Engerlish bookies

[Resha]

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! 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!

[Boney King]

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.

[Resha]

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

[Boney King]

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.

[Quindiana Jones]

I had to do To Kill A Mockingbird for GCSEs.

[Psychotic]

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

Yeah. Yeah I know, right.

[Old Manus]

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.

[Kirobaito]

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.

[Heath]

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.

[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?

[Jimsour]

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.

[Little Blue]

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...

[Heath]

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

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.

[Chemical]

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

[Rengori]

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 my way though it.