Books to Impress English Teachers

Ah, yes, it’s spring, when English instructors’ fancies turn lightly to thoughts of students sweating under massive books.

While there are a lot of long, long books that I dearly love (and I adore long books,) I admit that it is easier to write a great book report about a shorter book. Long, lovely books contain so much wonderful material that winnowing out a few cogent thoughts for a paper can be daunting. If you want to read a long, involved book to sink your proverbial teeth into, try my own novel Rabid (due out in April, 2007.)

However, here are several excellent books that any English teacher will love that won’t turn your backpack into Sisyphus’s boulder.

Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf

Though Woolf titled her book, Orlando: A Biography, it is a work of fiction. Orlando is an easy novel to read in terms of simple vocabulary and short page length. It is astonishing how much character and life and plot and gorgeous prose that Woolf packed into so few pages.

Orlando, the title character, begins life as a lad in Elizabethan England in 1588 and ends the book as a woman thirty-six years older in 1928.

Much has been made of the fact that the title character, Orlando, changes gender and ages magically slowly during the 340 years that the book covers. The effects of the gender switch play beautifully against society and society's changes. Orlando the character is probably based on Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's lesbian lover who cross-dressed, and the gender switch is seen to embody both the masculine and feminine aspects of her.

Modernism, the art movement that best characterizes Woolf, is concerned with society and a person's role in it. Woolf managed to play both sides by introducing a character who was both male and female.

All this is true, but I believe that there is another layer to the book beyond mere gender role exploration and modernist games. Orlando is a book about being a reader, about a life spent as a reader. When one reads great literature, one experiences what it is like to be both a man and a woman, to live the span of many lifetimes, to have experiences as varied as traveling to Istanbul by ship and giving birth to a child and hacking at the head of a Moor swinging from the ceiling and being the lover of a queen and being in love with a man.

Of course, a writer is a reader moved to emulation, and Orlando is a writer. After centuries of composition (and that's what it feels like sometimes!), The Oak Tree, Orlando's epic poem, is finally accepted for publication at the end of the book.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Jane Austen's short novel Persuasion was her last book before she suddenly, sadly, unjust-universely died, and it is profoundly different than her earlier works.

In this book, Anne Elliot, the protagonist, is past the bloom of her youth, all of 27 years old. She gave up the love of her live, Captain Wentworth, when she was twenty because she was persuaded that he was not socially a proper match for her. In previous books, a proper match, or a good match, was of vast importance, such as Pride and Prejudice in which Lizzy Bennet, who is essentially penniless and perhaps soon to lose her home, makes the ultimate "good match" in which she marries Pemberly, er, Mr. Darcy. In Persuasion, however, Jane examines the results of declining a socially and economically imprudent match. Anne Elliot's life is blighted when she gives up love merely because Wentworth is not rich enough for her. She becomes an old maid. This book is an admonition to the flighty young girls who sought "good matches" at the expense of love. It's a grown-up's book.

Persuasion also funny as all heck. That first sentence, "SIR WALTER ELLIOT, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt," is a damning statement about people who don't read good literature, but only read books of mere facts, like the Peerage. Anne's older sister is just as daft and great for an eye-rolling laugh.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Arguably one of the most infamous books written in English, Nabokov’s Lolita may loom large in reputation but is short in page length. Though not quite as short as the previous two, it’s still a quick read.

Humbert Humbert is a pedophile. In this, he is one of the most reviled characters in literature, but just because a character isn’t sympathetic doesn’t mean he isn’t fascinating. Humbert has developed an entire vocabulary for his predilection, including his hypothesis that some girls, those he’s particularly attracted to, are semi-demonic “nymphets,” and he, a thief of young girls’ innocence, is then a “nypholept.” He marries Lolita’s mother, tries to stay away from Lolita, but can’t. The mother is killed by a car, and Humbert and Lolita go on the run. Somewhere along the way, he softens toward Lolita in a way he never has toward anyone. He begins to love her, not in a romantic way, but just love her. Considering that situation, it is no surprise that the book is a tragedy, but it is bittersweet. That small sweetness saves it and saves him.

If you need some more ideas for book reports, this article separates books by subject idea.

If you just want to read a great book, try these articles:

Great Books Like The Da Vinci Code

Great Books To Read While You’re Waiting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Great Books Like American Psycho

TK Kenyon

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