Ten top books about teaching

At the Guardian, the author of The Secret Teacher: Dispatches from the Classroom tagged ten top books about teaching, including:

Stoner by John Williams

Another classic of US literature, this exquisitely melancholy novel became a surprise bestseller in 2013, almost 50 years after it was written. William Stoner is a farm boy who falls in love with books and becomes an academic at the University of Missouri. Williams describes the transformational power of literature, its value in keeping the noisy world out, and the bitchy departmental infighting recognisable to all teachers. To be a teacher was to be “simply a man to whom his book is true, to whom is given a dignity of art that has little to do with his foolishness or weakness or inadequacy as a man”.

Read about another entry on the list.

Stoner is among Jamie Fewery's ten best fictional fathers and Colum McCann's top ten novels featuring poets.

--Marshal Zeringue