[ILB User's] Syllabus

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What would be on your (more realistic) syllabus?

― Vermont Girl (Vermont Girl), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 13:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I've been keeping a list for the past 3 years of all the books I read, so it was easy for me to pick out the ones I liked best (and put them in alphabetical order). Note, my class would be an eclectic one. These books are all over the place; from graphic novels to humor to young adult, etc...

01. Watership Down by Richard Adams
02. The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
03. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
04. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
05. Bitten by Kelly Armstrong
06. The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
07. Abarat by Clive Barker
08. The Book of Leviathan by Peter Blegvad
09. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
10. Women by Charles Bukowski
11. Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
12. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
13. I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier
14. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
15. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
16. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
17. Under the Skin by Michael Faber
18. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
19. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
20. The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
21. Neil Gaiman (All of his works.)
22. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
23. Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
24. Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
25. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
26. Redwall by Brian Jacques
27. Sshhhh! by Jason
28. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
29. The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
30. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
31. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
32. Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (vol.1-4) by Hayao Miyazaki
33. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
34. Monster by Walter Dean Myers
35. A Step from Heaven by An Na
36. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
37. Sabriel by Garth Nix
38. Lirael by Garth Nix
39. Abhorsen by Garth Nix
40. 1984 by George Orwell
41. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
42. Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne
43. An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
44. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
45. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
46. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
47. My Ishmael by Danial Quinn
48. Box Office Poison by Alex Robinson
49. Harry Potter (all of 'em) by J.K. "I'm rich, bitch!" Rowling
50. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
51. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
52. Stright Man by Richard Russo
53. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
54. David Sedaris (All of his works.)
55. Requiem for a Dream by Hubery Selby Jr.
56. The Savage Girl by Alex Shakar
57. Maus by Art Spiegelman
58. The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
59. Blankets by Craig Thompson
60. Summer Blonde by Adrian Tomine
61. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
62. Squee's Wonderful Big Book Giant Book of Unspeakable Horror's by Jhonen Vasquez
63. Y: The Last Man (whole series) by Brian K. Vaughan
64. Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell
65. Cosmic Banditos by A.C. Weisbecker
66. Fables (series) by Bill Willingham

― Vermont Girl (Vermont Girl), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 13:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Is this just a list of our favourite books? If not, what level are we supposed to be aiming at? And what is the aim of the course? These questions are relevant to the choice of books I'd put up. (Am I taking this a little too seriously?)

But I'd like to set up a course entitled "Selling your Soul", which contains these books, for starters:

- Christopher Marlowe. Doctor Faustus (1593).
- William Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice (1596, 1600, 1623).
- William Shakespeare. Macbeth (1606, 1623).
- Aphra Behn. Abdelazer (1676).
- John Bunyan. Pilgrim's Progress (1678/ 84).
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Faust (1808–1832).
- Mary Shelley. Frankenstein (1818).
- James Hogg. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).
- James Hynes. The Lecturer's Tale (2001).

Any suggestions welcome.

― SRH (Skrik), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:00 (twenty-two years ago)

The film of Angel Heart.

Lisa Bonet. Phwoar.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:03 (twenty-two years ago)

The goal of my course would be to make people read things maybe they normally wouldn't.

Month 1: Being a 'Tween is Fucked-Up Shit
Month 2: Reading Books with Pictures Don't Mean Your Supid, Stupid
Month 3: Neil Gaiman
Month 4: Mind-Opening Books
Month 5: Misc. Good Books

All the books I posted fall into those categories.

― Vermont Girl (Vermont Girl), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:20 (twenty-two years ago)

VG, your class would also take 3 semesters with that booklist. 66!! ;p

Mine would be entitled The Death of the Reader or something similarly trite.

Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Joyce, Ulysses
Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
Ondaatje, In the Skin of A Lion

The class would discuss the relationship between text and reader with special regard for the temporality of reading.

― O.Leee.B. (Leee), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 21:56 (twenty-two years ago)

What do you mean by that?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 25 March 2004 04:11 (twenty-two years ago)

In the Skin of A Lion specifically is sensitive to the (meta)act of reading -- in several passages it mentions reading outright, and one (or two?) in particular talk(s) about going back in time by turning the pages backwards. Which opens the can of worms about re-reading and the concomitant reader-text hierarchy, a struggle Joyce expressly deals with in the "Sirens" chapter of Ulysses, the ultimate destination of which leads the reader to a status similar to that of angels in Gravity's Rainbow. (Angels, from the Greek for "messenger," stand as a mediating presence between the characters (of the text, mind) and an omniscient presence (God? the reader?) who can see the (conspiratorial) structures whose skeletons and sinews are on a scale too large for the characters-confined-within-text to comprehend.)

Compare that with Woolf's use of windows in Mrs. Dalloway (and also her intermediary section in To the Lighthouse, and also, perhaps, Kafka's The Trial), which limit the textual depictions and serve as a metaphor for fiction -- a mediated and selective opening into a discrete world.

Then, return to Ondaatje's novel, where windows play an integral role as well, though in contradistinction to Woolf's illuminating yet limiting metaphor, windows in In the Skin of A Lion present a passageway, a construct that allows transmission between text and reader and thus serves as an expansive trope.

― Vitamin Leee (Leee), Saturday, 27 March 2004 00:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Dude, have you read "If on a winter's night a traveller..." yet?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 27 March 2004 05:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Wow. Vitamin Leee is full of shit, huh guys? J/K.

― Moti Bahat, Saturday, 27 March 2004 19:13 (twenty-two years ago)

>Dude, have you read "If on a winter's night a traveller..." yet?

I'm reading it for May's BookBlog.

― Vermont Girl (Vermont Girl), Monday, 29 March 2004 12:20 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

gravity's rainbow
the notebook of malte laurids brigge
duino elegies
the free-lance pallbearers
plastic man archives, vols 1-2

probably should work in some non-literary stuff too, sigh.

― Josh (Josh), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 06:44 (twenty years ago)

21. Neil Gaiman (All of his works.)

There are laws against this.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 12:34 (twenty years ago)

TS: Syllabi vs. Mixtapes.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 17:35 (twenty years ago)

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