Reading lists

Daniil M. Ozernyi

2024/10/21

Since I have taught British and American literature (for ESL) students before ad often find myself discussing literature, I thought I’d transfer the reading list I compiled over the years here.

English reading list

Poetry

  1. The Haunted Palace, E. A. Poe
  2. Photograph from September 11, Wisława Szymborska (or Fotografia z 11 września)
  3. She Walks in Beauty, Lord G. G. Byron
  4. Annabel Lee, E. A. Poe
  5. The Road Not Taken, R. Frost
  6. Axe Handles, Gary Snyder (from the late Hugh Silbaugh)
  7. Travelling through the Dark, William Stafford
  8. The Campus on the Hill, W.D. Snodgrass
  9. We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
  10. The Black Walnut Tree, Mary Oliver
  11. Ox Cart Man, Donald Hall
  12. I heard a fly buzz when I died, Emily Dickinson
  13. Theme for English B, Langston Hughes
  14. Lapis Lazuli, William B. Yeats
  15. In a Station of the Metro, Ezra Pound
  16. The Last Duchess, Robert Browning
  17. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot
  18. The raven himself is hoarse from Macbeth, William Shakespeare
  19. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow from Macbeth, William Shakespeare
  20. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel T. Coleridge
  21. What Kinds of Times Are These, Adrienne Rich
  22. The Lady of Shalott, Alfred Tennyson (both 1832 and 1842)
  23. To be or not to be, from Hamlet, William Shakespeare
  24. Suppose Columbus, Charles Suhor
  25. The Everlasting Monday, Sylvia Plath
  26. Lady Lazarus, Sylvia Plath
  27. Q:

    1. Celia, Celia, Adrian Mitchell

      “When I am sad and weary
      When I think all hope has gone
      When I walk along High Holborn
      I think of you with nothing on”

    2. mr youse needn’t be so spry… (XVIII), e. e. Cummings

      “mr youse needn’t be so spry
      concernin questions arty

      each has his tastes but as for i
      i likes a certain party

      gimme the he-man’s solid bliss
      for youse ideas i’ll match youse

      a pretty girl who naked is
      is worth a million statues”

  28. [mildly comical, not to be taken seriously] Robert W. Service
    1. The Shooting of Dan McGrew
    2. The Cremation of Sam McGee

Fiction: Short Prose

  1. O. Henry:
    1. Gift of the Magi
    2. The Last Leaf
    3. etc.
  2. O’Connor:
    1. A Good Man Is Hard To Find from A Good Man Is Hard to Find
    2. A Late Encounter With the Enemy from A Good Man Is Hard to Find
    3. The River from A Good Man Is Hard to Find
    4. Good Country People,
    5. Revelation,
    6. The Barber,
    7. The Displaced Person
  3. EA Poe:
    1. The Murders In The Rue Morgue
    2. The Cask of Amontillado
    3. The Pit and the Pendulum
    4. Ligeia
  4. Rats in the Walls, HP Lovecraft
  5. Conan Doyle:
    1. The Adventure of the Speckled Band from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
    2. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
    3. The Adventure of the Dancing Men from The Return of Sherlock Holmes
    4. The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans from His Last Bow
    5. etc.
  6. The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving
  7. A Sound of Thunder, Ray D. Bradbury
  8. Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin
  9. Joyce (all from Dubliners):
    1. The Sisters
    2. Araby
    3. Eveline
    4. After the Race
    5. A Little Cloud
    6. Counterparts
    7. A Painful Case
    8. Grace
    9. An Encounter
  10. Time x2
    1. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce
    2. Bullet in the Brain, Tobias Wolff
  11. Hills Like White Elephants, Ernest Hemingway
  12. Stranger in the Village, James Baldwin
  13. A Modest Proposal, The V. Rev. Jonathan Swift, DDiv
  14. A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner
  15. Bartleby, the Scrivener, Herman Melville
  16. The Bear, William Faulkner from Go Down, Moses
  17. Welty:
    1. A Worn Path
    2. Why I Live at the P.O.
    3. Music from Spain
  18. Hemingway:
    1. Hills like White Elephants
    2. Big Two-Hearted River
    3. A Day’s Wait
    4. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
    5. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
  19. Hisaye Yamamoto
    1. Seventeen Syllables
    2. Yoneko’s Earthquake
  20. Jhumpa Lahiri
    1. Interpreter of Maladies
    2. The Third and Final Continent
  21. Maxine Hong Kingston (but the books from which the stories below come is probably the best way to read her)
    1. No Name Woman
    2. Shaman

Non-fiction short prose:

  1. Projective Verse
    1. Projective Verse, Charles Olson
    2. A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance, Stéphane Mallarmé
  2. Variations on the Right to Remain Silent, Anne Carson
  3. Composition as Explanation, Gertude Stein
  4. The Death of the Author, Roland Bartes
  5. On Noise, Arthur Schopenhauer
  6. Clarice Lispector
    1. Agua Viva
    2. The Egg and the Chicken
  7. Soliloquy, Kenneth Goldsmith

Long Prose/Drama

  1. A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, Charles Dickens
  2. Agatha Christie:
    1. And Then There Were None
    2. Dead’s Man Folly
    3. Mrs McGinty’s Dead
    4. etc.
  3. Old School, Tobias Wolff (sort of meh though)
  4. The Catcher In the Rye, J. D. Salinger
  5. The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
  6. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
  7. Go Tell It On the Mountain, James Baldwin
  8. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
  9. Death of A Salesman, Arthur Miller
  10. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
  11. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
  12. Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
  13. American Tragedy, Part I, Theodore Dreiser
  14. The Haunting of the Hill House, Shirley Jackson
  15. 1984, George Orwell
  16. Optimist’s Daughter, Eudora Welty
  17. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  18. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steibeck
  19. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Edward Albee
  20. As I Lay Dying**, William Faulkner**
  21. The Trial, Franz Kafka
  22. F+
    1. The Sound and the Fury, WF
    2. The Unvanquished, WF
    3. Light in August, WF
    4. Intruder in the Dust, WF
    5. Sanctuary, WF
    6. Go Down, Moses, WF
    7. Absalom, Absalom, WF
  23. How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel
  24. Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet
  25. Copenhahen,
  26. Angels in America, Kushner
  27. A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennesse Williams
  28. Arcadia, Stoppard
  29. Old Times,
  30. Democracy, Frayne
  31. Noises Off, Frayne
  32. Sweat,

All of us need Shakespeare

  1. Titus Andronicus
  2. Hamlet
  3. Henry V
  4. Richard III
  5. King Lear
  6. The Merchant of Venice
  7. Winter’s Tale
  8. Macbeth
  9. Much Ado About Nothing
  10. Othello
  11. Romeo and Juliet
  12. Twelfth Night
  13. The Two Noble Kinsmen
  14. Coriolanus
  15. The Tempest

Reading Lists for American Literature (as taught in 2020-2021; high school)

Prose

Poetry

Reading Lists for British Literature (as taught in 2020-2021; high school)

Ukrainian

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