Books To Read before/in College!

[Andrew]

I'm getting ready to go to college in a couple of months and I was wondering if you all would be willing to post books that you think I should read before I go to college and while I'm in college...please post all that you want!

[Jennifer]

All quiet on the western front. It is amazing and gives a great view of WWI.

[Jackie]

If you haven't done so already you might want to tackle some of the classics. Many of the English courses that I took in college required reading one or two classics or classics were referred too at some point during the course.

[Tabitha]

There are many websites with lists like this that might be helpful.

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/p...

http://www.lrsd.org/schools1/schoolpa...

[Dani]

I just finished my degree in English in June and I could recommend a bunch of books to you. What are the topics or themes of your class? If you can give me a time period or a topic of some sort I may be able to help.

[Andrew]

Well, I don't even know where I am going to school yet! Hahaha. I just wanted some suggestions of books to read that would be helpful to read before I start.

[Sasha]

My wife and I were arguing / whiteboarding "The Foundation" tonight, coincidentally - like, the stuff you really have to have by college. I'd say:

- Iliad and Odyssey (I recommend Fagles' translations)
- Plato's Apology (the most fun of his stuff, and short too)
- The Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Song of Solomon; skip anything that has the word "begat" in it)
- Chaucer (Oh, just read Wife of Bath and Knight's Tale, nobody reads anything else.)
- Shakespeare: King Lear and Hamlet
- Milton's Paradise Lost (Read books 1 and 2, and if you're thrilled, 9 and 10)
- Pride & Prejudice
- Moby-Dick
- Freakin' Hawthorne, fine. Just read "Young Goodman Brown." It's short and you'll get the idea, which is that Hawthorne is a dick.
- Huck Finn (along with Moby-Dick, the contender for Great American Novel, with the added bonus that it doesn't have great big gaping boring parts)
- Farewell to Arms, Hemingway
- Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
- Beloved, Toni Morrison

Ah, what have I missed of the bare essentials? Andrew, I realize this is stuff you may already have read, in which case, thumbs up!

(For those who are about to say "That's a bunch of white dudes," I know, I'm not defending this list, my list would be radically different if I got to run things. I just think these are the things we end up talking about a whole lot.)

[Kaion]

No offense to everyone's suggestions, but honestly, Andrew: If you manage to actually read all the assigned material (like textbooks and assigned books and articles and research materials for your papers)? You'll have done more than 98% of college students, and be super-duper awesome smart and spent your money well.

[Sasha]

Ha! Good point Kaion.

[Andrew]

Haahahaha! That is really great guys!
@Alex...I did this project for AP Pyschology, where I had everyone in my random sample name an Author that they could think of, and 96 percent of the authors named were white males. C'est la vie.

[Sasha]

I think the first dude who would come to mind for me would be Shakespeare. Possibly Tolstoy 'cause I happen to be reading him right now. So yeah...white dudes. Sigh.

[Chinook]

If you happen to be Canadian, add Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, and Mordecai Richler to that list. All white, not all dudes.

[Sasha]

Fun fact: 100% of the people in Canada are white. And female.

[Andrew]

I personally said MArgaret Atwood, which is wierd becuase I have never read a book by her, even though I am dying to read Cat's Eye.

[Kaion]

For what it's worth, Andrew, here's what I totally wish I knew to read when I was in high school and had free mind space to do that and feel smart and stuff:

Psychology:
1. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (Oliver Sacks is a neurologist, not a pstychologist, and boy it shows, but darn if it doesn't make you think and bring new associations and things.)
2. The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

Anthropology:
3. Guns, Germs and Steel

Biology:
4. Silent Spring
5. Origin of Species

Physics/Astronomy:
6. A Brief History of Time
7. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

Miscellaneous Social Importance:
8. The Jungle
9. Uncle Tom's Cabin
*books that happen on other continents too

Poets:
10. W.H. Auden
11. Emily Dickinson

Because they're AWESOME:
12. Pablo Neruda
13. Alice Walker
14. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Mythology/Legends/Stuff:
15. Edith Hamilton's Mythology has you covered as far as references go, but you should probably brush up
16. Gilgamesh
17. Anansi myths
18. Arabian Nights
19. Journey to the West
20. the Upanishads

Economics (psh, who cares about that):
21. Freaknomics

History (yeah, who cares about that either):
22. 1491

Books/writers pretentious people are always talking about and it you want to shut them up, you have to read them too (especially when the author's name becomes a 'descriptive' adjective):
- The Art of War
- Franz Kafka, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot (but you can stop at "The Wasteland" and "Love Song of Alfred S. Prufrock"), Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf
- The books this year's Oscar (or other heralded) movies are based on or are based off said movies... don't forget documentaries!
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America & Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

And if you're going into Journalism/Writing/Editing: The current popular books, no matter how crappy they are. I mean, anything with any sort of column space. Off the top of my head: Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Earth (the Daily Show), The Help, whatever Oprah is currently reading, Freedom (Franzen), The Hunger Games, The Thousand Lives of Jacob de Zoet.

And of course, the books everyone read in high school, so you should probably suffer as well: Catch-22, Brave New World, 1984, TKaM, Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, The Places You'll Go (Dr. Seuss), etc

[Dani]

Alex wrote: "Fun fact: 100% of the people in Canada are white. And female."

Ha! Yes it's true. You should ask me how we reproduce sometime Alex :P

[Kaion]

Yeah, my professor did about the same. But that was my intention: mention books that wouldn't be assigned, but I would/have found really useful as interesting supplement or background. (I mean, obviously reading the assigned material = smart.)

[Robin]

I first have to say, 'Congrat's' on making it to college! Just over the top cool!!! Second, I say just drop all of the 'how to do it books' and go with a really good horror, or paranormal read...Like one of mine..LOL. Sorry, I had to say read mine!!! ;) Mine would give you something to read when you are bored and need some really cool excitement..LOL. Dark Knight of the Skye, starts off on a college campus. ;p

[Chinook]

I think Guns, Germs and Steel is a really good suggestion - great, sweeping overview of history. And if you like it, I'd go on to read Collapse as well, particularly if you study any prehistory.

[Sasha]

Kaion, that list is amazing. Like, I am actually copying it and saving it so I can make sure I haven't missed anything on it. (Although for the most part I haven't, so that's nice.)

Just f'ing nice work there.

My other favorite sweeping history book (other than 1491, which is awesome) is Roger Osborne's Civilization: A New History of the Western World.

[Andrew]

@Erika....I love Toni Morrison. I actually did my American Author paper on her! And my banned book project....She is definitly one of my favorite authors.