The GEP reading lists bring back wonderful memories. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, did I read that? Somehow I cannot remember. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn & Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Both of them under the theme of self-determination and individual control of destiny. Intriguing. Somehow I never remembered them being classified into themes. Perhaps I forget. It feels slightly horrifying to be given pre-determined lists of values and virtues which we are to learn. Do they design the literature syllabus based on what virtues we should have? The Odyssey by Homer, no I didn’t dare to take this on.
The Painter of Signs by RK Narayan, what a familiar name somehow. The role of the supernatural in human destiny.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding, I have that book, bought many years older. Natural instinct vs ‘civilisation’ influences.
To Kill a Mockingbird; Diary of Anne Frank; The Pearl by John Steinback; Les Miserables. Social Justice.
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, another book I have but I never understood it properly. A Wrinkle in Time, so kiddish, so nice. Sons and Lovers, in the same category of Self-understanding, Fears, Anxieties, Self-discovery.
King Lear; The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ravages of Time:loss of youth; growing old.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, another donation to Kinokuniya. Social alienation; social decay.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinback; Of Mice and Men by Steinback. Dreams and Disillusionment. more books I vaguely remember. the best laid plans of mice and men. I could never forget that line.
A Tale of Two Cities comes under Social Changes and Revolution.
Catch 22; Day of the Jackal by Federick Forsyth. Political Intrigues. So that’s why I started reading Forsyth.
Animal Farm; Macbeth. Was it so that we do not grow up to be tyrants?
1984; Brave New World; A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Loss of indivuality and Dystopia. So easy to go crazy.
Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane; Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally; War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. What would drive a 15 or 16 year-old to touch War and Peace.
I Heard the Owl call my Name by Craven.
Sherlock Holmes, haha.
Lord of the Rings Trilogy. indeed. They encourage fantasy after all.
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela; Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe; Dune by Frank Herber; The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells; Planet of the Apes by P. Boulle’; The Andromeda Strain by M. Crichton; Ideas and Opinion by Albert Einstein; Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder; Camus; Kafka; Jean-Paul Satre (The Age of Reason is lying on my desk); Nietzche; Locke; Bertrand Russell; Confucius; T.S. Eliot; Yeats; W.H. Auden; Robert Frost; Ted Hughes; Sylvia Plaith (ohmy); E.M. Foster; Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett; Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevski (hey I did force myself to write this one, but I couldn’t understand enough of it to write the book review); Death in Venice by Thomas Mann; One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gariel Garcia Marquez; Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie; Famished Road by Ben Okri (I don’t understand it); Cry, The Beloved Country by A. Paton; The Kitchen God’s Wife by A. Tan; Watership Down by R. Adams (yummy); Jonathan Livingston Seagull (hey I thought I bought the book); Red Sky in the Morning; The Scarlet Ibis (my fondest memories)
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That’s like a who’s who list of readable literature, hehe. Absolutely fantastic. I typed out like 1/3 to 1/2 of the list. I’ve got a few more decades to try to finish reading everything. I need so many more books. I think many people don’t read because they do not know what to read or where to start. So many of these books are not That difficult, but where would you pick these out in the bookstore. In the entire city I only know of Borders and Kinokuniya where they can be found reliably. Perhaps Books Actually might have many of them too. Times, MPH, well difficult to find. It makes me want to splurge at Kino. Good thing they gave up with those 20% book coupons, else I would be much poorer.
I still cannot imagine 16 year olds reading such books. It’s just incredible. It is, however, impressive that they dared to expose us to these names, to stuff we could never yet understand.
How good a level of English is required? Pre-O Level standard?
Such was life back then. All the crazy things we did which makes us a little crazy inside.
Comments (4)
i remember reading the diary of anne frank and loving it alot. sadly i’ve (or someone else in my family has) lost the book =(
i had animal farm for lit in secondary school! i remembered hating it. haha
i loved sherlock holmes too =D
i fell asleep twice well attempting to read LOTR. i gave up and nvr finished the book. =P
hm i cant remember Anne Frank, perhaps I didn’t read it.
yes i had Animal Farm for lit as well. first ever lit book in lower sec. what’s wrong with it? it’s such a cute story. growing up, i was rather surprised that many adults think it’s an important book.
LOTR, well, there’s a rather lot of history in the story. if you can’t jump into it then i guess it’s rather tiresome and confusing.
You mean those reading lists they gave us had categories?!?! Never noticed them.
Intriguing list don’t think I’ve read half of it
@<16 I was not in any condition to appreciate a quarter of them anyways.
Still no compulsion to finish up the list these days.
I remember LT did not do a ERP or whatever and he wrote some essay to Janelle Ho about not doing it or sth like that. I was pretty amused by that.
I remember doing Momo by Michael Ende and wrote a poem as the creative response. For some reason I can’t recall what the story was about, what my poem was like (or what category it was under). I remember I got a good grade though. Sheesh I think it went out in the trash with all the old notes from my files.
Don’t you just love The Neverending Story by Ende. Fascinated me as a kid. The movie and the book. I would rank it way up there in my childhood movies list together with The Land Before Time.
Heh suddenly inspired to a movies of our times list.
i only recently found out there were categories. i don’t recall having noticed them before either. maybe we got censored versions of reading lists. what a conspiracy anyways.
Janelle Ho, and her shrieks, yuck. so many pretty amusing things.
i don’t remember Michael Ende though.
movies? i dont have any strong impression of movies