<p>I was obsessed with the movie version of Gone With The Wind, obviously it was because of Clark Gable.</p>
<p>My favorite contemporary authors are all Chinese, I don't read any comtemporary books in English. I don't know why, I always hate bestselling books.</p>
<p>we're the opposite. ;D.</p>
<p>Fallinwater0328, have you read "Demain, d</p>
<p>No, I haven't. I can hardly think of any peotry by Hugo that translate dinto English, and I don't speak French, this always makes me feel bad about myself.
tchaikovsky, I think you should major in Comparative Lit., I used to wonder if I can major in that or not, unfortunately, I can't meet their requirement, I cannot speak four languages fluently.</p>
<p>HAhah, I'll see. I applied to some schools as a Comparative Literature major...I can always switch later</p>
<p>fallinwater, i read a lot contemporary chinese literature too.</p>
<p>I like Russian literature a lot. Has anyone read The Brothers Karamazov?</p>
<p>thz, same here.</p>
<p>now that makes me nervous how many immigrant-Chinese applicants are in the pool</p>
<p>Rhett, I love Gone with the Wind. I like scarlet letter too. </p>
<p>To kill a mockingbird-to be honest, I don't remember anything about that book. I disliked all my sophomore and freshman readings. The only books I liked my junior year were East of Eden and Scarlet Letter. My senior year, I love all the required texts.</p>
<p>Oh , at least somebody shares the same favorite books with me ! :D. Gone with the wind is fabulous . Before reading it , I had a preconception that this book is too much sentimental or romantic with a host of romantic words and conversations between two main characters (ouch, this is my friend 's fault :D. He had never read it ) . But after half-way through the book , I know this was my misconception and immediately falled in love with it ! The only thing in the book which gets on my nerves is the words some negroes talked to each other. Instead of using " what".... ( for example ) , they always use " wut" or something like that :( . Of course , I neglect these conversations :D</p>
<p>@hideANDseek : Would you mind telling me some of your recommened books during sophomore or junior or freshman year ? Some of them might not enthrall you but they may intrigue me ;) . Tell me their name , and so I can give them a try if I can obtain them in the bookstore. :). I wanna catch up with American kids' favourite books.</p>
<p>You mean books we read for school? I'll give you the list of school books I read in the past three years(I wouldn't call these texts American kid's favorite):</p>
<p>To kill a mockingbird, Yellow raft on the river(don't read this. BORING), great gatsby, east of eden, the crucible, one flew over the cuckoo's nest(i didn't even finish the book), cry, the beloved country(...didn't finish reading it), all quiet on the western front(didn't like it), scarlet letter, bean trees(didn't like it), catcher in the rye(i did not like it), etc.</p>
<p>There are more. I just don't remember.</p>
<p>I read scarlet letter, the crucible, to kill a mockingbird, the great gatsby, grapes of wrath, the house on mango street, The Once and Future King, Lord of the Flies, The Canterbury Tales, parts of paradise lost, Crime and Punishment, the Poisonwood Bible, The Kite Runner, Heart of Darkness, Wuthering Heights, the Invisible Man, As You Like It, Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead... the list goes on and on of the books I've read in school. Some of them were good, others... well, lets just say they'd make good bedtime reading material for insomniacs.</p>
<p>Books read by mandate that I'd actually recommend:
To Kill a Mockingbird (freshman)
Scarlet Letter (junior)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (senior)
Lord of the Flies (sophomore)
The Great Gatsby (junior)
Invisible Man (junior)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (senior)</p>
<p>Books read by choice that I'd highly recommend:
Emma
Middlemarch
Age of Innocence
Anna Karenina
The Fountainhead
Jane Eyre</p>
<p>Books read by mandate/choice that I can't stand:
Lovely Bones [shudder]
House on Mango Street
Brave New World
Wuthering Heights (sorry, everyone, I'm not into gothic romance)
Heart of Darkness (sorry again: I know it's genius, but I couldn't stand it)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (paradox: you're supposed to be frustrated with it; Joyce did an excellent job making you disgruntled and exasperated with his immature self. Admirable, but torturous.)
Anything by Dickens. Especially Great Expectations.</p>
<p>Books of no literary value that I find amusing:
The Thief
Harry Potter 1-3 (very quickly rolls downhill thereafter)
Beatrix Potter children's books: Peter Rabbit, Samuel Whiskers, etc. Such character!
Robin McKinley fairy tale renditions</p>
<p>i love Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. It was quite insightful in it's philosophy about aesthetics. I also loved how Stephen Dedalus was so devoted to his cause of becoming a true "artist" that he sacrificed church, family, and state...</p>
<p>To tell you the truth, I enjoyed Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man more than Ulysses. Of course they're both great books :)</p>
<p>i also enjoyed it much more than Ulysses, tchaikovsky.</p>
<p>i also like Wuthering Heights. While i was reading it as a sophomore, i thought it was pure torture and hell, but i decided to pick it up again for a project, and i found it quite enjoyable.</p>
<p>I really liked THE BEAN TREES by Barbara Kingsolver. I wouldn't say it's the greatest piece of literature, but it focuses on the importance of family, and redefines what being a family really means.</p>
<p>A lot of my friends did like the Bean Trees. Again, I just didn't like any of the books I read in 9th and 10th grades. </p>
<p>If you like Anna Karenina, you should try his other books too(sorry what's the author's name?), or any Russian writer's work. They're phenomenal and deeply philosphical.</p>
<p>Speaking of Bean Trees, I enjoyed reading Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver--it was the only "recent" book in my AP Literature class that we've read.</p>
<p>I'd agree with the sentiment on wuthering heights being extremely difficult to get through the first time. The characters become so much more likeable after you've read it once. hotpiece, out of curiosity, what was your thesis? I ask because I did a research paper on wuthering heights as well. I played around with the light vs. dark theme, analysing the relationships between all the characters. An interesting thing I didn't pick up on until about the third read was that there's this very interesting motif of intertwined hair. I know, I'm a dork, but I actually like writing research papers.</p>
<p>do we have any falkner fans here? my English teacher's in love with The Sound and the Fury, but we don't have time to read it in class. I'm planning on picking it up in the near future, but I figured I should probably get the opinion of a non-english teacher first.</p>
<p>rhapsody, i addressed the universal struggle b/w emotion and reason (a very prominent conflict during the rigidity of Victorian social standards) and the effect of that struggle on the individual characters.</p>