The High School Novel: Books that Everyone Should Read

Do you remember when Facebook let you search for the most popular activities, movies, and books that users list on their profiles? These stats were always fun to look at: you could see just how many young people in the U.S. played frisbee golf and listened to Weezer and were obsessed with the Harry Potter movies.

However, what always impressed me the most was the Favorite Books section. Harry Potter was, of course, always near the top, as were the Bible and The Da Vinci Code. But, surprisingly, the most commonly listed Favorite Books were classic high school reads like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

These are all great books--I know that I enjoyed them--but there are plenty of other books out there that are easier and more fun to read. There are also a lot of books out there that show more depth of thought and literary craftsmanship. Yet people's favorite books are neither the most entertaining nor the most profound novels available. So why are they so universally beloved?

Well, these tested and true High School Novels are wonderfully teachable: they strike a healthy compromise between depth, readability, and age appropriateness. Their ability to provoke thought while remaining accessible and inoffensive has made them the most widely taught and therefore the most widely read books in America. They're our universal texts--even people who aren't avid readers outside of a classroom have encountered them--and so, statistically speaking, these books are the most likely to be considered favorites.

In a very real way, our high school English teachers have placed these books at the center of the de facto American literary canon: everyone is expected to have read them, and they have become beloved symbols of our national culture. In this sense, being a high school English teacher is an awesome responsibility because the texts teachers assign will continue to have a huge impact on students and, arguably, our natural mindset and culture.

I've been thinking about this because I'm teaching an introductory literature course at a business college in the spring. This is the only literature course that my students will ever take at the university level, and I'm struck by the unexpected importance of my task. Statistically speaking, between 1/4 and 1/2 of my students will cease to be regular readers after they've turned in their final papers. The books that I teach them may become their lasting favorites and permanent influences on their way of thinking.

So what works should I choose for them? What books can they grow to love and learn the most from? Should I choose the books I love? Those that are the most emblematic of American literature? A wide, strange array to show literature's scope, or a traditional yet limited segment of stories? Should I choose the most morally edifying books (Huckleberry, I'm looking at you!), or should I choose great literary works whose message is less than inspiring (The Waste Land, anyone?)?

Perhaps I'm worrying about this too much. But when I think back to high school, I remember how little I knew and how important each new book seemed to me. What if I hadn't read The Grapes of Wrath as a junior and Jane Eyre as a senior? These are the kind of works that made me fall in love with literature, the books that made me want to be a writer, the books that really made me think.

And that sort of passion is all I want for my students: I want them to fall in love with a book that I assign at least once, in the hope that they'll become lifelong readers and fall in love again and again.