<p>I am taking an Independent Study English Class this coming school year and am in the process of planning my course curriculum. The course will include elements of reading, writing, and vocabulary. The most structured part of the curriculum will be the course reading list, which I am trying to determine.</p>
<p>With the school year being 36 weeks, I'd like to create a 36 (maybe 30 to be more reasonable) book list, so that I finish one book per week. I'd like the books to be from a variety of time periods (pre-16th century, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th century). I'd like to read primarily classics, although not to the extent that I'm boring myself with books that are too dense to realistically complete in seven days.</p>
<p>An early list of possible books includes (title/author/pages):</p>
<p>On the Road- Jack Kerouac (307)
East of Eden- John Steinbeck (608)
The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald (180)
The Catcher in the Rye- J.D. Salinger (277)
Catch 22- Joseph Heller (453)
Brave New World- Aldous Huxley (268)
To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee (323)
A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess (192)
War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy (1392)
The Wind in the Willows- Kenneth Grahame (240)
Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (704)
The Prince- Niccolo Machiavelli (146)
Lord of the Flies- William Golding (192)
Walden- Henry David Thoreau (384)
The Republic- Plato (416)
Slaughterhouse Five- Kurt Vonnegut (275)
The Sound and Fury- William Faulkner (326)
Middlemarch- George Eliot (912)
Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison (581)
Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte (326)
A Farewell to Arms- Ernest Hemingway (304)
Frankenstein- Mary Shelley (254)
David Copperfield- Charles Dickens (974)
Gone with the Wind- Margaret Mitchell (1024)
Atlas Shrugged- Ayn Rand (1168)
The Fountainhead- Ayn Rand (720)
Uncle Tom's Cabin- Harriet Beecher Stowe (438)
Faust- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (352)
Utopia- Thomas More (135)
Macbeth- William Shakespeare (272)
Robinson Crusoe- Daniel Defoe (320)
Candide- Voltaire (94)
Paradise Lost- John Milton (453)
The Aeneid- Virgil (442)
Oedipus Rex- Sophocles (80)
The Nicomachean Ethics- Aristotle (400)
Canterbury Tales- Chaucer (528)
Inferno- Dante (528)
Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen (320)</p>
<p>Any recommendations for books to consider and books to not consider, with regard to historical significance and also ability to complete in one week? Also, any grouping of books that would be good to read together and do a project on comparing and contrasting them or that relate to a certain period in time?</p>
<p>Paradise Lost is not a book. It’s an epic poem. A movie is being made from the material, so you should read it and then go see the movie to compare. Check out Native Son by Richard Wright. I’m reading it now and it’s great. I recommend Invisible Man, Great Gatsby, East of Eden, Catcher-Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird.</p>
<p>On that particular list, I’d say definitely read On the Road (my personal favorite book ever), The Catcher in the Rye, Great Gatsby, and To Kill A Mockingbird. The first three are definitely doable in a week, I finished The Catcher in the Rye in two days and still loved it. Slaughter-House five is also great, but you could check out Galapagos or Cat’s Cradle, two other widely adored Vonnegut books.</p>
<p>You should check out The Stranger by Albert Camus.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t think you’ll have time to finish a book a week. If you’re in many ECs or taking difficult classes, you might get hit hard with work some weeks. Especially the more “heavy” books.</p>
<p>I would give myself two weeks for each book, which would cut your list down significantly, but you’ll enjoy each one a lot more lol. Reading on a deadline is something I personally find rather unpleasant. As for your list, I think you’ve got a good summary of the Western canon there. Wind in the Willows is a bit juvenile for high school study though, and I would either pick The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged–not both.</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestions! I’m cutting the list down to 18. I’ll take a look at Invisible Man and Stranger. Any thoughts for 4-5 book groupings with similar themes?</p>
<p>If you want a book for every time period, Dante’s Inferno is pretty good. Voltaire is also pretty interesting. The suggestions other people made are good too. If you’re thinking about Ayn Rand, the fountainhead is more bearable and shorter.</p>
<p>Honestly, Gravity’s Rainbow was one of the most absurd books I’ve ever read. It would go in cycles: 10 pages of stream-of-consciousness descriptions of God-knows-what and randomly capitalized nouns to add Significance to generally boring prose (these 10 pages would take about an hour to slog through), followed by a page or two of hilariously lowbrow dialogue involving kinky sex and poop jokes (this would take maybe 5 minutes).</p>
<p>Read Infinite Jest if you’re into the whole thick-postmodernist-tome thing. It’s like Gravity’s Rainbow except fun to read.</p>
<p>I’d avoid The Sound and the Fury, unless you like your brain leaking out of your head from some of the mind screwyness.
out of your list, I’d suggest these (I’ve only included those that I’ve read parts of at the very least, can’t comment on the others):
The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald (180)
The Catcher in the Rye- J.D. Salinger (277)
Catch 22- Joseph Heller (453)
To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee (323)
A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess (192)
The Wind in the Willows- Kenneth Grahame (240)
The Prince- Niccolo Machiavelli (146)
Lord of the Flies- William Golding (192)
The Sound and Fury- William Faulkner (326)
Frankenstein- Mary Shelley (254)
Atlas Shrugged- Ayn Rand (1168) (one of these two)
The Fountainhead- Ayn Rand (720)
Macbeth- William Shakespeare (272)
Canterbury Tales- Chaucer (528)
Inferno- Dante (528)</p>
<p>I’d include something by Lovecraft (most were pretty short), Rime of the Ancient Mariner (not a book, also short), Snow Crash (What? I’m a geek and it’s a good book), 1984, and Lord of The Rings.
If you have a choice, just read what you want. Most of the reasons why many of these books are read are BS. That said, many of the books are good, just read for the wrong reasons.</p>