As summer comes upon us, (terribly strange to think that summer is nearly here with all of these thunderstorms and rainy days....) the myth of lazy days with nothing to do float to the surface.
Of course, we know those are just myths and imaginations. Summer actually gets busier. And if you're a student, you have to do the required reading, in addition to the school term reading.
But the doom of the required reading list is that you are cursed to ahte the books. Why? Because you HAVE TO read them, and then listen to someone tear them apart and make them mean things that you have no idea how they go to that conclusion. Sometimes a book is just a book. Soemtimes it's a metaphor for everything. And sometimes it's whatever the teacher wants it to be. (Those are the most dangerous ones - teachers and books.)
Here's the school's summer reading list as copy and pasted from their page. How many have you read? How many of thenm did you like or dislike?
Tunkhannock Area High School English Department
Recommended Summer Reading List
AUTHOR TITLE
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart
Agee, James A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert The Stranger
Cather, Willa Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chekhov, Anton The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen The Red Badge of Courage
Dante Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man
Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry Tom Jones
Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust
Hardy, Thomas Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Heller, Joseph Catch-22
Hemingway, Ernest A Farewell to Arms
Homer The Iliad
Hugo, Victor The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God
James, Henry The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong The Woman Warrior
Lewis, Sinclair Babbitt
Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman Moby Dick
Morrison, Toni Beloved
O'Neill, Eugene Long Day's Journey into Night
Pasternak, Boris Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia The Bell Jar
Proust, Marcel Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William Macbeth
Shakespeare, William A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath
Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David Walden
Tolstoy, Leo War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan Fathers and Sons
Voltaire Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith The House of Mirth
Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard Native Son
I ask you this question:
What would your required reading list be for summer or for school? What books do you think ever student should read by the time they graduate with their diploma?
Are there any books you think inappropriate or that aren't worth reading? Perhaps the book is too 'old' for the student (meaning the students typically lack a maturity or experience level needed to fully appreciate or comprehend the book)? Were there any books that you absolutely loved? Why (for all the questions)?
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
old favorites
I have found myself in between adult fiction books of late. I finished the Cookbook Collector recently, and for as lovely as it was, it wasn't what I was looking for. it was a good story, beautifully written, and deserving of the Jane Austen comparisons. Yet it wasn't something I would sneak away to bed early to cuddle up with in my mass of covers and quilts. (Yes it is late May, and I still have two quilts on the bed, and a wool blanket.) My palate still craved something else.
So I began scanning my shelves, and came upon Laurie R. King's The Game.
It's another of the Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell series. I loved it before, so I tried it again. It fit perfectly. It even spent the better part of ten hours in the hospital waiting room with me.
I am close to finishing it again. The second time so far. I am sure there will be more.
Next on the adult fiction reading list: The Radleys by Matt Haig. I have high hopes for it.
What are the books you can read again and again?
So I began scanning my shelves, and came upon Laurie R. King's The Game.
It's another of the Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell series. I loved it before, so I tried it again. It fit perfectly. It even spent the better part of ten hours in the hospital waiting room with me.
I am close to finishing it again. The second time so far. I am sure there will be more.
Next on the adult fiction reading list: The Radleys by Matt Haig. I have high hopes for it.
What are the books you can read again and again?
Monday, May 2, 2011
Homer, Langley, Doctorow, and Literary..
Kristin and I have this bet going... Not a bet per se, but a "won't it be interesting to see what happens" thing. The Book in question: E. L. Doctorow's Homer & Langley.
What never heard of it?
I'm not surprised. Sadly. Though if you've been reading the Reviews, you should have read one other review of a Doctorow Book: The March (the one that way nominated for the Pulitzer).
Doctorow has name recognition. His publishing history is extensive and well acclaimed. There's been one Broadway musical based off his book (Ragtime!), along with multiple movies, including Ragtime! He's won numerous awards, and has been an esteemed member of the NYU community. If you google his name, or his name +reviews, you find a mind boggling amounts of hits. If you go to Amazon.com, you find the same thing.
So why haven't you ever heard of him? Probably because he's 'literary.' Well, what does that mean? It means he makes his readers work. some of his books, by his own admission, are more difficult to read (City of God being one of them). His pieces can be grand in scope, detailed, and weave in a thousand different elements like a tapestry. The March does this. Or they can be intimate, quiet little things that pull you into the mind of the narrator. Homer &Langley is a great example of that.
