Where pop culture meets geek culture and they make out a little.
What My Summer Will Look Like: One Hint, Not Fun
I’ve put it off as long as possible. When the last week of August rolls around, I begin the final semester of my master’s program. Normally, that would be cause for (slight) celebrations. But on September 13, I get to take a six hour exam. The exam covers material that is different each time it is given (twice a year, September and January), and you get four months to prep. There is no class associated with said test, and, the professor’s grading said test (they also change each test) do not, in fact, lecture to the student at all. Basically, you get a list of stuff to read then, on that fateful morn, you show up and have to write three essays, the prompts to which, you have never seen and have no idea what they might cover.
Behold my reading list:
Devotions and Emergent Occasions by John Donne
The Revenger’s Tragedy by Thomas Middleton or Cyril Tourneur (no one has a definitive answer on the author of this text)
Middlemarch by George Eliot
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Omeros by Derek Walcott
The Dialogic Imagination by Mikhail Bakhtin
That’s a lot of damn reading between now and September! I mean, Middlemarch is big, and that Bakhtin ain’t light reading folks. Not too mention that I have to read To the Lighthouse for a THIRD TIME, and I wholeheartedly believe that it is the worst “literary” novel ever written in the English language. Stupid Virginia Woolf, I hate her with a fury like that of 10,000 exploding stars!
I guess it’s my own fault, waiting for the very last opportunity to take the test I was bound to get a reading list that I absolutely despise. And if I don’t pass I can always…panhandle, I guess.
Fugazi – Bulldog Front
Race ya!!!
I’ll do something like the Sword of Truth, or Reread the Wheel of Time Series.
Yeah, I’d say it isn’t a fair race since what you’d be reading is completely for enjoyment’s sake. Now if you want to read Bakhtin with me…
ill read with you killian except that i think that book is too advanced for my age =D
Any non-english majors might have issues with this novel though the fact that it has been translated could give even them trouble. As ususally happens with translations the novel changes meanings, and even with rewrites there are bits that will make no sense what so ever.
To the Bookmine!!
The Sword of Truth Series is only what 10,000 pages or so, and if I don’t take it head on, and read 1,000+ pages a week you’d have a chance at beating me.
There was a cool movie made of The Revenger’s Tragedy, starring Christopher Eccleston and Eddie Izzard, written and directed by Alex “Repo Man” Cox.
Bakhtin is fun.
-Mojo
That’s an…odd…choice. I’ve actually read Revenger’s Tragedy before, so I’m not too upset about that. Mostly I’m annoyed about the length of Middlemarch, the crapitude of To the Lighthouse and just Bakhtin in general. I read a bit of him this semester, actually, in Teaching Composition and while I…no, I won’t say enjoyed, was interested in some odd way…it wasn’t something I look forward to plowing through.
And, exsulis, it could be 100,000 pages and you’d still beat me because I know how obsessive you get when reading something you like, and that’s the key right there, you’d enjoy it.
Thanks for the solidarity in any event, Count.
Well, I only obess about random stuff like the New England Medical Journals, and theAdvanced Nano Manufacturing publication that I somehow got my name on.
Though the Witcher series along with the Sword of Truth both look like good targets
*THAT* is the single most bad-ass’d icon ever… wherever did you get it??? O_O
i drew eet!
Nice.
I suppose it says a lot about me that I’ve never heard of any of the books and only two of the authors.
That or is says a lot about me.
Gilgrim! Gilgrim! Gilgrim! Gilgrim! Gilgrim!
I think it says more about your area study, than anything else. As to the titles I would doubt that the average reader would be interested in said books from looking at today’s “Top Sellers lists.”
Ah, but who chose my study area/school….hint: it was me. And we’ve gotten one visitor in the last day from a search engine query for Thomas Middleton…
Well at least you’re in the home stretch of your grad program. I haven’t even started to look at/research grad programs for social work yet.
It’s good to be well read though. I look at classics like 1984 or stuff by Michener or Austen and I feel I should try it but… don’t really want to. I read The Great Gatsby in high school with the best english teacher I’ve ever had before or since and I still hated the book. A major sin since F. Scott Fitzgerald is a MNan. So is Prince and I don’t like him either. Same with Josh Hartnett. Hm.
That, and I never finished college myself. So good on you!
(Oh. The only reason I know about Virginia Woolfe is because of some old obscure Oscar Award trivia I’ve since forgotten. Go me.)
I think you’d enjoy Jane Austen. I mean, yeah it’s steeped in Victorian social mores and each of her novels inevitably ends with a marriage. But she’s just such a graceful writer that you can’t really help but get pulled into the stories. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve only read three of her novels, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed each of them. If you like science fiction at all, you have to read 1984, Brave New World, and War of the Worlds. They’re just mandatory. But they are all very good. Feel free to skip the first chapter of Brave New World until you’re about a quarter of the way through the book…
If you want to read some “literary” genre, Vonnegut’s always a good call. Or Dracula, or Frankenstein.
Steinbeck’s another “classics” writer who is quite easy to get through. Grapes of Wrath reads very quickly, and both The Pearl, and Of Mice and Men could be read in about 15 minutes.
What didn’t you like about Gatsby? I’ve read it…I don’t five times now, and in my experience it’s really polarizing. Either you love it, or you hate it. Personally, I think Tender is the Night is a superior novel by Fitzgerald, but it’s much longer and much more complicated so taught much less often. Which is a damn shame.
Generally, I try not to categorize writing, honestly, because I tend to have no self-motivation to read “literary” stuff either, but it can often be surprisingly rewarding. If you haven’t read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Chabon, won the Pulitzer) for instance, then forget everything else I’ve just said and go get it.
Agreed on Frankenstein – disagree on Steinbeck….
What!? Jim Casey is one of thee icons of american literature…i mean, i’m not really into a grown man breast feeding…but I am into fiction that really makes you feel like life is shit…and no one’s better at that then Steinbeck.
but that’s exactly what I don’t like about him… if I wanted to get all depressed I’d be emo…
wait…you’re not emo? i thought we all were.
My dad actually heard War of the Worlds that first time it was broadcast and he said it scared him shitless. I’ve seen Animal Farm in movie version (a cartoon, if you can get around that) and I actually liked Cat’s Cradle till the very end.
I don’t remember exactly what I didn’t like about Gatsby, I read it over 10 years ago. I remember thinking it was boring and that with all those parties and stuff, the characters were still really boring people. I must’ve had the maverick English teachers, my friends were reading Grapes of Wrath and The Scarlet Letter and To Kill a Mockingbird and I had A Yellow Raft in Blue Water and The Bean Trees.