The Times' list of 'The Books You Must Read Before You're 21' arrived in the post today and as expected it was most disappointing. I mean, The Tale of Tom Kitten? Well, sure, I think most of us can hold our hands up and admit that we have (probably) read or been read this delightful story, but as a 'must read before you're 21'?!! More like, before you are old enough to be beaten up at school for reading stories of animals dressed in jerkins and petticoats and mop-caps, surely?! On the other end of the scale, of course, were great novels such as Catch 22. But while I would definitely recommend this to anyone, and currently have one of my caustic teenagers delighting in it, I would not assume to debar those of age from a thorough enjoyment of it. So why, dear The Times, the tender age of 21? Is is just to make your readers feel old and past it before their time? Well, Sebastian Faulks, that literary object of idolatry to my former adolescent self - I mean, who has read Birdsong and not wanted to go to bed with the author? (though, of course, I did not say that to my own English teacher at the time who'd recommended it to our class. No, I was still far too deeply blushed by its awakening to countenance admitting to that!) - answered for the choice when he said his entry, Orwell's essays I believe, marked an important step in his coming of to maturity. And yes, I am sure we all have books that we read at one time or another and which seemed to speak just to us, or through which we fell from innocence and grew into the wise and wonderful (bitter and bitten) beings we are today, so that we cannot but look back on those books with the fondness and gratitude of nostalgia. But why, oh why, does The Times imagine that our beloved authors' choices are going to fit with our own or should be laid down for the edification of a young Great Britain? Surely, if anything such a list shows it is the subjectivity with which we - particularly as adolescents - enter the covers of a book, as between the sheets of a some-time lover. So, while I rather hate to have to admit it, I think that Nigella Lawson (that genius of, not so much the art of cooking as of eating - or, as in her last show, of opening jars from Waitrose ...and eating) was right: the books we read before we are 21 are not books that cannot be read at any time thereafter by the common reader, but books which cannot be read again by ourselves. For then those first blushes have already faded and died - that first awakening to a new knowledge or vision of ourselves and the world already dozed off into a middle age ennui - and to go back and read it again would be, to paraphrase Larkin, to cry, lamely admitting how they had touched you then but could not now.
So, in short: no, there was no Catcher in the Rye on this list, no Little Women, Jane Eyre... I am being slightly ironic (in case it wasn't apparent), mainly at myself for these are, as far as I can remember, about all I was reading around the age of 16 - apart of course from all of Sebastian Faulks (until I saw this photograph and learnt that he had a wife and kids, which spoilt the fantasy somewhat). So, what are the stereotypical bildungsroman of Western Literature? The great formation novels in which the character moves from childhood through adversity to adulthood? David Copperfield, Wikipedia suggests. Sure. Great Expectations. Yes. Dickens would feature a lot, wouldn't he? But then there's Anne of Green Gables and Lord of the Rings? Even hobbitsies go through adversity, so Tolkein tells us; and terribly annoying little Polly Annas, though their suffering is less our own than Frodo's and Sam's as it turns out. (I tried to read Anne again recently, for a student you understand, and it managed to quite crush my nostalgic attachment to it, thus proving Nigella right.) And there are the books that in all likelihood we all made to grow up with at school, such as To Kill a Mockingbird - possibly killed by a former pupil's inane annotations or another's rebellious graffiti. But then there are truly great coming of age novels we discover some time later or by ourselves, such as - for me - Sons and Lovers, and even I would hazard to say Jacob's Room (though its less coming of age than a coming to death, without meaning to spoil it for the as yet unacquainted reader). You may, however, beg to differ, or decide that I cannot nearly have grown up enough yet with such a dearth of reading material. In which case I make a plea for you to add your own choices to the list that we may grow wonderful and wise and short-sighted through too much night-reading together.
However, when all is said and done, it must be admitted that lists - and particularly book lists, as Austen's Emma knows only too well - may be rather exciting in theory but can be pretty hopeless in practise. I am a great list maker myself: shopping lists, to do lists (I have one hideous one at the moment telling me the names of all 40 students I must write reports for and, which having diligently compiled and thoroughly depressed myself with the inauguration of the existence of The List, remains very much in the imperative), bills-to-pay lists.... and most recently pros-and-cons-in-my-continued-search-for-a-new-job-list. Pro: more money. Con: longer hours. Pro: more responsibility. Con: less freedom. Pro: swanky office. Con: commercial sell-out. Pro: nice people. Con: Americans. And so it goes on. Utterly hopeless. Or at, least, my lists are. Other people's lists, on the other hand, however objectionable at least force your opinionated (and, yes, my literarily snobbish) hand (but..): The Tale of Tom Kitten?! Why not go all out and plumb for Where's Wally?!!!
I am, though, at least grateful to my friend for sending the Saturday Review pages of The Times all the way out to Hong Kong, which is something of a critical literary, and literary critical, desert where the South China Morning Post top ten bestsellers list (comprising mainly books-to-screen) compares shamefully with the New York Times', making one wonder how they can even face to draw the comparison. Ah, sigh. No, it's no good: Sunday Review newspapers are a thing of my English past when the morning unfolded into the afternoon broadsheet and glossy supplement at a time. But in the absence of a healthy supply of reading fodder - for it is not just the Review sections that seem a distant memory but also bookshops and libraries in which people are not slumped asleep or merely picking up management self-help books between meetings - in the absence of these, the list of books to read gets happily longer and longer. And long may it do so.
