Required Reading: Fall 2004

so...for some of us, it's time to read fewer and fewer of the novels that we have begun to love. it is time to read only what's on the syllabi - and how!

this fall, i have four classes. i won't know the required books for Certain until monday for intellectual heritage (TBA) - we are strongly advised to wait for our profs to tell us, but this is my list so far:

math:
rote text (ok, it's algebra, i fell asleep in trig in '86, so am in need of major refreshment as far as equations go, lol.)
sociology:
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie - story about Michael Patrick MacDonald's childhood in the "Old Colony projects of South Boston...highest concentration of impoverished whites in the U.S." promises to be a good read. started it today after came home from the bookstore.
American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood - perhaps a self-explanatory title, but to expound, Marie Arana's parents are American (U.S.) and Peruvian. looking forward to this as well. the titles and content remind me of my humanities class last fall, to an extent. although soc. here has a lab (???).
Intersections - assorted readings. some of the topics: the normality of crime; women in the global factory; the new immigration and ethnicity in the united states; how will the internet [:)]change society?; & the way we weren't: the myth and reality of the 'traditional family.'
international politics:
another rote text with various topics, but it does discuss current politics so i'll pretty much shut up about it. looks fascinating, though i don't think i'm much of one for political discussion. hey, maybe i'll learn some cultural geography along the way! :)


Okay, what's your list?

As for now I have only one list, but it's pretty terrifying for me. I haven't read a lot from it and I don't suppose I'll manage to read it all. I don't like reading if I have to, it sort of takes the whole pleasure away.

History of American Literature
Native American creation myths (Iroquois, Pima)
Bartolome de las Casas excerpts from the Norton Anthology of American Literature
A. N. Cabeza de Vaca excerpts from the Norton Anthology of American Literature
J. Smith excerpts from The General History of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles
W. Bradford excerpts from Of Plymouth Plantation
J. Winthrop A Model of Christian Charity
R. Williams A Key to the Language of America
Anne Bradstreet poems
Michael Wigglesworth The Day of Doom
E. Taylor Preparatory Meditations
God’s Determinations
S. Sewall excerpts from The Diary
C. Mather excerpts from The Wonders of the Invisible World
J. Edwards Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
B. Franklin The Way to Wealth
The Edict by the King of Prussia
The Sale of the Hessians
excerpts from The Autobiography
J. Woolman The Journal of John Woolman (excerpt): Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes
S. Occom Sermon Preached at the Executon of Moses Paul
J. H. St. J. de Crevecoeur Letters from an American Farmer (What is an American)
Th. Paine excerpts from Common Sense
Of the Theology of the Christians, and the True Theology
Th. Jefferson The Declaration of Independence
Ph. Freneau poems
Phillis Wheatley poems
Royall Tyler The Contrast
W. Irving Rip Van Winkle
The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow
William Apess An Indian Looking-Glass for the White Man
J. F. Cooper The Pioneers
N. Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter
Young Goodman Brown
The Minister's Black Veil
My Kinsman, Major Molineux
preface to The House of the Seven Gables
H. Melville Moby Dick
Billy Budd, Sailor
R. W. Emerson Nature
Self-Reliance
H. D. Thoreau Walden
Resistance to Civil Government
Life Without Principle
M. Fuller The Great Lawsuit
E. A. Poe The Cask of Amontillado
The Tell-Tale Heart
Ligeia
The Raven
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Purloined Letter
The Philosophy of Composition
Walt Whitman Preface to The Leaves of Grass
Song of Myself
E. Dickinson poems
Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Letters from the Earth (excerpts)
W.D. Howells Novel-Writing and Novel-Reading
Kate Chopin The Awakening, Emancipation: A Life Fable
H. James Daisy Miller
The Art of Fiction
S. Crane The Red Badge of Courage
The Open Boat
Th. Dreiser Sister Carrie


I just hope most of them will turn out to be interesting ones.

i studied cabeza de vaca for humanities this spring. his was a very interesting story. the edict sounds pretty cool. ooh! and thomas paine. we have a thomas paine house here in philly. i've never thought to read any of his stuff. oooh. and washington irving. can i laud his stuff any more already - Great stories...reading further: what a lot of novels. i adored the red badge of courage, btw.

all i can say is omg, you have a lot of books on your plate; how many classes do you have? you're a lit major, yes? (i hope.) :)

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Originally Posted by amuse

all i can say is omg, you have a lot of books on your plate; how many classes do you have? you're a lit major, yes? (i hope.) :)

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yup. i'm studying English and American Literature. this semsester i have 5 classes: philosophy, history of american literature, history of english literature, interpretation of literature and a foreign language (hopefully swedish). tough, tough...

The programs of my Uni are out finally but I just had a quick look online and will get a paper one on Monday (much easier to consult!)

I'll do English Lit. on the first semester while I'm in Hungary, and it'll be Shakespeare... I've never studied him and I've never felt really attracted to his work, so I hope that this will teach me to appreciate it...I dont remember the works we'll study specifically, but there's none I really know (no Romeo & Juliet ;)).

