This year I changed my degree to study English Literature, and I thought I’d share some of the pieces we read.

I had three different classes across the year, focusing on Literary Classics, World Literature, and Contemporary Literature, so I certainly got a range of literature to read.

LITERARY CLASSICS:

• Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
• Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• Beloved by Toni Morrison

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE:

• The Agonist – Shastra Deo
• Heat and Light – Ellen van Neerven
• Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic – Alison Bechdel
• The Candy House – Jennifer Egan

WORLD LITERATURE:

• Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Feeding the Ghosts – Fred D’Aguiar
• The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
• Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books – Azar Nafisi
• Zong! – M. NourbeSe Philip
• Baby No Eyes – Patricia Grace

Listing them all out like that is rather satisfying, and certainly makes me feel more accomplished, as it was a lot of work getting through all of them. Admittedly, some of them remain slightly unfinished, as I had to move on to the next set of books, but I will be finishing all of them before the year ends.

These were all incredibly interesting and challenging reads, with some being utterly painstaking to get through. Even so, I enjoyed the different topics, and the new ideas were both confronting and informative.

If you are interested in expanding your own reading, nearly every piece on those lists would be a great place to start, as they are all masterful pieces of writing.

My favourites though, were the ones that surprised me the most.

Titus Andronicus – Oh my goodness, this is easily one of the most gory and horrifying plays I have ever seen, but it was simultaneously clever, funny, and so interesting. Historically, this is believed to be one of Shakespeare’s earlier plays, and would have been incredibly popular back in the day.

The violence and gore would not have been as shocking to audiences back then, but the thing I found most interesting was the many references that were interspersed in the play. The average modern viewer probably wouldn’t recognise the Roman or Latin references, but these were in fact common knowledge to most of the men of the Elizabethan era.

The Candy House – I must admit that I haven’t actually finished reading this yet, but I’m almost done, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. The book is a collection of shorter stories which centre on a web of intriguing characters who all have such rich backgrounds and lives. Each is fleshed out, gripping, and fits into the strange world perfectly.

The main premise is of living in a world in which you can upload your consciousness to a collective database to relive your memories, or even explore others. It questions the morals around this, and how one could actually live and function within that world in such a fascinating way.

The Moor’s Last Sigh – This book was on the longer side, and had a huge web of characters, plot lines, ideas, histories, and references throughout. It was gripping because of the humorous narration, utterly gripping characters, and hundreds of pop culture, historical, cultural, literary, artistic, and religious references that made it so interesting to read. I highly recommend this book, and encourage anyone who reads it to stick with it. Nothing can really prepare you for the masterpiece this novel it, and no matter what you think will happen, I’m almost sure that you’re going to be wrong – in the best way.

So there you have it. Whether you are a literature student like me, an avid reader, or just curious about what studying literature is even like, this is certainly an introduction to that. These books are fascinating on so many levels. Each one is entertaining enough to read alone, layered enough to read critically and find some really interesting questions and potential answers, and they will all reveal new cultures and worlds that will draw you in and leave you wanting more!

Do any of these books interest you? Have you read some of them before? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.