The GCSE English syllabus has been in the news lately with allegations Michael Gove does not like Of Mice and Men <\/a>(though he\u00a0 has denied banning it). Regardless of the merits or otherwise of that particular novel the controversy has led to more of the usual pontificating of what should be read by all 16 year-olds \u2013 basically everything remotely \u2018intellectual\u2019. This example from Robert McCrum <\/a>being a notable example. For the record I don\u2019t think the 16 year-old would have got anything from reading Austen, Bronte or Joyce. I thought some of these books were OK-- I might even have enjoyed one or two of them.<\/p>\n

These are the novels, short stories, poems\u00a0 and plays I remember from GCSE . for the reconrd I have not read any of the them since. Surely I read more than this!<\/p>\n

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men<\/em><\/p>\n

Robert C O\u2019Brien Z for Zachariah. <\/em>Apparently a new movie <\/a>is being filmed.<\/p>\n

Neville Shute A Town like Alice <\/em>(I chose this one for the wider reading element).<\/p>\n

James Thurber The Secret life of Walter Mitty. (Short story)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

J B Priestley An Inspector calls (Play)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Shakespeare MacBeth. <\/em>We watched a film version of Romeo and Juliet<\/em> and saw Twelfth Night <\/em>at Stratford (which I enjoyed).<\/p>\n

Poetry: Rupert Brooke The Soldier <\/em>and Wilfred Owen Dulce et Decorum est<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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  The GCSE English syllabus has been in the news lately with allegations Michael Gove does not like Of Mice and Men (though he\u00a0 has denied banning it). Regardless of the merits or otherwise of that particular novel the controversy has led to more of the usual pontificating of what should be read by all 16 … Continue reading Books I 'did' for English GCSE (1992)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1798,"href":"https:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions\/1798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}