Engerlish bookies

rawr. So surely everybody who does English Lit or the equivalent will be studying texts and analysing them and writing lots and lots of esssays (joy!!!). And I want to know which ones, and what you think of them! :D Or if you don't do them anymore...but what you did ONCE UPON A TIME.

This year we're doing Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge", which is brilliant. We're also doing Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming", "King Lear" by the shaking spear and "Top Girls", by Caryl Churchill (because feminist literature is always a massive win).

Now your turn!

This year's Shakespeare study is "Hamlet", I finished it ahead of time and I quite liked it. After that is a Timothy Leary book (either "The Wars" or "Fifth Business"), then finally "The Great Gatsby", in addition to two independent study books of our choice (I've picked "Requiem For A Dream" and Chuck Palahniuk's "Choke").

Mmm. Minty.

You guys get to study two books of your choice? That's pretty sweet. I'd love to do that. And "The Great Gatsby" would be such a fantastic book to study...there's so much in it :heart:

Yeah I'm looking forward to "The Great Gatsby", been meaning to read it for the longest time.

I'm surprised that you don't get independent study novels, I've been getting them since Grade 8. :confused:

I had to do To Kill A Mockingbird for GCSEs.

I did Jane Eyre and I'm the King of the Castle for GCSE.

Yeah. Yeah I know, right.

At GCSE I did Of Mice and Men and Blood Brothers, as well as a load of Shakespeare. Once again the education system managed to make something which was probably pretty interesting the most boring experience ever. I absolutely despised English Lit, it's a wonder how I managed a C.

I am not taking English Literature until next semester, but this semester for my Great Texts class, we are reading Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, Averroes's Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory, some lais from Marie de France, some readings from Thomas Aquinas, Dante's Divine Comedy, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, More's Utopia, and Spenser's The Faerie Queene.

Over the IB, I did the following:

Kafka - The Metamorphosis
Camus - The Outsider
Sophocles - Antigone
Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice
Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Heaney - Selected poetry
Blake - Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Shakespeare - King Lear
Ibsen - A Doll's House
Marlowe - Dr. Faustus
Miller - Death of a Salesman
Beckett - Waiting for Godot
Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper
Chopin - The Awakening
Hardy - Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Yellow Wallpaper and Awakening got changed for the second year because they didn't fulfill the criteria though I'd read them over the summer anyway. Got replaced by some short stories by Guy de Maupassant and In Patagonia (Chatwin), the latter of which I've still yet to read. I also read Brave New World (Huxley), The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood) and A Clockwork Orange (Burgess) for my extended essay on the subject of dystopia (to add to Nineteen Eighty-Four, Fahrenheit 451 and The Man in the High Castle which I already had under my belt).

GCSE involved To Kill A Mockingbird (Lee) and An Inspector Calls (Priestley) for the English literature exam.

H-how...how many do you guys have to read? smurf. I love reading but I'd die with all that. And it's all heavy stuff like Camus and wtf.

But that's so brilliant. What did you think of "Waiting for Godot"? Ain't it brilliant? :D

Its been years since my GCSEs. I think we done "Lamb" but I forget the author, was a pretty easy book and not one I'd have seen as as syllabus book for an English qualification.

Genuinely enjoyed the book though, read it in two days on my own before they even read it in the class.

All I remember is Educating Rita, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Midsummer Night's Dream. I liked them quite a bit too, it never would've occured to me to read them outside of lessons, but, and this is probably nostalgia talking, I want to read them again...

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Originally Posted by Resha

H-how...how many do you guys have to read? smurf. I love reading but I'd die with all that. And it's all heavy stuff like Camus and wtf.

But that's so brilliant. What did you think of "Waiting for Godot"? Ain't it brilliant? :D

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That's over two years remember. The Outsider isn't really that heavy or at least I didn't find it that way. I found it to be quite an enjoyable book to read really.

Waiting for Godot is absolutely fantastic. As well as reading the book we watched a film of it that was quite good too. It's so silly and slapstick in places and it really just stands really out from every other play I've read.

so far all the essays we'll be writing these year are personal and reflexive.

I hate having to write analytical essays about reading material. Hell, I hate writing essays. It's just so boring and restrictive. The essays are never broad, they're always extremely narrow and they're always stuff like your feelings. At which point I usually just bull:skull::skull::skull::skull: my way though it.

Reading 6 books of our choice, but they have to be approved by the teacher because they have to be usable on the AP Exam. I'm reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man now and plan to read Candide next. Not really sure what else yet though.

If I could get a practical, well-paying job in Literature, I probably would go for it because it's really my favorite subject, but that's not the case.

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Originally Posted by Boner Guy

Yeah I'm looking forward to "The Great Gatsby", been meaning to read it for the longest time.