It's like this: Pop fiction = McDonalds, Dennys, or Chinese Buffets. You can get the same stuff anywhere you go, and it will taste the same way. There will be variations if you ask for it, but that's it. You come away having read it, and you might find yourself hungry in about an hour. And if you take home leftovers, you better eat them that day or the next because after that, they just get minging. That's pop fiction.
There's nothing wrong with that. I like a good pile of lo-mein, and cheese won tons on my plate as much as the next person. And heaven help me do I love a good chocolate frosty from Wendy's.
Literary is different. Literary fiction is like eating at one of those restraunts, where they put your leftovers in the tin foil swan, or some hole in the wall where the menu changes every other week. There the dining experience is different. It's longer, it's more involved. It may involve different courses, or it may involve having no idea what you're ordering but finding something brand new, that only this one establishment makes. And when you're done with your meal, you leave, with your little tin foil swan, and look forward to warming it up. Or you remember that meal and that experience, and long to go back to that establishment (maybe you do).
That's Literary fiction. Its diverse. It's challenging sometimes. It's going to be different from the run of the mill, and often even with the same author, you may not get the same style every time. But the experience will leave you satisfied, full, and wanting to return again and again to that book, and to that author.
But it has that word Literary attached to it. That snobbish stigma that only the overly educated elite read it, or are allowed to read it, or would want to read it. Dumb stigma.
Reading is like watching a classical symphony concert, and especially watching the Maestro. To most people, the Maestro is someone who just stands up in front of the orchestra and waves his arms around.
But to the more astute eye, the Maestro controls the entire orchestra. He or she expresses what he wants, hat he needs the orchestra to do through this hands, through his facial expressions, through his body posture. A sloppy Maestro will lead the orchestra, and they'll get the job done, but it will be nothing spectacular. They may have to 'pound' out what they want the orchestra to do, they may not e in sync with the different sections. The Maestro may also be so full of himself that he just stands up and looks pretty while the real work is done by the concertmaster, and the orchestra basically plays and leads itself. These are all bad signs.
Then there are the Maestros who are so in tune with their orchestra that they can just give the musicians a look, or a glance, a raised eyebrow, a facial expression, or maybe a tiny hand gesture, and they will eek out of the musicians exactly what is needed. An excellent Maestro should make it look effortless.
The same can be said for writers. The writers who make it look effortless, who are so in tune with their musicians (the characters the writing craft,) those are the ones you want to read. Doctorow makes this look simple. He is one of the ones who can give a look, a tiny finger twitch, and make the words go dancing into line with practiced ease. He may take you through a symphony you don't know, or through many different movements, some dark, some spry, some unfamiliar. It may make you stretch your opinions of what you like. But by the time it's done, you should feel like you've gone on a journey, that you have come out on the other side, and that you have been enlightened and enriched for having listened to it. (Think of Beethoven's 9th symphony. Can you ever listen to that and feel bored, or not find your spirit soaring? Or Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, a piece that stretched the norms of classical and jazz and fused them together?)
Doctorow is like that. LIterary fiction is like that.
Homer &Langley, is probably one of the most approachable of Doctorow's works, up there with Ragtime! The scope is much smaller, the focus is on the two brothers with one consistent narrator, rather than it spanning several characters in multiple, simultaneous locations. The book is written in first person, with an intended audience (the narrator has someone in mind that he's writing to though we don't find out who until the end, and it's not really pivotal. We've gotten through most of the book without knowing who it is, so there you go.....) But what we do get is a narrator who is the brother to someone whose mind is not intact, yet the narration is biased by his brotherly love for him. So while an outsider would just say, so and so is just an all out nutter, we have another view that may or may not be able or willing to admit the depth of the eccentricities that may lead to madness, until it is too late.
It is beautiful. There are parts that I just want to read again and again they are so exquisitely written. The story humanizes two men of folk hero/urban legend status and gives them breath, and life, and sympathy. If you like history, or weird psychology, or the tv show Hoarders..... or just all out great writing.
It's not a popcorn book (like popcorn movies that just blow things up, have fast car chases, and really, really pretty people). It is far more satisfying.
That's how it is with literary fiction. So don't be scared. I'll hold your hand
What never heard of it?
I'm not surprised. Sadly. Though if you've been reading the Reviews, you should have read one other review of a Doctorow Book: The March (the one that way nominated for the Pulitzer).
Doctorow has name recognition. His publishing history is extensive and well acclaimed. There's been one Broadway musical based off his book (Ragtime!), along with multiple movies, including Ragtime! He's won numerous awards, and has been an esteemed member of the NYU community. If you google his name, or his name +reviews, you find a mind boggling amounts of hits. If you go to Amazon.com, you find the same thing.
