Books read in college

[SnowQueen189]

Hi! I was wondering if anyone could give me an idea of what books I'll be expected to read in my lit classes for college next year. (I'll be a freshman, so I don't really know what to expect.) I'm taking 2 classes that involve substantial amounts of reading: Intro to Literature and Fundamental Interperative Reading (a theater class). I was in AP Lit/Comp last year and the books will probably be similar, but I was hoping to get a headstart on my reading. Anything will help. Thanks!

[Quark]

The great thing about college is that you can pick your classes. If you don't like American modernism, you don't have to take a class on it and force an attentive expression during a seemingly pointless and insipid lecture. If you're majoring in English, then there will be some pointless, insipid lectures that are unavoidable--get that attentive expression ready. Mostly, though, you will get a choice, and often the reading lists are pre-established so students know what they are getting themselves into. Try to manipulate the prerequisite system to cram as many classes (really, books) that you like as possible in your 15 hours (or whatever).

As for the characteristics of a book which qualify it for university study, I wish I could be more forthcoming. There is a CANON which contains certain works which I'm sure you will be exposed to. Books like Great Expectations, The Sound and The Fury, and Moby Dick will be read firsthand, and other works by more difficult authors like James Joyce, Thomad Pynchon, or non-English authors will make up a secondary background which will be referred to. You can decide for yourself whether you like this CANON or not.

If you're still curious about what books you might see or how class discussion may be handled, I can be more specific.

[PeterL]

Look at the college's website and see if the course catalogue is included. Many colleges have course descriptios that include some, or all of the reading list. If you know who will be teaching the classes that you will be taking, you could email that person and get the reading list that way.

[applepie]

Peter is right. Most schools will at least give you the test book and then you can preview it to see what you will be reading. My lit classes were primarily short stories but I did a Mythology and Folklore class in which we read some interesting works. I think we covered part of the Iliad in that class.

[SnowQueen189]

Thanks for your help. I had looked on the website, but it didn't give the syllabi or the required textbooks for each class (It won't be available until Aug 3rd). I only have the teacher for my intro to lit class, so i'll try to email her.

But what I was acutally looking for was some suggestions of books to read. I've already read Great Expectations and Moby Dick (well, I actuallly <i>tried</i> to read Moby Dick and failed :bawling: ) in addition to many other classics. I just wasn't sure what books Intro to lit might include...

[JADJARHD]

Being a science major, I didn't take to many English classes. The ones I did take, however, never required an entire book. Instead they had texts with selections of literature. Excerts, short stories, and poems. Each one tried to sample the literature of different eras and regions starting with Gilgamesh and moving up through Victorian literature.

One complete text we did cover, and that irked me, was Hamlet. It was required in my Freshman English class as well as the required Art/Music/Theater class. This in addition to the fact that I read it in my High School honors course. It would have been nice if someone had thrown in some other Shakespeare somewhere.

[grace86]

In my world lit class I read so many differents things. Greek and Roman mythology (Illiad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Oresteia, Lysistrata, Electra), Chinese poetry, we read a lot of middle ages stuff (Song of Roland, Lais of Marie de France) then went on to a lot of pre-renaissance and renaissance lit (Shakespeare, parts of Don Quixote, Dante, Paradise Lost--parts), Mesoamerican literature (Popul Vuh)...all this is the stuff I remember reading...I read tons more.

It really depends on what type of literature class you are taking. Intro Lit right??

[PeterL]

A huge variety of literature may be included in some class. Take a look at the Norton Anthologies to get some idea as to what.

[grace86]

A huge variety of literature may be included in some class. Take a look at the Norton Anthologies to get some idea as to what.

Yes Peter, I used the three world lit volumes from Norton for my class. They are pretty awesome.

[hedbanger]

Hard ones D:

[Cassiel240]

The canon is so huge, as people have said, that it isn't really as if there is some list of books that you "should have read" as a student. My own reading has been somewhat obscure, in fact, and I'm just now learning to get over the feeling that by now I "should have read" this or that because I find most people have read it. That said, if you can find things that a lot of people have read, you suddenly have lots of people to talk those books over with! I've felt a little left out of the conversation by the fact that I've never read, say, very much classical mythology. I'm trying to fix that at the moment by reading Ovid's Metamorphoses, which is filling in huge gaps as I go (it's great to know what Milton is alluding to, for instance, when he compares the Son to Apollo). So there are things you could read that might give you a really good foundation.
One way to find out what the list "most people have read" consists of is to get on Amazon.com and look at people's lists. There are even some lists which people have made out of required reading lists for their college classes (I did this for an Arab lit class, actually, because the books we had to read for it were so excellent).
I think it's really great to read some of the foundations of the literature of your own culture, though, because it provides you with the heritage of later works (as I'm finding with Ovid). Writers borrow from their forefathers/mothers very heavily, and it can really improve your grasp of the meaning of a work if you know to who/what the writer is alluding. For English speakers, this means Langland, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton, and beyond that, as I noted, classical mythologies.

There must be a resource for this, now that I think about it. I'm going to search for it. I'll let you know if I find anything helpful to this question.

[Il Penseroso]

One place you might want to take a look at is your school's bookstore. I've always found it interesting to peruse my own in search of interesting books to read, or familiar names I have read. However, I occasionally have had to mentally slap my wrist when reaching for these books to purchase with my own class textbooks, as I end up spending more than enough money on just what's required for classes I do take.