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May I then claim to be the only person on the board who knows what "required" means?
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since that's so obviously  a rhetorical question, let me ask another of you, bill. [take it to a separate thread if you like] what did *you read that added to *your formative experience (however you define that)?
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old hand
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May I then claim to be the only person on the board who knows what "required" means?Of course we know what required means, but required and personal invariably conflict. It's against human nature to conform to all standards. Rules are made to be broken. But if we want authors that would be absolutely required, I need only to delve into my last two years of high school English (American Lit. and British Lit.) and decide on the 10 that were considered the most fundamentally important for the formation of a proper English education. Here's probably the most likely list and their most important works: Chaucer (Canterbury Tales) Shakespeare (Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, sonnets) Donne (Holy Sonnet 10, A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, Meditation 17) Coleridge (Kubla Khan, Rime of the Ancient Mariner) Shelley (Frankenstein) Poe (The Raven, other creepy stories) Conrad (Heart of Darkness) Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath) Orwell (Animal Farm, 1984) Miller (The Crucible) And we probably still won't agree.
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He asked for a list of required reading not based on reviews in the New York Times Review of Books or the opinions of your secondary school English teacher or your college professors or what you feel you *should have read had you but followed the proper educationally correct regimen but based on *your reading.
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 why do I feel like (suddenly) we're speaking about four different languages here?
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In college, many courses had required reading. A list would be handed out, and posted in Widener Reading Room.
You did not have a prayer of passing the exam if you did not read those books or articles before indulging in the luxury of reading other things that seemed likely to be valuable to helping you become "well rounded" and intellectually developed.There was no time for pleasurable browsing.
The miserable thing was that some bastards would get to the only available copies and hide them so the rest of us could not find them until they were through with them, and even then they did not always put them back in the proper place.And the profs would not even punch your TS card.
This is why I have such bitter recollections of required reading lists.
And any list of ten books is a obscenity Procrustean bed.
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Whoa, whoa, people. Dr. Bill, you obviously had a nightmarish time that involved required reading--no wonder the idea makes you bristle! I don't suppose the professors could be bothered to make sure that there were enough copies of a particular book to go 'round, before they assigned it. Tsuwm, you are right: there are different struggles going on here, and not all are necessary. The most obviously unnecessary one is arguing over what maverick meant. We really might benefit from waiting until he can explain for himself, if he chooses. We seem to have gotten on to a track that thinks a 'canon' = 'required'. I am not sure that is the case. Perhaps it might have been more along what this section from Atomica says: "A group of literary works that are generally accepted as representing a field: “the durable canon of American short fiction” (William Styron)." But I don't know. There is also the lack of consensus on what we weregiven to read, vs. what we think we should have beengiven to read. Any list of these, as was said in the beginning, is probably never going to be agreed on. So can we please agree to disagree without getting ugly about it? I find it fascinating, first to know what others were given, and even more, what made the most impact on them. There is also the question of: what had the most impact on us personally, vs. are we trying to make up a list that we think others should be given, to make sure they get the best experience we think they can have? Again, I think we're going to have to wait and see if maverick will enlighten us as to which he was looking for. Anna, I agree that this thread has made me think in ways I haven't before, and I love your point about Carroll.
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I love the premise of this thread, and thank mav muchly for intitiating it! I wasn't contesting mav's proposal in my "oxymoronic" post, as much as thinking through it out loud... Because this has caused me to call into question the honesty of my original picks, and to take a hard look at their import, impact, and chronology in my life in a more justified and fair-minded manner. I encourage the longevity of this thread!! And I am working on a revamped top-ten list in light of my new self-pespective/appraisal, and will repost it when when comfortable with it after some extra thought (but just ten, I promise!), and perhaps with some short explanantion for the changes. But I agree that it might be interesting to hear mav's reaction if he chooses...but, if not, I will continue to preen my list for future posting. Ironically, (what's that irony emoticon, tsuwm?) I reacted to what I perceived to be a roadblock being thrown up by Dr. Bill with his required implication...because I was looking forward to this thread's survival and lists from folks who haven't yet chimed in! I'll finish with a for all!
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The central mission of this Board is to learn words and how to use them.
It seems to me that the most important word in Mav's original post has been ignored.
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If Mav wanted us to come up with lists of authors who should be required to be read by all children, then he's doomed to disappointment as far as I'm concerned. However, if it was what we found formative, then my list in the previous post stands, if only because if I fiddled with it I'd be like Wow - torn between umpteen different authors. Bill, we know what required means, I think. We just don't find it a valid term in this discussion.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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