<p>I am almost finished reading the summer assignment and I was wondering how long the response has to be? Are there specific instructions?
Thanks!</p>
<p>You got your package already?</p>
<p>i didn’t even know that we had to write a response to the book;
i thought we just get into groups w/ ppl from all over the department
and discuss the book</p>
<p>i didn’t get mine yet, but i haven’t had much to do at work so i read the book. and i’m pretty sure we have to write a response. i know that had to in previous years</p>
<p>There will be a whole bunch of questions you can choose from. I would wait.</p>
<p>If you would like some other reading suggestions, let me know!</p>
<p>ooh i would love some reading suggestions!
i have a tendency to pay too much for the wrong books XD</p>
<p>Good authors to read for an incoming freshman include Eggers, Franzen, Zadie Smith, and Murakami. Of those, you can read Heartbreaking Work, Corrections, On Beauty, and Norwegian Wood.</p>
<p>If you would like to read some Cornell-related fiction, you can check out Richard Farina (Been Down So Long), Matt Ruff (Fool on the Hill), or Alison Lurie (The War Between The Tates). Nabokov also wrote a book that took place at Cornell, but I’m blanking on the name.</p>
<p>If you would like to read fiction written by Cornell authors that isn’t Cornell related, you can try Pynchon, Diaz, Nabokov, and of course Vonnegut.</p>
<p>I’m an incoming freshman and these are some books you might want to consider, depending on your interests. I’ve read (and liked) about a third to half of these, but the rest are from my own long-term reading list. </p>
<p>Albert Camus - The Stranger
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
Allison Hoover Bartlett - The Man Who Loved Books Too Much
Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger
Arundhati Roy - God of Small Things
Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged
Barack Obama - Dreams from my Father
Bill Clinton - My Life
Bohumil Hrabal - Too Loud a Solitude
Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
Cormac McCarthy - The Road
Dave Cullen - Columbine
David Rakoff - Don’t Get Too Comfortable
David Rakoff - Fraud
David Shields - The Thing About Life is that One Day You’ll Be Dead
Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
Edward O. Wilson - On Human Nature
Elie Wiesel - Night
Eric Schlosser - Fast Food Nation
Eric Weiner - The Geography of Bliss
Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea
Fareed Zakaria - The Post-American World
Flannery O’Connor - Wise Blood
Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka - The Trial
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
**Gabriel Garc</p>
<p>I just graduated, and for the record, I didn’t pay any attention to the summer reading project. I forgot it existed. Nothing will be collected. No one will know that you didn’t do it. Your essay will be entered into a competition, but that’s all.</p>
<p>There should be a website for a discussion and instructions I believe, well at least my year had one…</p>
<p>I get the sense that murakami’s work can be very kafkaesque or strange like dorian gray, at least from reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
but it’s a good read</p>
<p>srrinath – That’s a great list. My only complaint would be that you’re missing a lot of the recent up and comers – Zadie Smith, Eggers, Franzen, and David Foster Wallace, although the later isn’t exactly up and coming anymore.</p>
<p>I’d also probably add Coetzee, I’ve been obsessed with him as of recent.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And I suppose you’re better as a result, right?</p>
<p>What kind of questions to they give to base the response on?</p>
<p>Last year:</p>
<p>[Cornell</a> University 2009 New Student Reading Project](<a href=“http://reading.cornell.edu/The_Grapes_of_Wrath/study_questions.cfm]Cornell”>http://reading.cornell.edu/The_Grapes_of_Wrath/study_questions.cfm)</p>
<p>thank you so much! that was really helpfull</p>
<p>@CayugaRed2005: I’ve heard of (or even sampled from) some of the names you’ve mentioned, but like any other lifetime reading list, mine is a work in progress and I add books whenever I come across them. There are more great books in the world than I have the time or discipline to read. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to read something by Coetzee, any specific recomendations?</p>
<p>for the record, you don’t even have to do this assignment, or you can just hand in some garbage thing…I handed in my pochontas essay or something.</p>
<p>No one I know even read the book. Trust me, during Oweek there is way too many other fun things and partying to be done than to start school early</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Disgrace is probably the best to start with. Some of his other recent books, like Summertime, are a little bit less accessible to the first time reader.</p>
<p>What is the required reading for incoming first years this year?</p>