ourselves, and of others.

It’s a love letter to literature and reading, and I doubt that that I’ll read anything better all year.