Not only is it always a privilege to review for My Weekly magazine online, but it’s a real pleasure that my latest review is for Carol Atherton’s Reading Lessons as I’m absolutely thrilled to be interviewing Carol all about Reading Lessons at the Deepings Literary Festival on 2nd May. If you’d like to come along, you can find tickets here.
Published by Penguin imprint Figtree on 4th April 2024, Reading Lessons is available for purchase through the links here.
Reading Lessons
An English teacher’s love letter to reading and the many ways literature can make us, and our lives, better.
How can a Victorian poem help teenagers understand YouTube misogyny? Can Jane Eyre encourage us to speak out? What can Lady Macbeth teach us about empathy? Should our expectations for our future be any greater than Pip’s? And why is it so important to make space for these conversations in the first place?
In a career spanning almost three decades, English teacher Carol Atherton has taught generations of students texts that will be familiar to many of us from our own schooldays. But while the staples of exam syllabuses and reading lists remain largely unchanged, their significance – and their relevance – evolves with each class, as it encounters them for the first time.
Each chapter of Reading Lessons invites us to take a fresh look at these novels, plays and poems, revealing how they have shaped our beliefs, our values, and how we interact as a society. As she recalls her own development as a teacher, Atherton emphasizes the vital, undervalued role a teacher plays, illustrates how essential reading is for developing our empathy and makes a passionate case for the enduring power of literature.
My Review of Reading Lessons
My full review of Reading Lessons can be found on the My Weekly website here.
However, here I can say that I expected Reading Lessons to be good as Carol is my friend of 30 years and I know what a talent she is, but honestly, if you’ve ever read a single word of a book, if you’re a human being, you need to read Reading Lessons. It is stunning and I loved every moment of being between its pages.
Do visit My Weekly to read my full review here.
About Carol Atherton
Carol Atherton has taught English since 1996 and is currently Head of English at a secondary school in Lincolnshire. Originally from Merseyside, she read English at Oxford before doing a PGCE at Manchester Metropolitan University and a PhD at the University of Nottingham. She is a Fellow of the English Association and a member of the National Association for the Teaching of English. Atherton has written for a range of publications aimed at teachers and students, and she co-authored Teaching English Literature 16–19 (Routledge, 2013). Reading Lessons is her first trade publication.
For further information follow Carol on Twitter/X @CarolAtherton8.
