It was! I looked it up and the summary matches what I remember.

I found the list, it may be missing some poems but this is largely what we covered:

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr

Arcadia - Tom Stoppard

Dulce et Decorum est - Wilfred Owen

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Kindred - Octavia E. Butler

Life of Galileo - Bertolt Brecht

Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw

Suicide in the Trenches - Siegfried Sassoon

The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King

The Lady's Not for Burning - Christopher Fry

The Mortal Immortal - Mary Shelley

Awesome, I haven't heard of half of this list. This will be great shelter-in-place reading.

Well, at leats they had Canticle, so well done for not being totally closed, but the problem with this and many reading lists is it's just. so. predictable.

Authors in the above I have not heard of: Laurie R. King, Christopher Fry

I'm not saying these are bad but the list focuses on what's well known, not what's obscure and perhaps better. In that sense it's gutless. It invites you down the well trodden paths where there's no risk of upset, all carefully vetted. And it makes me sad because it seems to want to usher people into conformity, of not being open to new ideas. Don't scare the horses.

I don't have time to list books I'd find interesting, but this is depressing for me.

...aaand the inevitable downvotes. Not "you're wrong, here's why", just a surly response that you don't like it. I made my point clearly enough, the lack of a constructive response kind of backs up that being stuck in a rut is a good thing in literature.

(I suppose it could have been down to me not offering an alternative reading list, but I don't think that's all of it)