Our Independent Reading Program

One of my hopes for this year is that much of our reading can be done independently, so that you can choose, within certain constraints, books that you are more likely to be interested in.  We will all read some things in common, and we will look at short passages from many, many authors, but the works you read in full will, I hope, be mostly ones that you choose on your own.

That does not mean that you can spend all of your time reading Tucker Max or the like.  During the first quarter, we are going to be studying American literature that was written before the end of the Civil War, so your independent reading books should have been written before 1865. There is a list below: you should spend some time browsing and reading before you pick a book to continue with.

Once you have selected a book, you should read it regularly.  Bring your book to class every day, since we will often spend some time reading in class.  When you finish one book, start another; those of you who are seriously interested in literature should have read two or three or more books on your own by the end of the quarter.

You will be graded mostly on regularity, and on completing a minimum of pages each week (to begin with, let’s say 80).  People who want to be A students will be expected to greatly exceed that minimum.  If you want to get a B, you should meet that minimum—and NEVER do other work during the reading time in class.  If you do so, you will be graded down severely.  Giving you reading time in class is a great gift for you and something of a risk for me.  Please make it be a risk that I want to keep taking.

The independent reading will be intensive over the first four weeks of the quarter, and then will be put a bit on the back burner (though we will still spend half an hour of class time each week reading independently).

·            (18^th century:)

·      Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer

·      Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity…

·      Franklin, Autobiography

·      Equiano, Autobiography

·      Woolman, Journal           

·            (19^th century:)

·      Poe, stories

·      Melville, Moby Dick (or others)

·      Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

·      Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, as Written By Herself

·      Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (or others)

·      Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly (or others)

·      Susannah Rowson, Charlotte Temple

·      Washington Irving, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, etc.

·      Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales (or others)

·      Thoreau, Walden

·      Emerson, Essays (start with “Self Reliance” and then ask me for other good ones)