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High School/college Lit Classes


homeschoolmom

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homeschoolmom

I'm currently looking to reread some of the novels/short stories that I read in my HS and college lit classes... I especially liked American lit, but I also took (and enjoyed) World lit. Both of my American Lit classes (HS and college) were focused on the period from Civil War to WW2.... Anywhoooo... I'm intererest in learning what you all liked from your literature classes. I just reread To Kill A Mockingbird (I've lost count on how many times I've read that) and And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie (for the third time).

So... start listing your favorites.

But don't suggest Ethan Frome.... I have a bad association with that book... Long story....

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JMJ
6/30 - First Martyrs of the Roman Church

I enjoyed very much my classical literature class. My favorites were [i]Gilgamesh[/i], the story of Ragnarock, and many of the Greek dramas. The poetry of Ovid is nice, too.

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You can't go wrong with Mark Twain. I took a dramatic literature class last semester and really enjoyed it. Some good American drama if you don't mind reading plays. Death of a Salesman, A Raisin In the Sun, etc.

Have you ever read "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"? Great short story.

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homeschoolmom

[quote name='Era Might' post='1306515' date='Jun 30 2007, 11:44 AM']You can't go wrong with Mark Twain. I took a dramatic literature class last semester and really enjoyed it. Some good American drama if you don't mind reading plays. Death of a Salesman, A Raisin In the Sun, etc.

Have you ever read "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"? Great short story.[/quote]
Yes, yes, yes!!!

My daughter is in a production of Tom Sawyer next month for parks and rec. I should reread that....

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hmm fav. books lol

Pride and Prejudice ^_^
Count of Monte Cristo (great book! movie was horrible)
The Picture of Dorian Grey
Little Women ( I can never read that book too many times )
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Great Expectations
David Copperfield

there are a lot more but can't remember them right now lol

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In high school, I read:
To Kill a Mockingbird
Romeo & Juliet
The Oddessy
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Julius Caesar
A Separate Peace
The Scarlet Letter
Of Mice and Men
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet
A Midsummer Nights Dream
Macbeth
Death of a Salesman
A Streetcar Named Desire
Oedipus
The Doll House by Henrik Isben (a play)

In college: (a lot, I'm an English major ;-) ) but here are some of the ones that everybody read and a few of my favorites.
-The Kite Runner, Life of Pi (I couldn't stand this book), Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
-Hemingway & Faulkner (esp. The Old Man and the Sea, A Light in August, The Sound and the Fury, and The Sun Also Rises)
-Cantebury Tales, Dante's Inferno, Paradise Lost
-The Professor's House by Edith Wharton and Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

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You and I have already talked pretty extensively about the books I read in h.s. and college, but I can give you some recent reads I've really enjoyed. And by recent, I mean I read most of these more than two years ago. My reading fare for the last couple of years, aside from academic work, has (as you know) largely consisted of young adult fantasy novels.

Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
Case Histories, Kate Atkinson

There are more but I'm not at home where I can look at my shelves easily ...

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So many wonderful books, have always lost myself in literature!
Jane Eyre
Best short stories by O'henry
Call of the Wild by Jack London
Gone with the wind(I know, I know, still a classic)
The Good Earth by Pearl S. buck
Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck
1984 by Orwell
Pride and Prejudice by Austen
War and Peace by Tolstoy
I loved To Kill A Mockingbird, what a great book. My all time favorites are anything by Shakespeare, he is truly my favorite, especially the plays.

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JMJ
6/30 - First Martyrs of the Roman Church

Right now, I'm reading G.K. Chesterton's [i]The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare[/i].

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Theologian in Training

In H.S. I cannot quite remember what I read, but remember, somewhere along the line, feeling as though I was deprived of the great classics in literature and so set out to read them myself.

The few that stand out in my mind are J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and many books by the author Paul Auster.

Come to think of it, not sure I read all that much in H.S., but I did like English the best.

As an English major, I read a lot in college. In fact, there was a point where I was reading a book a week.

The few that stand out in my head were:

The New York Trilogy (Paul Auster)
Love Medicine (Louise Erdrich)
Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
Shadowplay (Charles Baxter)
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (Michael Dorris)
Most everything by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most everything by Edgar Allen Poe
Most everything by Henry David Thoreau
Most everything by Washington Irving (though my favorite is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
Most everything by Walt Whitman
Most everything by Emily Dickinson
Spoon River Anthology (Edgar Lee Masters)
The Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway) (It was hard to get through that book without constantly wanting a drink ;)
And most, if not all Contemporary poetry...actually, I think what I enjoyed most about being an English major was always reading poetry...could not believe that that was my class....ahh, those were the days :)

Edited by Theologian in Training
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Theologian in Training

[quote name='Pio Nono' post='1306692' date='Jun 30 2007, 05:43 PM']JMJ
6/30 - First Martyrs of the Roman Church

Right now, I'm reading G.K. Chesterton's [i]The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare[/i].[/quote]

Good book!

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I read the Stone Diaries ... I was on a Pulitzer-winning kick for a while and read several books on my list noted above because of that. It was pretty good, if I remember correctly.

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cmotherofpirl

High school english consisted of reading short stories and writing classes. In college I had to analyse Huckleberry Finn and I hated it, but I also took a class in King Arthur and that I loved. We read D'morte Arthur in french :blush:
Since my mum was a teacher and loved to read, I read all the Harvard classic series at an early age. In grade school I ran the library and devoured classics. Currently I am indulging in a classic sci-fi summer :)

My favorites were [url="http://www.librarything.com/catalog/cmotherofpirl"]http://www.librarything.com/catalog/cmotherofpirl[/url]

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homeschoolmom

[quote name='Theologian in Training' post='1307701' date='Jul 1 2007, 09:48 AM']In H.S. I cannot quite remember what I read, but remember, somewhere along the line, feeling as though I was deprived of the great classics in literature and so set out to read them myself.

The few that stand out in my mind are J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and many books by the author Paul Auster.

Come to think of it, not sure I read all that much in H.S., but I did like English the best.

As an English major, I read a lot in college. In fact, there was a point where I was reading a book a week.

The few that stand out in my head were:

The New York Trilogy (Paul Auster)
Love Medicine (Louise Erdrich)
Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
Shadowplay (Charles Baxter)
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (Michael Dorris)
Most everything by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most everything by Edgar Allen Poe
Most everything by Henry David Thoreau
Most everything by Washington Irving (though my favorite is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
Most everything by Walt Whitman
Most everything by Emily Dickinson
Spoon River Anthology (Edgar Lee Masters)
The Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway) (It was hard to get through that book without constantly wanting a drink ;)
And most, if not all Contemporary poetry...actually, I think what I enjoyed most about being an English major was always reading poetry...could not believe that that was my class....ahh, those were the days :)[/quote]

Did you need that drink during A Farewell to Arms to numb the pain? Hemingway is not my favorite....

I LOVE Spoon River Anthology. :)

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