Over coffee at a recent IB workshop, I fell into conversation with a teacher of psychology who lamented the fact that young people are no longer reading. In truth, she told me, it was much worse than this. She paused for effect. Teachers, she said, were no longer reading, and she became rather animated as she related the sorry story of a colleague – an English teacher, no less - who, she claimed, reads nothing except the set works she teaches to her students, year in, year out. How, my interlocutor asked with an exclamatory raised eyebrow, could this woman teach at all if she did not read herself?

Stories about children reading fewer and less challenging books are not new. The 2024 What Kids are Reading Report supports the dispiriting general trend. The contention that teachers are not reading, despite the myriad demands of our profession and the pressures of quotidian life, I find harder to believe. I’m reasonably confident that the unsettling anecdote of my coffee-drinking confrère is an aberration. Perhaps an outlier, or maybe just caffeine-induced hyperbole. Professional obligation is one thing, but surely an important motive for many of us becoming English teachers at all has much to do with our love of language and books. Teaching, in some ways, is an extension of this desire. Through teaching, we are able to share our passion for reading with our young students, and someone pays us, more or less well, for doing it. I hope I’m right, but even when reality intrudes – for teaching is seldom easy - we read, not from duty, but because it’s an identity-defining compulsion.

It's probably the case that, for most of us, there are times when our reading rate drops. Sometimes this is due to the pressures of work. At other times, it might be family life making demands on our time. This is understandable. However, since life will legitimately intervene on our opportunities for reading, it is important, to the extent we can, to set aside a little time every day, or most days, to make reading one of our priorities. My own approach to creating a reading life is straightforward and – although it has a paradoxical quality – works reasonably well. It goes like this: Every January, I set myself the target of reading one book for every week of the year. This must not include books I must read or re-read for professional purposes. Every year, I fail in my ambition. I never – or have never yet – achieved my target. I am, however, fine with the failure (I am). Some things come before reading books, and should. And, you might say, quality trumps quantity. Fair enough.

As we move towards the end of June, and the midpoint of the year, I am again on course to fail. A familiar narrative, but all is not yet lost. This might still be my year! Here, below, are some of my January – June 2024 reads. In the comments section that follows, you can share a book or two that you have, for better or worse, recently read. Why not? Go on.

My year began on a crime spree. Val McDermid, Adrian McKinty, Kate Atkinson, and Elly Grifiths – all British, I now notice – helped me through January, a month that can sometimes feel, at my northerly latitude, like the approach of Ragnarok. In February, I decided that I wanted to know more about Pakistan and Afghanistan. I’m an impulsive reader – or maybe just impulsive, impulsive – and I can’t say with any certainty why the notion took me, but it did, and it led me to Declan Walsh’s The Nine Lives of Pakistan. I was initially enthusiastic. After all, Walsh, quite early, seems to promise a quasi-emic, beyond Western stereotypes look at Pakistan. Failing to keep his word, he let me down. Despite, or perhaps because of, all the years he spent as a journalist in Pakistan and the insight gained, he offered very few reasons to be cheerful. I remained, however, in the region. This time, I turned to a (if you know, you know) ‘classic’ of travel literature: Dervla Murphy’s Full Tilt. I dare say, I should exercise some old white man caution before continuing. Not least, Murphy, who died in 2022, was a prolific traveller and writer. Full Tilt, was published when she was only 24, and recounts her solo bicycle ride from Ireland to India. It’s a feat that was and remains remarkable. Incredible endurance, interwoven with bravery and naivety of youth. Her prose – little more than a diary – reads, however, more like an adolescent blog than great travel literature. In the Spring of this year, another ‘must read’ lead to similar disappointment. Beryl Gilroy was another woman who, like Murphy, achieved remarkable things and was, unequivocally, a ground-breaker. Part of the Windrush generation, her autobiography, Black Teacher, tells of the many obstacles she overcame before becoming the first black headteacher in London. As a work of social history, her book will not leave you unmoved, but its prose style may leave you a little less enthused. Both Dervla and Beryl reminded me that a good book is more than a good story.

While neither Full Tilt nor Black Teacher – as cliched blurbs go – dazzled with luminous prose, another book did: Alan Garner’s novella, Treacle Walker, defies easy categorization, but it is a book of extraordinary word play. What it’s about is harder to say. It hardly matters. Read it. Immerse yourself in the language. Give copies to the reluctant readers in your classrooms. Read it again, and give thanks for life.

Other January – June books came and went, some better than others. In maudlin moments, I can think back to the 70s, a period of the Cold War, and fancy that the world was easier to grasp. Perhaps. However, Anna Funder’s Stasiland quickly dispels the worst excesses of nostalgia or, more appositely, what the Germans call ‘Ostalgie’. The East German Stasi were, Funder reveals, the embodiment of terror. As I read Funder’s excellent book, I was thinking – always the teacher – you could pair this, if pairing is your thing, with (a popular IB choice) Bernhard Schlink’s, The Reader. Why not? Guilt is a central concern of both works. Staying with non-fiction, a March read that I particularly enjoyed was Richard Beard’s Sad Little Men. Biography meets politics meets education meets social history. Some may disagree with Beard’s thesis and descriptions of boarding school life, but it is a book I recommend all teachers read.

Was there, then, a pick of the litter, jewel in the crown, crème de la crème in my reading journey to June? There was, in fact, a clear winner, and a book I had been anticipating for some time: Andrew O’Hagan’s long novel, Caledonian Road. A number of critics have called it a (British) ‘state-of-the-nation’ novel. It is. Other critics have drawn parallels with Dickens. The echoes are obvious. At some 625 pages, it isn’t something you are likely to teach. After all, who in 2024 asks IB students to read so many words? (Tell me you do!) Many of you will soon be gathering your own books and heading for the beach, or a cabin, or your hammock, or sofa. This is a book to take with you, and just indulge yourself in the pleasure of the story well told. Almost certainly, you deserve the rest. When well rested, and looking forward to a new academic year, can I finally recommend The Inner Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett? Aspiring to a better and more peaceful world, it makes its contribution.

Before I go, I realise I have written this through a ‘northern hemisphere lens’. For teachers in the southern part of the world (how to avoid sounding glib?), your summer break will come. Before you go, whether in the north or south, what have you been reading this half year?

David