So why haven't you ever heard of him? Probably because he's 'literary.' Well, what does that mean? It means he makes his readers work. some of his books, by his own admission, are more difficult to read (City of God being one of them). His pieces can be grand in scope, detailed, and weave in a thousand different elements like a tapestry. The March does this. Or they can be intimate, quiet little things that pull you into the mind of the narrator. Homer &Langley is a great example of that.
It's like this: Pop fiction = McDonalds, Dennys, or Chinese Buffets. You can get the same stuff anywhere you go, and it will taste the same way. There will be variations if you ask for it, but that's it. You come away having read it, and you might find yourself hungry in about an hour. And if you take home leftovers, you better eat them that day or the next because after that, they just get minging. That's pop fiction.
There's nothing wrong with that. I like a good pile of lo-mein, and cheese won tons on my plate as much as the next person. And heaven help me do I love a good chocolate frosty from Wendy's.
Literary is different. Literary fiction is like eating at one of those restraunts, where they put your leftovers in the tin foil swan, or some hole in the wall where the menu changes every other week. There the dining experience is different. It's longer, it's more involved. It may involve different courses, or it may involve having no idea what you're ordering but finding something brand new, that only this one establishment makes. And when you're done with your meal, you leave, with your little tin foil swan, and look forward to warming it up. Or you remember that meal and that experience, and long to go back to that establishment (maybe you do).
That's Literary fiction. Its diverse. It's challenging sometimes. It's going to be different from the run of the mill, and often even with the same author, you may not get the same style every time. But the experience will leave you satisfied, full, and wanting to return again and again to that book, and to that author.
But it has that word Literary attached to it. That snobbish stigma that only the overly educated elite read it, or are allowed to read it, or would want to read it. Dumb stigma.
Reading is like watching a classical symphony concert, and especially watching the Maestro. To most people, the Maestro is someone who just stands up in front of the orchestra and waves his arms around.
But to the more astute eye, the Maestro controls the entire orchestra. He or she expresses what he wants, hat he needs the orchestra to do through this hands, through his facial expressions, through his body posture. A sloppy Maestro will lead the orchestra, and they'll get the job done, but it will be nothing spectacular. They may have to 'pound' out what they want the orchestra to do, they may not e in sync with the different sections. The Maestro may also be so full of himself that he just stands up and looks pretty while the real work is done by the concertmaster, and the orchestra basically plays and leads itself. These are all bad signs.
Then there are the Maestros who are so in tune with their orchestra that they can just give the musicians a look, or a glance, a raised eyebrow, a facial expression, or maybe a tiny hand gesture, and they will eek out of the musicians exactly what is needed. An excellent Maestro should make it look effortless.
The same can be said for writers. The writers who make it look effortless, who are so in tune with their musicians (the characters the writing craft,) those are the ones you want to read. Doctorow makes this look simple. He is one of the ones who can give a look, a tiny finger twitch, and make the words go dancing into line with practiced ease. He may take you through a symphony you don't know, or through many different movements, some dark, some spry, some unfamiliar. It may make you stretch your opinions of what you like. But by the time it's done, you should feel like you've gone on a journey, that you have come out on the other side, and that you have been enlightened and enriched for having listened to it. (Think of Beethoven's 9th symphony. Can you ever listen to that and feel bored, or not find your spirit soaring? Or Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, a piece that stretched the norms of classical and jazz and fused them together?)
Doctorow is like that. LIterary fiction is like that.
Homer &Langley, is probably one of the most approachable of Doctorow's works, up there with Ragtime! The scope is much smaller, the focus is on the two brothers with one consistent narrator, rather than it spanning several characters in multiple, simultaneous locations. The book is written in first person, with an intended audience (the narrator has someone in mind that he's writing to though we don't find out who until the end, and it's not really pivotal. We've gotten through most of the book without knowing who it is, so there you go.....) But what we do get is a narrator who is the brother to someone whose mind is not intact, yet the narration is biased by his brotherly love for him. So while an outsider would just say, so and so is just an all out nutter, we have another view that may or may not be able or willing to admit the depth of the eccentricities that may lead to madness, until it is too late.
It is beautiful. There are parts that I just want to read again and again they are so exquisitely written. The story humanizes two men of folk hero/urban legend status and gives them breath, and life, and sympathy. If you like history, or weird psychology, or the tv show Hoarders..... or just all out great writing.
It's not a popcorn book (like popcorn movies that just blow things up, have fast car chases, and really, really pretty people). It is far more satisfying.
That's how it is with literary fiction. So don't be scared. I'll hold your hand
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