I'll do Russian Lit. on the second semester when I'm back here, and the novels I have to read are, funnily:
War & Peace, which I've read already and will never fully read again but I'm curious to see if I get more of it at lessons, cos my opinion of it is not flattering...
The Captain's Daughter (Pushkin) which I read ages ago and it's really time to refresh
and, amazingly, 2 books that already were on top of my 'to read' pile and were ready to be read in the next weeks:
One day of Ivan Denisovich (Solzenycin)
and Doktor Zivago (Pasternak).

I didn't carefully read which critical works are in the program, I spotted some of the usual stuff we have read parts of in the previous years...

That's it for the literatures, I'll have other subjects such as History of Philosophy and Theory of Translation (which is a crappy short course I dont expect much from) but I'll think about these probably when I'm back here... Plus the languages of course, I'm taking a third one which might be German even if I dont like it... While I'm in Hungary I'd love to take Serbian and Ukrainian which we dont have here but it will be only for fun as they won't count in my studies and I fear I wont have time... :( I'll try to learn Hungarian but it looks pretty much impossible...:eek:

and Monica, that's really a big list... then they say that we Italians have to read more, it really doesnt seem so... Though it looks like another proof that Uni here is much easier than anywhere else.

Machiavelli--The Prince
Thomas More--Utopia
selected writings of Martin Luther
Plato--The Last Days of Socrates
Saint Augustine--Confessions
The Bhagavad-Gita
John Stuart Mill--On Liberty
E.O. Wilson--Consilience
Pedro Calderon de la Barca--La Vida es Sueno
and un collecion de escritorios Mexicanos

for the 1st class:
Oedipus Tyrannus - Sophocles
Antigone - "
The Republic - Plato
The Holy Bible
The Koran
The Bhagavad Gita
Discoveries and Opinions of Galilieo
The Prince - Machiavelli
and a Reader with poems by Sappho (today's assignment) and etc. etc. to the nth.

so nome1486, we have a few of the same texts. :)

Hmm,

some pretty heavy tomes on Organic, Physical Chemistry and Phase Equilibria.

Calculus, Mechanics, Stats, Algebra, Maths, Physics, Modern Physics, Astronomy and Astrological Studies, Envoirnmental Physics, Electronics... I think there are about 15-20 text-books I gotta read this fall. :(

Egads!!!
let me know if you want to discuss astrological studies. i taught myself to do charts 20-ish yrs. ago.
and good luck sleeping. i'm always so impressed when people study o-chem.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by amuse

so nome1486, we have a few of the same texts. :)

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:) Tell me what you think of the Prince when you get to it, I'm reading that right now in one of my classes (along with a medieval Spanish poem I forgot to mention called Poema del Cid--I'm a little worried about getting through that one).

Ya'll are really making me look forward to my junior and senior years; and no, I'm not being sarcastic. lol. I just love a challenge, and all of that looks really exciting to me. Good luck everybody!

i was a senior and after transfering, am a soph. again. i look forward to being one too!

thank you! good luck to you as well. :) and good for you, being an adult/re-entry student. there are a couple of us here.

I noticed you're taking sociology. I took that last semester; so I'm dabbling in Social Psych this semester. Fascinating subjects! I'll be interested to hear what you think of the class.

nome, we only read The Prince the last few weeks, and for part of that i was hospitalized. then came back and had to prep for exams.

we didn't read all of it, so i'm going to read that and W&P over break, but let me say, from the 10 or so chapters we covered, i love machiavelli!

really, the man was an unbelievably apt political machine, just great for his time, and a pure archetype of cuthroat genius, very economical in his ways, i don't like his ways and means necessarily but he has my greatest admiration.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Monica

Anne Bradstreet poems
J. Edwards Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Th. Paine excerpts from Common Sense
Of the Theology of the Christians, and the True Theology
Ph. Freneau poems
Phillis Wheatley poems
W. Irving Rip Van Winkle
The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow
N. Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter
Young Goodman Brown
The Minister's Black Veil
My Kinsman, Major Molineux
preface to The House of the Seven Gables
H. Melville Moby Dick
Billy Budd, Sailor
R. W. Emerson Nature
Self-Reliance
H. D. Thoreau Walden
Resistance to Civil Government
Life Without Principle
E. A. Poe The Cask of Amontillado
The Tell-Tale Heart
Ligeia
The Raven
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Purloined Letter
The Philosophy of Composition
Walt Whitman Preface to The Leaves of Grass
Song of Myself
E. Dickinson poems
Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Letters from the Earth (excerpts)
Kate Chopin The Awakening, Emancipation: A Life Fable
H. James Daisy Miller
The Art of Fiction
S. Crane The Red Badge of Courage
The Open Boat

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Good stuff! All that I have quoted, I can call greatly inspiring work that I would recommend to most students interested in literature. Even though this seems a relatively old thread, I had to comment.