Episode · EconTalk · 2025-07-28
Books mentioned on Read Like a Champion (with Doug Lemov)
Many students graduate high school today without having read a book cover to cover. Many students struggle to learn to read at all.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Animal Farm
Animal Farm by George Orwell is a renowned allegorical novella that satirizes the corruption of socialist ideals and the rise of totalitarianism through a story about farm animals overthrowing their human master.
Discussed“I gave him Animal Farm to read and I didn't give him a lot of background knowledge and I didn't tell him anything about the Russian Revolution and about how this is this is, you know, an allegory for the so he, you know, read the book diligently.”
Where to get it
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Number the Stars
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry is a poignant children's historical fiction novel that follows a young Danish girl named Annemarie Johansen as her family helps smuggle their Jewish neighbors to safety across the sea during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.
Discussed“Like, we're assuming that they're like learning about uh, you know, if it's Number the Stars, classic canonical, you know, fifth or sixth grade text set in uh, Denmark during World War II during the Nazi occupation.”
Where to get it
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Atonement
Atonement by Ian McEwan is a sweeping and intricately structured modern classic that follows the devastating lifelong consequences of a single childhood misunderstanding across multiple historical eras.
Discussed“I just finished reading uh Ian Mchuan's book Atonement. The first 60 pages of it like I didn't really someone recommended to me. I didn't really like it.”
Where to get it
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1984
1984 by George Orwell is a dystopian novel that explores totalitarianism, government surveillance, and the manipulation of truth and information.
Discussed“Almost everything that's in most important to society has been written and captured in books. And if I know those books and I have access to them, then I can connect to people about, you know, I can, if you refer to Shakespeare or to 1984, if I don't know anything about George Orwell in 1984, I can't even have”
Where to get it
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For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls is a classic novel detailing the experiences of Robert Jordan, an American volunteer attached to an antifascist guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War.
Recommended“I'm reading uh I'm reading For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway which I read 50 years ago for the first time and now I'm rereading it and I have no interest in rereading and I should just say for the record if you had said to me hey what what's your next book next book it be? How about”
Where to get it
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Middlemarch
Middlemarch by George Eliot is widely regarded as a masterwork of Victorian literature and one of the greatest social novels ever written.
Recommended“Middle March is one of my favorite novels. I read it uh 50 45 years ago probably. And the last page of Middle March is a masterpiece.”
Where to get it
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The Sound and the Fury
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner is a modernist masterpiece that chronicles the tragic decline of the once-aristocratic Compson family through a series of fractured, stream-of-consciousness perspectives.
Discussed“having tried to read um um Sound the Sound of the Fury and at 16 and not getting very far and thinking, well, it's just a bad book.”
Where to get it
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As I Lay Dying
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is a darkly humorous yet tragic novel that follows the harrowing journey of the impoverished Bundren family as they transport their matriarch's corpse across Mississippi to fulfill her final burial wish.
Recommended“so, but I took the course and uh, one of the I think the first Faulner we read was As I Lay Dying and As I Lay Dying is a book I recommend. I uh spoiler I love Faulner became one of my favorite writers and it wasn't so enamored of Conrad by the end of the course... and when”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“Uh we're going to talk about reading again today, specifically based on uh his new book co-authored with Colin Driggs and Erica Woolway, the Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading.”