Cliff posted about a suggested reading list. He states: "Human Events Online, two years ago, contacted twenty-eight scholars to ask them what ten books every college student should read. They explain the weighting given to the compiled lists, and the rationale for each book." Cliff has everything hyperlinked. I am too lazy to do that now, but the list is interesting.
And here are the honorable mentions, according to ranking:
Here is what I read from the list.
The Bible
The Illiad by Homer - some in the original Greek
Aeneid by Virgil - some in the original Latin
Hamlet by William Shakespeare - also read in High School
Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles
Animal Farm by George Orwell - also read in High School
I went to a good school, was a religion major and did all the reading assigned to me in college (that did not interfere with my always-exciting social life). How about you all? Are there teachers out there who would ammend this list?
Also, I think it important to mention that these are not necessarily the books these people actually get to teach or students get to read.
I also read The Mayor of Casterbridge in all of its Thomas Hardy happiness. Please don't make me read it again.
Posted by tripp at June 7, 2005 11:50 AMYou can tell, prima facie, that this is a bad list, because unless you subscribe to the theory that the samaritan woman wrote the gospel of john, or that shakespeare was in fact a woman, there are no women on this list.
Teresa of Avila The Interior Castle
Mary Shelly Frankenstein
Thank you Trevor, you beat me to the same point!
Beyond that, I'd ask: why should any college student, or other person, stop at ten books?
And I'd add to the list of writers, though I don't have titles easily at hand:
Alice Walker
Toni Morrison
Virginia Woolf, at least "A Room of One's Own" if not more of her work
there are more...
Yes, the lack of female presence jumped out at me also.
As a former writing and lit teacher, I would amend the list. Every American college student, which is what I presume we're talking about here (okay, as an American lit person I have a bias, but I feel that American students should have familiarity with American authors as well as where they fit into a wider scope of literature.).
So, here goes (and these are not in any particular order, and okay, I'm a bit of a novel hog!),
1. The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy
2. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
3. Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
4. Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
5. A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf
6. The Complete Plays, William Shakespeare
7. Homer's Odyssey
8. One Hundred Year's of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
9. Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
10. Native Son, by Richard Wright
Honorable Mentions
-Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
-To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
-Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
-The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
-A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
-Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
-The Age of Missing Information, by Bill McKibben
-Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
-On Human Nature, by Edward O. Wilson
-Orgin of Species, by Charles Darwin
This is great. Sunni, I loved the stuff you posted. If I were to follow the suggestions you three added, then I would have read many of proposed books. This is good news.
Posted by: Tripp at June 8, 2005 10:07 AMNicomachaean Ethics? do they want these college kids to actually finish? that had to be the most mind-numbingly dull thing i ever read in college--and i was a philosophy major!!!
as for the honorable mentions, it pretty much reveals the political biases of the 28 scholars who drafted the list. (e.g. "the road to serfdom")
Posted by: upyernoz at June 8, 2005 01:32 PMIf you are going to understand any political editorial there are three books constantly mentioned.
1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World by Alduous Huxley
The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solshenitzen
For economics
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (There's your woman)
For sheer pleasure
The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye
To understand the world we live in
Future Shock and The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler
Yeah, Ayn Rand - that's who I'd like to represent the female contingent. Ick.
How about reading some Adam Smith or Milton Friedman? John Maynard Keynes? John Kenneth Galbraith?
Posted by: Sunni at June 9, 2005 10:34 AM