It’s been a while (we won’t say how long) since anyone at Good & Gold headed “back to school,” but we still pick up on those vibes every year as September rolls around. Check out this collection of throw-back reads from our own school “daze.”
Moody moors, haunted hallways, and English estates… not to mention the brooding Mr. Rochester and fierce first-person narrator, Miss Jane Eyre herself. A teenage Anna Louise couldn’t get enough of this gothic tome, especially the version illustrated by the quirky Dame Darcy.
This hard-hitting, prize-winning novel (which Toni Morrison herself said she wrote to remind readers how hurtful racism is) still packs a punch and resonates deeply. If you haven’t re-read this since your own school days, we recommend revisiting, especially through the lens of the BLM movement.
Dark, strange, perfectly crafted. The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was Katie’s first intro to sardonic Queen of Southern Gothic, Flannery O’Conner, and it may or may not haunt her still…
Not all of us got to study decadent French poet Charles Baudelaire at school, but Lucie sure did! Still a favorite poem of hers, L’albatros took Baudelaire over 10 years to complete (but it definitely won’t take you that long to read).
Not all of us were big readers from birth, but we all sure came around. When 17-year-old Carrie first read “The Old Man and the Sea,” she was blown away by how a book can transport you to another place completely. And now she’s obsessed with reading, so you know this is a good one to revisit!
No list of school favorites would be complete without “To Kill a Mockingbird”. For Rachel, nothing quite compares to the sweetness, the innocence, the loss of innocence, the family relationships, the eloquent tackling of seriously heavy stuff. And, of course, Atticus.
