I have been making a book list

for someone and came across another list. The second list was intended for students in their senior year at a Catholic high school somewhere in the United States in 1965.

It is an extraordinary list. The books on it are books which even the brightest university students would now struggle to read. 

It begins with  four books to be read "before September" - presumably the start of the school year.  There is a book by Thomas Merton and I know nothing about that. Then there is Harper Lee's  "To Kill a Mockingbird" (now banned in some places), Antoine de St Exupery's  "Night Flight" comes next, then Ivan Turgenev's "Father and Sons". 

I have read just two of those and only glanced at the Turgenev.

It goes on to other books. The first on the list is Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a young man". When I was about ten the Senior Cat was studying that as part of his university degree and I remember him reading me the part where Stephen's mother is washing his ears. It is not the sort of thing most ten year olds hear about I suppose. I did read the book later.

The rest of the list covers some interesting material.  It ranges from things like "Lord of the flies" and "The thirty-nine steps" to "War and Peace" and "Crime and Punishment".  I have read Lord of the Flies and The thirty-nine steps but gave up on the other two. 

In between there is Paton's "Cry, the beloved country" and Shute's "On the beach". They are interesting choices for their time and were probably considered controversial as well. Willa Cather appears too, as does F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Le Carre.

It is a mixed list but there is serious literature on it. It is an interesting list because I have just shown it to the only neighbour I know who does any reading for pleasure. He looked carefully at it and then said, "Well, I have heard of some of them but the only one I have read is Lord of the Flies. It was a set text in my last year at school." This neighbour is twenty-two years younger than I am. His children have not read any of these books. He thinks they will not even have heard of anything on it. The idea of them reading four books on it before the beginning of the school year made him laugh.  "Not a hope," he told me.

I know quite a number of teenagers in their final two years of school and I have to admit that not one of them would be likely to read anything on that list by choice. They might read one or two of the shorter and better known books if they were forced to do so but most of those books would not be read except under duress.

So, what are they reading? Is that the right question or should I be asking, "Are they reading at all?"  I know some of them are not reading now. Hopefully they will go back to books when Year 12 has ended and before university begins.