Books To Read

I had a student ask me what I thought they should read, because Summer vacation is coming soon and they wanted to get some good reads in their bookshelf. The following is a quick list of some of the greats that I think everyone should read and a bit of why I think people should read it.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy; A Gentleman - By Lawrance Stern -
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1079
This is meant to be an "autobiography" but is a complete joke from the start and is just a fun read. Yes this is considered comedy, but it's a bit different than what you'd expect from comedy. It's an early novel, so it's a bit long at points, but the best part about it is that it completely deconstructs the basic story structure of beginning, middle, and end, and turns it on its head. It's a creative piece, but to read it like a writer and to be able to notice all of the amazing things that it can manage to do being the first to do it, is down right amazing.

Frakenstein - The Modern Prometheus - Mary Shelly
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/84/84-h/84-h.htm
This is just a good read, and is multi-leveled. It's different than what the media has given it credit for, and the differences change the meaning of the entire book. It addresses a lot of scientific ethics questions, but does it without saying that it's going to talk about ethics and morals. It's odd to think about it this way, but Frankenstein is totally a Romantic piece of literature. Remember that this has a sub-title as part of it. As you're reading it, try to understand how the monster or Frankenstein is the modern Prometheus.

Divine Comedy (or at least the Inferno) - Dante
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1001/1001-h/1001-h.htm
It's a tour through Hell. It's an interesting look at the eternity as well as the philosophy of religion. It's a creative take on punishment meeting the sin and how those punished fit into what they do.

There's always weird things out there, but to help out with some of the other stuff that I covered, but it's a bit lower down the list are some of the following -
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (don't do 1984, that's lame, do this one instead)
Canterbury Tales (all of them, not just Wife of Bath, Knight, and Miller's tales) - Chaucer
Parliament of Fowls- Chaucer
In Memoriam of AHH (all of it) - Lord Alfred Tennyson
ANY collection of short stories
Everything done by Billy Collins (former poet laureate of the USA)
When in doubt - Norton anthologies of literature. You can pick these up at major universities in their used books sections and they take an entire section of time and give the best of sections with introductions into what you're reading and how they fit together. Even if you don't get them used, they still are pretty cheap online, and most libraries worth mentioning SHOULD have something along the lines of anthologies of literature in them, even if they're not put together from Norton. It's the cheater's guide to literature. It's a personal goal of mine to read through ALL of the anthologies that I have in my bookshelf. They're really good, but unfortunately they take a bit of time to work through due to small text size and thin pages. If you're super lucky during the unloading time of students leaving school between spring and summer semesters, second hand gook stores as well as Deseret Industries occasionally get copies of these for really cheap. 

In short - my list of things that I think you should read is EVERYTHING. Read it all. Just keep reading. Find something that you want to read, and then read it.