Subversion in Borders
I was in Borders this morning, looking for a copy of The Adventures of Johnny Bunko (see previous post), and doing my usual browse of the graphic novels. Just to the left of the Manga books was a slim display of books marked as a ‘Personal Study Selection’. Personal Study is what used to be the dreaded RPR in Higher English – review of personal reading – and requires the weans to read a book and write a Higher standard critical essay on it, supposedly with little teacher input, although it doesn’t always work out that way. A lot of bookshops have this kind of display, but I was impressed on first glance by this one. For a start, they had a whole shelf called ‘dystopian futures’. Fantastic. There were ‘ones by the girls’ with wonderful Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter titles among others, a nice selection in interesting classics, and a world fiction section, each with a pithy display card introducing the theme. Brilliant, I thought, this is the kind of thing they should be reading. Then I looked up……
Nice.
The selection of apparently shocking tales included American Psycho, The Piano Teacher, The Photographer of Vienna, Hunger and Swung.
You know, it probably says a lot about me as a teacher that I’m delighted by the concept, and by the choice of books, but dismayed by the missing apostrophe on the shelf card, which reads “Fictions dark and dirty side”.
I need help.
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