Bücher, die ich im Grundstudium gelesen haben sollte: Danke, Anglistikstudium!

It is that time of the year again when I start tidying up my study to prove myself I am not a rag and bone man keeping everything that should have been thrown away long ago. But then you tend to find things that do lead you to procrastination. Today’s example: the reading list I received as an undergraduate student when I started studying in 1993. All titles mentioned below were supposed to be read in only two years time. A who’s who of literary history. What do you think – did you have a similar list at your university? I’d be glad to read your comments on this. P.S.: The list is alphabetical – by eras.

Reading list for undergraduates

Prose

Chaucer. “The Pardoner’s Tale.”

Defoe. Moll Flanders; Robinson Crusoe

Fielding. Joseph Andrews

Austen. Emma; Pride and Prejudice

E. Bronte. Wuthering Heights

Ch. Bronte. Jane Eyre

Crane. The Red Badge of Courage

Dickens. Oliver Twist; Great Expectations

G. Eliot. The Mill on the Floss; Adam Bede

Hardy. Tess of the d’Urbervilles; The Return of the Native

Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter

James. The Portrait of a Lady

Melville. Moby Dick

Twain. Huckleberry Finn.

Anderson. Winesburg, Ohio

Atwood. Surfacing

Barnes. Flaubert’s Parrot; Staring at the Sun

Bellow. Herzog

Brookner. Hotel du Lac; Family and Friends

Conrad. Heart of Darkness; Lord Jim

Drabble. The Middle Ground

Doctorow. Ragtime; Billy Bathgate

Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury; Light in August

Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby

Forster. Howards End; A Passage to India

Fowles. The French Lieutenant’s Woman

Hemingway. Short Stories

Ishiguro. An Artist of the Floating World; The Remains of the Day

Joyce. Portrait of the Artist; Dubliners

Lawrence. Sons and Lovers

Lessing. Memoirs of a Survivor

Lively. Moon Tiger

McEwan. The Cement Garden; First Love; Last Rites

Mansfield. Bliss and Other Stories; The Garden Party and Other Stories

Morrison. Song of Solomon; Tar Baby

Pynchon. The Crying of Lot 49

Roberts. The Visitation

Roth. The Ghost Writer

Salinger. Nine Stories

Silko. Ceremony

Spark. The Comforters; Loitering with Intent

Stein. Three Lives

Swift. Waterland; The Sweet Shop Owner

Toole. The Confederacy of Dunces

Tyler. The Accidental Tourist

Updike. Rabbit at Rest

Walker. The Color Purple

Weldon. Female Friends; Praxis

White. The Solid Mandala

Wilson. Late Call.

Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse

Dolley (ed.). English Short Stories

Cochrane (ed.). American Short Stories

Bradbury (ed.). Modern British Short Stories

Drama

Everyman

Marlowe. Doctor Faustus

Shakespeare. Richard III; King Lear; A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Congreve. The Way of the World

Jonson. Volpone

Wycherly. The Country Wife

Goldsmith. The Stoops to Conquer

Sheridan. The School for Scandal

Shaw. Major Barbara; St. Joan

Synge. Riders to the Sea; Playboy of the Western World

Wilde. Lady Windermere’s Fan; The Importance of Bein Earnest

Ayckbourn. Absurd person Singular

Bond. Saved

Churchill. Top Girls; Serious Money

Edgar. Maydays

Gray. Quartermain’s Terms

Mamet. Glengary Glen Ross

Mercer. After Haggarty

Miller. Death of a Salesman

Norman. ‘night, Mother

O’Neill. Long Day’s Journey into Night

O’Casey. Juno and the Paycock

Pinter. The Caretaker

Shaffer. Equus; Amadeus

Shepard. True West

Stoppard. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

T. Williams. A Streetcar Named Desire

Poetry

Shakespeare.

Donne, Milton, Pope.

Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron

Shelley, Keats

Browning, Tennyson, Hopkins

Whitman, E. Dickinson, W.C. Williams, E. Pound, W. Stevens

Yeats, Eliot, Auden, Thomas Larkin, Hughes, S. Plath, Heaney, Causeley, Pickard

(and more from New Oxford Book of English Verse, ed. Helen Gardner)

In Erinnerung an Walter Scherf: Ein Treffen in München

An obituary for German fairy- and children’s tale researcher, translator, author and publisher, Dr. Walter Scherf.

Die zehn (möglicherweise) besten Fantasybücher aller Zeiten

I will discuss this list as soon as possible in English, too. This is going to be fun

Four book reviews at Phantastik-Couch.de

My sincerest apologies but this article is only available in Deutsch. If you are interested in a translation please feel free to contact me anytime.

(Deutsch) Die letzten ihrer Art. Eine Reise zu den aussterbenden Tieren unserer Erde – Teil I

My sincerest apologies but this article is only available in Deutsch. If you are interested in a translation please feel free to contact me anytime.

Trudi Canavan. Age of the Five. Book review

Priestess of the White – Last of the Wilds – Voice of the Gods. Ithaniais facing new challenges. Almost a hundred years ago the Gods created the White, a group of powerful wizards serving as liaison between mankind and the Gods. Hundred years it took to find the five chosen priests to attain that outstanding status and the last to become a member of that council, the young Auraya, is a great catch as she is very apt at finding allies for Ithania.

Her task is one of the most important to the White as rumours have started to spread, coming from the south, that the Pentadrians count powerful sorcerers among their ranks. They want to destroy the Circlians as the White and their followers are known. Auraya travels to the neighbouring peoples of the Siyee and Elai to win them over to tehir cause as the Pentadrians start brutal attacks on the north.

The fight for the true faith begins as the Pentadrians claim the Gods of the North to be just lies invented by the White to stay in power. The Circlians have to defend themselves and many innocent people come to harm: the Dreamweavers, for example, are very good healers not willing to believe in the Gods of the North and are therefore outlawed.When Auraya starts to fall in love with her former teacher Leiard, a Dreamweaver of importance, they both suffer from being torn between two worlds. Auraya would very much like to have the Dreamweaver share their knowledge and Leiard would like to have the Dreamweavers respected in the North. However, the Gods have their very own ideas and this leads to a sea of troubles when Auraya and Leiard become lovers.

The southern sorcerers move a huge army into the battle. Throughout these conflicts Auraya learns more about the past. When the war of the Gods ended and only five of them survived there were extraordinary individuals, the Wild, who were just as immortal as the Gods themselves and who had unique abilities beside their magical powers. Rumours have it they were all destroyed. But Leiard turns out to be Mirar, the immortal healer and Dreamweaver, who was supposed to have been killed by the most powerful of Circlians. However, he survived and hid his spirit in Leiard to escape the Gods. When he is discovered they start hunting him again and the White are told to take war down south to the Pentadrians. Auraya, Mirar and the other Wild soon discover a horrible truth.

Trudi Canavan is being hailed as fantasy literature’s new hope. Her first trilogy, The Black Magician, was the most successful debut ever in her native country, Australia. Age of the Five does not quite live up to the expectations. Portraying the action from a multi-perspective level and fascinating characters guarantee a good story pace but the result still begs the question whether all three books should have had more than 800 pages. If you like Tad Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien or George R.R. Martin with their elaborate writing style then you should give Canavan a try.

This article was originally published in Nautilus, Germany’s leading genre magazine on fantasy and sci-fi: book, film and series reviews as well as great features and interviews. Homepage available in German only.

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