The 200 Hundred Books You Shouldn't Read

Exam Prep: An Invitation to Adventure

We spend a lot of time in our culture, telling ourselves what the best books are, telling ourselves what we are supposed to read to be a whole human. Out of the millions of books that have been written over the centuries, over the years of conquest and control imposed by those who have sought only their own interest, how are we to believe that the Western Canon, or even the expanded version that contains a smattering of writers from what we classify, anachronistically, as protected classes, begins to approach the best of literature? Yes, certain texts can be important to understanding cultural references in contemporary North American society, but every effort you make to invest in one text is time away from investing in other texts. The more open you are to books and stories from other places and peoples--that may or may not fit a historically bound understanding of "good literature"--the more power you will find as your create and claim ownership of your own collection of literature, canonized or not.


video transcript

Join with Ryan as he reads and explores community through literature.

Please sign-up at:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqcOpUeEcgp7dHBDTWNYbTR6cjUxcU85dUtYb2NwaGc&usp=sharing

Check out the different books and articles you can discuss by looking through the Reading List below!


Frequently Asked Questions

See the list as...

SPREADSHEET - OFFICIAL READING LIST

MAP - GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION

TIMELINE - CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Browse

books and articles by their relationship to    

GENRE (Nonfiction, Novel, Drama, etc.)
TIME PERIOD (Contemporary, 20th century, 19th century, Medieval, etc.)
THE MODERN WORLD (Rise of Civil Society, Technology & Industry, Race, Class, Gender, etc.)
LITERARY FORM (Modernism, Dystopic Texts, Romanticisms, Realism, etc.)
HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS (Institutional, Family, the Individual, Marginalizing, etc.)

links forthcoming

Some Back Story

This upcoming Valentine's Day, Ryan will be taking a test, and he wants to invite you to help out in a small way. Pick a book or article from the reading list that you would like to discuss, and email back and forth with him a few times. That's all. There are lots of different books to choose from, so pick something that will engage and challenge you in your own life and work. If you would like help making a choice, email Ryan and he'll be happy to help you find something that will interest you.

The goal in all of this is not to say what good literature is or isn't: every book deserves to be read. The goal isn't to define the purposes of literature or tell everyone the 100 books they should read. We all know what a story is. We all can sense the purpose of books simply by what they do in our life. No, the goal of this project is to understand a game one can play with books and stories: how can literature serve as a metaphor for the public sphere, for how we interact as a society.