ten books to read this year

Since winter break only lasts so long, I am going to condense my reading list to one book: The Brothers' Karamazov.

I read constantly during the semester, but never what I want to read. I get stuck with things like Logic of Language, Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, and The MLA Handbook. Not my favorite things to read. For Christmas, I asked for and received quite a few books, including Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and the complete collection of Fairytales from the Brothers’ Grimm. Sure, these sound like children’s’ books, but they really aren’t. Any Writing Major or Writer, for that matter, who has not read those books should be ashamed.

Writing is about telling stories, and a writer who does not read is probably not a good writer. One does not understand the art of good story telling unless one first investigates the classics.

I have an extensive library ranging from current best sellers to classics, to self-help and chat books. I have read…. most…. of my books, but there are a particular few volumes that continually hide from me and avoid being read. I have made a list of the next ten books that I will read no matter what. Excepting those required texts for the coming semester, I will read no other books until I have completed the list. (Perhaps I will be lucky enough to find one or two from my list on the textbook list this semester. Doubt it, but it is possible)

1. The Brothers’ Karamazov
2. Don Quixote
3. Garden of Eden
4. House of Mirth
5. Galapagos
6. Mrs. Dalloway
7. West Side Story
8. Les Miserable
9. Catch 22
10. The Catcher in the Rye

How, you might ask, have I survived as an English/Writing student for so long without reading some of theses books??!! I really must be a poor excuse for an English major, having not read The Catcher in the Rye. Non-readers accost me all the time and try to get the best of me by telling me how they ready TCitR and Animal Farm for their Freshmen Composition class. I am perfectly happy having skipped over that class altogether.

I find that I have developed a horrible habit: I do not read the required reading for class; I wait and read it the week after the semester ends. I never have enough time to devote to each book, so I wait. Otherwise, I read sections of the book and have no interest to read the whole thing later. I just wish professors understood this instead of thinking that I am lazy. It never occurs to them that I simply take my education more seriously than they do.