About a week ago I shared a post about classics. I talked about my opinion of them and some things I think that can need some improvement in the classics genre and classics in academic environments. That inspired me to share this post today, in which I talk about the books I read in my first year studying English Language and Culture. Please note that I read a lot of poems too, so many that I decided not to include those because this post would become very long.
All these books I read in my literature courses during the year. I also followed courses in linguistics but for those, I only read chapters from different course textbooks.
My first literature course gave us an introduction to literature, how we should read it, what questions to ask, how to write essays, etc. It is funny because thinking about this course it already feels so long ago, and the level of it was so much lower. Yet, at the time it was all so new and difficult compared to what I was used to. I can't believe how much I've learned already just in one year and how much my writing and literary analysis has improved. During this course I read:
Disgrace is praised because of many reasons, yet I did not enjoy it that much. I liked the ending, but that was about it. As the first novel that I had to read, I did not like this choice because I did not know what to do with it. The same was for The Cripple of Inishmaan, this was a play that I did not really understand well enough to really see what was going on. I think that for some students these texts were not really inviting into the studies. However, it did get better!
In my second period, I followed a course that discussed the Middle Ages and the 16th and 17th century. It was kept brief but during these months I read:
Even though I found Beowulf hard to read, I did enjoy seeing the links between this epic poem and J.R.R Tolkien's Hobbit. This course also inspired me to learn more about Celtic, I am planning to specialize in that topic next year! I enjoyed the 16th and 17th century less, Shakespeare is just not for me. Even though I liked Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Currently, I follow an obligatory course about Shakespeare (online...) and it's just not my thing. Even though my professors are in awe of Shakespeare I tend to get sleepy when reading his plays (I hope I don't offend anyone, this is just my opinion...).
In my third period, we focused on literature from 1650-2000. More recent novels especially focused on Romanticism, the Industrial Age and Modernism. That is why I read these books:
I truly enjoyed Pride and Prejudice, this book had been on my tbr list for quite some time so I was glad to read it. Even though it has a slow start and took me some time to get into, I really liked the writing of Austen and the storyline itself. I had already seen the film, but reading the novel is always better. I must confess that I didn't plan my time out well and was not able to read Hard Times and To the Lighthouse during the course (I hope my professors do not read this... :0). I still have not read Hard Times, but during the summer I did read To the Lighthouse, which I wrote a post about last month. I found it sometimes a bit hard to understand, but the way in which Woolf puts the consciousness onto paper is amazing and so well done.
The last course I followed last year was fully online, during this period I also moved out of my parents' house so I was quite busy. During this course we focused on American Literature, I had to read the following books:
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
- The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday
- Ariel by Sylvia Plath
- The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
The Narrative of Frederick Douglass I found most interesting. He talks about his life as a slave and how he escaped slavery. The things he shared in his book were gruesome, sometimes I couldn't get my head around the fact that this truly happened. The other book I think many people should read was The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. The Black Lives Matter movement and demonstrations were happening during the time I read that book. It gave me more understanding of how unequal society (still) is.
These are all the books I read during my first year of university. Please keep in mind that I also read a TON of poems but I left those out in today's post. I hope you may found a new book you're interested in reading, there are definitely a few goods books on this list.
Keep reading,
Julia
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