Reading List for the Higher School Certificate English

The new texts featured on a draft list for the Higher School Certificate English reading list to be taught in New South Wales (Australia) schools from 2009 have been published. It is interesting to see what is being considered as important for young people in Australia in terms of English. Teaching the Wikipedia would be interesting; as a critical exercise it could be brilliant. I heard a lot of Romulus My Father read on ABC Radio national each lunchtime when I was there recently- a fine text although I did not get the full drift of it as I drove around in a hire car performing family duties (ironic is it not). While not revolutionary this looks like an interesting list:


■ LITERATURE

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri; Rainbow's End by Jane Harrison; Romulus, My Father by Raimond Gaita; The Penguin Banjo Paterson: Collected Verse by A.B. Paterson; The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon; A Man With Five Children by Nick Enright ; The Story Of Tom Brennan by J.C. Burke; Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung; The Aunt's Story by Patrick White; Swallow The Air by Tara June Winch; Wit by Margaret Edson; Sonnets From The Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Sixty Lights by Gail Jones; The Orchard by Drusilla Modjeska; The Invention Of Solitude by Paul Auster; Neuromancer by William Gibson; Orlando by Virginia Woolf.


■ FILM

Run, Lola, Run by Tom Tykwer; Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock; 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick; Wag The Dog by Barry Levinson; Looking For Richard by Al Pacino; Ten Canoes by Rolf de Heer.


■ MULTIMEDIA

Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia, www.wikipedia.org; Making Multicultural Australia, www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au; September 11: Bearing Witness To History, an online resource about the 9/11 attacks, www.americanhistory.si.edu/september11.