English degrees - which books are you studying this year?

As the title says, how many books a year are you required to read in your English degree?

Bonus questions, which ones, and do you like them? :biggrin:

Reply 1

harleynight

At UCL, we're doing 25-30. Lectures cover 30+ but seminars cover fewer so you don't necessarily have to read them all. Plus some are just sections, for example we only study the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Others, such as Dante's Inferno, we are suggested a few chapters/books/cantos to read but it's advised we read most of it if not the whole thing.

Reply 2

khadz19

how many books per week do u have to read?

Original post by harleynight

At UCL, we're doing 25-30. Lectures cover 30+ but seminars cover fewer so you don't necessarily have to read them all. Plus some are just sections, for example we only study the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Others, such as Dante's Inferno, we are suggested a few chapters/books/cantos to read but it's advised we read most of it if not the whole thing.

Reply 3

awe

14

Here's my copy and paste for my third year course modules. (; Apologies for the length. Alongside these I'm doing the dissertation module, so throw in a bunch of my own chosen novels, primarily Peter Pan and extensions of, and The Inferno by Barbusse.

Postcolonial Indian Novel –
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust (1975)
Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day (1980)
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)
Amit Chaudhuri, Afternoon Raag (1993)
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance (1995)
Manju Kapur, A Married Woman (2003)
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger (2008)

Science-fiction –
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveller’s Wife (2004)
J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962)
H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898)
Heinlein, Robert. A, Starship Troopers (1959) (New English Library, 1993)
Clarke, Arthur. C, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (Orbit, 1990)
Films -
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Starship Troopers (1998)
Monsters (2011)
La Jetée (1963)
12 Monkeys (1997)
Inception (2010)

Creative Non-Fiction –
Gay Talese, Frank Sinatra has a Cold
Laurent Binet, HHhH
Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism (essay available online)
Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Hunter S Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas m
David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty Some Day (or any other Sedaris text)

Long-fiction
Ian McEwan, Enduring Love
Jacob Polley, Talk of the Town
Sarah Waters, The Night Watch m
Muriel Spark, The Driver’s Seat
Aristotle Poetics
David Jauss, Writing Fiction: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom About the Craft
David Lodge, The Art of Fiction
John Mullan, How Novels Work
Sol Stein, Solutions for Novelists
James Wood, How Fiction Works

Reply 4

khadz19

Im struggling to decide whether to do english lang or lit or bath or just english on its own OR finally english lang and linguistics...help?
and im predicted bbc atm, I don't know if i'll cope in uni so i really need some guidance as to what course i should do...

Original post by awe

Here's my copy and paste for my third year course modules. (; Apologies for the length. Alongside these I'm doing the dissertation module, so throw in a bunch of my own chosen novels, primarily Peter Pan and extensions of, and The Inferno by Barbusse.

Postcolonial Indian Novel –
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust (1975)
Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day (1980)
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)
Amit Chaudhuri, Afternoon Raag (1993)
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance (1995)
Manju Kapur, A Married Woman (2003)
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger (2008)

Science-fiction –
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveller’s Wife (2004)
J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962)
H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898)
Heinlein, Robert. A, Starship Troopers (1959) (New English Library, 1993)
Clarke, Arthur. C, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (Orbit, 1990)
Films -
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Starship Troopers (1998)
Monsters (2011)
La Jetée (1963)
12 Monkeys (1997)
Inception (2010)

Creative Non-Fiction –
Gay Talese, Frank Sinatra has a Cold
Laurent Binet, HHhH
Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism (essay available online)
Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Hunter S Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas m
David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty Some Day (or any other Sedaris text)

Long-fiction
Ian McEwan, Enduring Love
Jacob Polley, Talk of the Town
Sarah Waters, The Night Watch m
Muriel Spark, The Driver’s Seat
Aristotle Poetics
David Jauss, Writing Fiction: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom About the Craft
David Lodge, The Art of Fiction
John Mullan, How Novels Work
Sol Stein, Solutions for Novelists
James Wood, How Fiction Works

Reply 5

username919394

17

Literature: Origins and Transformations Module:
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Book of Genesis
The Odyssey - Homer
Metamorphoses - Ovid
Metamorphosed - Phillip Terry
Oedipus - Sophocles
Aristotle - Poetics
The Rover - Aphra Behn
Death and the Kings Horseman - Wole Soyinka
A Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare
The Accidental Death of an Anarchist - Daria Fo
Dantes Inferno
Dracula - Bram Stoker

I quite like the reading for this module! Maybe because I like my seminar tutor :h:

Intro to US Literature:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
The Scarlett Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Crucible - Arthur Miller
My Antonia - Willa Cather
Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
A fair few poems by Emily Dickinson

Quite enjoyed reading all of these, finished the module on Wednesday though!

I do Drama & Lit joint honours so one of my other modules is a Drama module and the other is a module on The Enlightenment which my University makes everyone who does Lit take. That also involves a lot of reading!

Reply 6

harleynight

Original post by khadz19

how many books per week do u have to read?

It's really not as simple as being set a book to read by a certain time. You have four different modules doing four different texts with different deadlines for each. I said about 30 in a year which would equal out at just over 1 a week, but you could be reading 3 in one week and 1 the next.