English Teachers, Look Away

Marlon and Jake discuss the books they’d banish from school reading lists—not ban but give a well-earned time out. They consider why the Bible shouldn’t make the cut, why mythology deserves to expand beyond the Greeks and Romans, and what kinds of books actually resonate with high school readers. Plus: why being a great book doesn’t necessarily make something a great book to teach—and whether length should matter.

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• Mythology by Edith Hamilton
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• “Who Am I This Time?” by Kurt Vonnegut
• King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard
• Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
• The Tempest by William Shakespeare
• The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges
• “The Aleph” by Jorge Luis Borges
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
• The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
• As You Like It by William Shakespeare
• Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
• You Can’t Take It with You by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
• A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Trial by Franz Kafka
• Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
• The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Look Back in Anger by John Osborne
• Butley by Simon Gray
• The Loneliness of a Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe
• Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
• The Circle by W. Somerset Maugham