The Essential EMA "Summer Reading" List!

[Mattymoo]

At the English department graduation at school, they give us a "guilt list," books we should have read by the time we graduated, instead of a diploma. I hope this helps.

Here is the link to the online version
www.sjsu.edu/english/undergraduate/guiltlist.html

[kimannjosouth]

Every summer for the last couple of years, I read one "long" classic, so add these to the list:

Moby Dick (or The Whale) by Herman Melville
and
The Ingenious Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel Cervantes

...On the Road by Jack Kerouac is good ol American summer reading, too. As for modern novels (because English majors should, in my opinion, pay attention to those as well...) the following have been at the top/hovering near the top of many snotty lists recently:

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (though it was not that great)
The Gospel of Anarchy by Justin Taylor

and oh my god, if none of you have read On Beauty by Zadie Smith... please please please add it soon. I wrote my masters thesis on it.

[Amber]

Everyone in the world should read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
Honestly. It is so fantastic.

[Susan]

I'm surprised to see Paradise Lost by Milton hasn't been mentioned. My professors have drilled into my head "To be an English Major is to know Paradise Lost" since the world of Literature contains so many references to it.

[Dodger Thirteen]

These are the pieces that my school recommends having read prior to student teaching:

1. Homer: The Odyssey and The Iliad
2. Virgil: The Aeneid (at least books 1-6)
3. Ovid: The Metamorphoses
4. Plato: The Republic, the Symposium, and The Meno
5. Aristotle: Poetics, Books 1 and 2
6. Sophocles: Oedipus Rex; Aristophanes: Lysistrata; Aeschylus: Orestia; Euripedes: Medea
7. Bible: Old and New Testament: eg, "Genesis," Exodus, "Job," All four of the Gospels
8. Dante: The Divine Comedy (at least Inferno)
9. Beowulf (Heaney translation)
10. Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales
11. Shakespeare: Hamlet, Merchant of Venice, King Lear, Othello, 1 Henry IV, Richard III, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, selected sonnets
12. Milton: Paradise Lost, Areopagitica, Of Education

[A Lady Called Katie]

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
1984 by George Orwell

And I'm going to add The Belgariad (series) by David Eddings. Five books with a five book sequel series (The Mallorean) and two companion novels (Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress). They're great reads that really got me going in the fantasy genre.

Also going to throw out The Thirteen Crimes of Science Fiction, edited by Isaac Asimov, et all. I first read it at my public library, but I'm having a wickedly hard time finding it to buy for myself.

[Marina]

As a break for the heavy reading, because let's face it, sometimes you need to read something light between the classics, I suggest The Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce. Or any of her quartets really.

And has anyone mentioned Gone With The Wind yet? It is a must!

[wildechild]

Jun 3, 2011 7:56:05 GMT -5 @Mattymoo said:

At the English department graduation at school, they give us a "guilt list," books we should have read by the time we graduated

My University has kinda the same thing, and it is HUGE.

www.elon.edu/e-web/academics/elon_college/english/readinglist.xhtml

Some Personal Reccomendations:
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Hunger Games by Suzanne Colins
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Bill Bryson (take your pick, he writes on a lot of subjects)
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien

[Marina]

Also The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
and Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur

[KatjevanLoon]

Someone asked for short stories, and I personally love Ursula K LeGuin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.

In fact, it's online.

Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water is fantastic.
Gregory Macguire's Wicked is a must-read, in my opinion.
And Cynthia Voight's Orfe is a poignant retelling of the Orpheus myth as a novella.
Harry Potter, if you haven't already. (*shock and outrage*)
Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing.
Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series.

There are others, but it's almost four-thirty a.m. and my brain is fried.

[serpentheart]

Short Stories:
Most of Edgar Allan Poe but The Tell-Tale Heart and The Pit and the Pendulum at least.
Henry James's The Turn of the Screw

Epic Poem:
Elias Lönnrot's The Kalevala especially if you are into LOTR. I think you can find an English version online.

Novels:
YA: Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl
YA: Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn
Virginia Woolf's Mrs.Dalloway

[Zeffy]

I vote for The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Every single time.

[Dodger Thirteen]

Looking at my shelves, I would definitely recommend Emerson and Thoreau. John Keats (assorted poems, but at least "Ode to a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale"). Lord Byron should also be on your list(s), as should The Poetic Edda, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Beowulf, all of Shakespeare (or at least the major plays), Vonnegut, and plenty of others.

To be honest, I would suggest perusing your English departments' course syllabi and reviewing the books professors require, especially those that are repeated. This will show you what professors (i.e. "experts" in the field) value and what you should at least be exposed to in your career as an English major.

[Fuck Yeah Dion]

Can we get a few more non-canonical suggestions in here?

Publish This Book by Stephen Markley
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart

[andy]

The new uncensored edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray which came out in April is an absolute must read this summer (although at £25.95 a hardcover copy, you might have to wait until your library gets it instead of buying it yourself). Other summery reads perfect for torrid days and pool side reading are early to mid 20th century novels on the lighter side - F. Scott Fitzgerald (just about anything by him, really), E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread, A Room with a View, Howards End), W Somerset Maugham (The Razor's Edge, The Moon and Sixpence, The Painted Veil), Evelyn Waugh (Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust - not Brideshead Revisited though, too depressing and wintery for summer), D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Robert Graves two Claudius novels (I, Claudius and Claudius the God - if you want to, paired with The Satyricon), Virginia Woolf's Orlando and her Common Reader series plus Faulkner, if you like him. Oh and Proust. Not all of In Search of Lost Time, just as much as feel enjoyable, the different volumes can very well be read on their own or with great break between them.

In terms of more recent works, magic realism seems to work extremely well in intense heat. Almost anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende would do the trick because they both write very engaging page-turner kind of prose set in exotic landscapes. Mario Vargas Llosa also deserves a mention (though he's more politically charged and his stream of consciousness novels can be hard to read in translation), Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter and The War of the End of the World are very, very awesome. Italo Calvino's neofantasy is wonderful too - Our Ancestors, Palomar, Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, everything he writes is great and very readable. If you read Italo Calvino, you might as well try Umberto Eco too, though The Name of the Rose isn't half as much fun as Baudolino. Also very exotic and very wonderful is Salman Rushdie - especially The Enchantress of Florence and Midnight's Children. Somewhere in between you could fit Ian McEwan's short novels and maybe A.S. Byatt's Victorian bricks (both Possession and The Children's Book are astonishing, earlier feminist novels are a bit of a disappointment, though). I dunno, just read something fun. I at least barely have any time to read anything that's not an assignment during term time, take advantage of your free time and enjoy yourself.