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Reading List

Can anyone recommend a reading list that you think is fudamental for an English applicant? Thanks loads! =)

there is no fundemental list really as there are sooo many great novels poems etc. i would recommend trying to get a varied scope, so that you have experience of lots of major movemnts and periods etc. altho i suppose it would help to have more 'classic' books (your daniel defoes and the likes) rather than very very modern books, though alot of 20th century books would be useful to i'm sure (and some contemporary texts no doubt). Alll in all i'd say don't worry about specific books just go for those which appeal to u and try and get a lot of variation. oh and the more books the better i would imagine
hope this helps

Reply 2

Toscar

11

ok, everyone has their own preferences etc, but these are some things i particularly enjoyed, and would suggest...

poetry:
the love song of j.arthur prufrock by t.s.eliot.
i am by john clare
the quiet house, by charlotte mews
to autumn by jonathan keats
morte d'arthur, by tennyson

drama
the changling, by middleton and rowley
cavalcade, by noel coward
hamlet, by shakespeare
hecuba, by euripedes
thyestes , by seneca

novels
tristram shandy by sterne
gullivers travels by swift
catch 22 by heller
the woman in white, by wilkie collins
frankenstein, by mary shelly.

Reply 3

Gothic_Nightmares

More suggestions:
Frankenstein: Mary Shelley
Lolita: Vladimir Nobokov
All Quiet On The Western Front: Erich Maria Remarque
Othello ( and if you don't know who thats by you shouldn't be doing English!)
Poetry, personal preferance is the romantics (Blake, Rossetti, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, Percy Shelley.) Perhaps Tennyson and Yeats as they are often studied.
Dante's Inferno
D.H Lawrence novels
Plato: The Symposium
Sophies World: Jostein Gardner
There are hundreds to choose from but I recommend sticking to classic novels,poems, plays and again choose from a range of time periods.

Reply 4

cappucino07

Toscar

ok, everyone has their own preferences etc, but these are some things i particularly enjoyed, and would suggest...

poetry:
the love song of j.arthur prufrock by t.s.eliot.
i am by john clare
the quiet house, by charlotte mews
to autumn by jonathan keats
morte d'arthur, by tennyson

drama
the changling, by middleton and rowley
cavalcade, by noel coward
hamlet, by shakespeare
hecuba, by euripedes
thyestes , by seneca

novels
tristram shandy by sterne
gullivers travels by swift
catch 22 by heller
the woman in white, by wilkie collins
frankenstein, by mary shelly.

Change Tennyson for Wilfred Owen and that's a damn fine list.

And get rid of Catch 22. Maybe put some Hemingway in there...

Reply 5

chewing_phat

Hmm..

Novelists: Swift, Rushdie, Hemmingway, Dostoyevsky, Austen
Poetry: Browning, T S Eliot, Kipling
Drama: Shakespeare, Middleton, T.Williams, Wilde

But that's just me.

Reply 6

Elusive Moose

1

With Tennesse Williams, maybe Arthur Miller too, as they're often grouped together. Plus he's also quite accesible, but interesting.

Dracula seems to be on the reading lists for almost every university, and Frankenstein seems to be quite popular. Just as wide a variety of popular authors as possible, spanning as wide a time-span as you can manage I guess. If you've applied to university, try having a look at the reading lists for the places you're interested in for ideas, and go from there :smile:

Reply 7

slk999

15

I'd also insert some Woolf or Joyce into the list somewhere as they are the giants (perhaps along with Eliot- though he's poetry) of the Modernist movement in the 1920s. Very important- but also they're 2 of my favourite novelists! :biggrin:

Reply 8

Gothic_Nightmares

Yeah Woolf is a very good idea, maybe Sylvia Plath?

Reply 9

Kittennffc

15

Ohh, Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar! Havn't finished reading it yet, but so far its amazing!

Is everyone forgetting the Brontes? I'm reading Jane Eyre and the moment and its amazing!

Reply 10

silence

16

do a pope; just read virgil and homer.

Reply 11

LondonSteve181

Classics:

Odyssey
The Illiad
The Aenied (can never spelll it)
Electra

Novels:

'Heart of Darkness' Conrad
'Jayne Eyre' Bronte
'Pride and Prejudice' Austen
'Frankenstein' Shelley
'Robinson Crusoe' Defoe
'The Bell Jar' Sylvia Plath

Drama:

'A Doll's House' Ibsen
'Waiting for Godot' Beckett
'The Cherry Orchard' Chekhov
'Pygmalion' Bernard Shaw
'The Importance of Being Earnest' Wilde
'Journey's End' Sherriff

Poetry:

Tennyson
Plath
Eliot
Milton
Blake (especially Blake. Lots of research atm into Blake, think one day he might overtake Milton in the whole visionary circle)

Reply 12

Toscar

11

rich_

I'd also insert some Woolf or Joyce into the list somewhere as they are the giants (perhaps along with Eliot- though he's poetry) of the Modernist movement in the 1920s. Very important- but also they're 2 of my favourite novelists! :biggrin:

what joyce have you read? am about to start uyllesus (sorry for spelling!), is there any prep. reading i could do to understand it better ( have previously read some of dubliners, but thats about it)???

Reply 13

Tyler Durden

17

Toscar

what joyce have you read? am about to start uyllesus (sorry for spelling!), is there any prep. reading i could do to understand it better ( have previously read some of dubliners, but thats about it)???

I'd read Portrait of the Artist first. However, this is recommended by York for students embarking upon the Joyce module (although that might have something to do with the editor teaching the module!):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195158318/qid=1140699573/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-7963438-0630848

Read the last page of Ulysses first btw - it's beautiful.

Reply 14

slk999

15

Toscar

what joyce have you read? am about to start uyllesus (sorry for spelling!), is there any prep. reading i could do to understand it better ( have previously read some of dubliners, but thats about it)???

I tried Dubliners and didn't find it caught my attention well- however that was a year ago, and I intend to try again soon. I read Ulysseys as Joyce's first proper novel- it took me a few weeks and you really do have to be on the ball at the end (there's no punctuation at all!), but it really makes you think and having read it I could draw lots of comparrisons to some of Eliot's poetry, especially Prufrock- 'tis a useful novel to have read. But, I can see that for some people it may be a bit daunting, so yeah, try Portrait of the artist as a young man- I haven't read it but people say it's good.

Reply 15

Danny the Geezer

21

Anything by David Crystal.

Reply 16

thepolia

OP

Thanks guys for all the recommendations =)

I haven't read most of the books listed above, esp the dramas [serious catch-up required] English is my second language and I only started reading voraciously this academic year. Also, I read quite slowly. Guess that's why I can't call myself very well-read. :blushing:

btw if you haven't read books by Haruki Murakami, you should try some =)

Reply 17

slk999

15

thepolia

Thanks guys for all the recommendations =)

I haven't read most of the books listed above, esp the dramas [serious catch-up required] English is my second language and I only started reading voraciously this academic year. Also, I read quite slowly. Guess that's why I can't call myself very well-read. :blushing:

btw if you haven't read books by Haruki Murakami, you should try some =)

You're welcome. But I think 'voraciously' was a little too strong a word to use! If you haven't read any of those we've listed (and they're pretty major), and you read slowly, then it's not voracious reading- but it could be! I really do reccomend all the works listed here- it will amplify your reference no end and they're all (I confess I haven't read all of them here), really enjoyable too! :smile:

Reply 18

Tyler Durden

17

In my experience, people who use the word voracious about their reading habits tend to have read the Cambridge Undergraduate prospectus!