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I looked forward to it too, but oh man, I could hardly get through it.

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Originally Posted by I Took the Red Pill

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Originally Posted by Boner Guy

Yeah I'm looking forward to "The Great Gatsby", been meaning to read it for the longest time.

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I looked forward to it too, but oh man, I could hardly get through it.

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I'm not a big fan of the book, but I thought the fact that it was really quite dull and hollow at times it was an accurate reflection of the society that Fitzgerald describes in the book.

He was describing the glamorous '20s though :cry: The Jazz Age! Before the Depression! Man, I just loved it. I thought the way he wrote about sparkling society at the start and then about them at the end -- what turncoats. It was tragic. The funeral bit actually made me cry, it was just so lonesome, and you start hating them all so MUCH for being so shallow. :irked: grrrrr

And on "Waiting For Godot" -- :D!! We've never studied this, but I watched quite a brilliant performance of it by the A2 Drama class last year, and I've been immensely interested in Beckett ever since. Theatre of the Absurd is just so...wow. Because I just can't figure it out at ALL, and everything about Godot is just speculation, but I love that it makes me think so much -- like who is Godot, and why're they waiting, etc etc... Yeah

hmm these are books i had to read in highschool

Great Expectations
David Copperfield
There Eyes Were Watching God
As I Lay Dying
Cry the Beloved Country
Great Gatsby
The Things They Carried
Farenheit 451
Of Mice and Men
Pride and Prejudice
Importance of being Earnest
Frankenstein

These are only ones that are more well-known...there were other books and essays that we read too...but i can't remember them all...and the only ones i enjoyed were Great Gatsby, MIce and men, Frankenstein, and things they carried...oh and I read Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird in middleschool, which were both great

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Originally Posted by Resha

He was describing the glamorous '20s though :cry: The Jazz Age! Before the Depression! Man, I just loved it. I thought the way he wrote about sparkling society at the start and then about them at the end -- what turncoats. It was tragic. The funeral bit actually made me cry, it was just so lonesome, and you start hating them all so MUCH for being so shallow. :irked: grrrrr

And on "Waiting For Godot" -- :D!! We've never studied this, but I watched quite a brilliant performance of it by the A2 Drama class last year, and I've been immensely interested in Beckett ever since. Theatre of the Absurd is just so...wow. Because I just can't figure it out at ALL, and everything about Godot is just speculation, but I love that it makes me think so much -- like who is Godot, and why're they waiting, etc etc... Yeah

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Oh yes, but Fitzgerald certainly didn't come across as a fan of the 1920s from the way he wrote the novel and certainly portrayed it as being a hollow and relatively superficial decade. It was a good book, but I'm just not a fan.

As for Godot, I think there's a fair bit you can read into it when you think about other absurdist literature such as things by Kafka and Camus (granted I had a little grounding in it). I don't think it's something that is supposed to make sense by convention. It's supposed to take people out of their comfort zone of understanding why and how things happen in order to really make them consider their lives and take a step back from reality in order to do so. A lot of people seem to think that 'Godot' is in fact God, but as Beckett said "if by Godot I had meant God I would have said God."

Man, now my expectations have tempered.

Thanks boyos.

Ah well, there's still "The Wars" to look forward to. Unless anyone has any objections to that and would like to spoil my anticipation? Nay? ;)

You should read As I Lay Dying then, resha.

Ohh, who's it by? :)

william faulkner. not exactly *english* lit, but pretty insane reading just the same.

Once upon a time I studied;
Of Mice and Men
Blood Brothers
Romeo and Juliet :jess:

I'm going to study this semestre:

Othello
Henry V
Twelfth Night

and

Antony and Cleopatra :(

Of course I still have the german books ^^

S-shakespeare overload, much? :( I mean, I love the fellow and stuff -- but four -- Jesus.

I have a subject in uni that is all about Shakespeare ^^ and the german one is all about Goethe! ^^ I don't mind at all ^^

I no longer do any form of English studies, but last year I studied:

The Great Gatsby - oh man. I couldn't stand this novel. I mean, it may be greatly descriptive and all that, but... ugh, it was so... dry and boring. Although, we did watch the movie version. That's really the only reason I actually know anything about the story - I hardly read any of the novel. :( But, I did hate Tom and Daisy at the end of it (I actually read the end of it xD). But, at the same time, I was rejoicing. The book was over!

and... umm...

All My Sons, Arthur Miller. I can't even remember much about this play. We read through it, some of the lines in it were hilarious. I just remember laughing my way through the play. Although, I laughed everyday in English ANYWAY. xD

But yeah, they're the stuff I did. But, no more books and novels and plays for me! :jess: