If you are an english major, you probably love to read. Here are some
"good reads" suggested by faculty members from the UMD Department of
English. The first group of books are recommended as especially fine
scholarly works. The second include the books that we're reading for
pure pleasure. In either case, we hope you'll like these as much as
we do!
Scholarly Books
Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children's Literature in
America by Beverly Lyons Clark (2003) explores the relationship
between American cultural attitudes towards children's literature and
childhood itself from the nineteenth century to the present. Accessible
and fascinating.
- recommended by Professor Carolyn Sigler
Imagining Characters: Six Conversations about Women Writers: Jane
Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Willa Cather, Iris Murdoch,
and Toni Morrison, by A.S. Byatt and Ignes Sodre. This book allows
its readers to be writers at the same time.
- recommended by Professor Joseph Maiolo
A History of Reading, by Alberto Manguel. Scholarly but reader-friendly,
a delightfully personal approach to the history of what we all love
to do. A great introduction to this fascinating field of study.
- recommended by Professor Carol Bock
Physiology and the Literary Imagination: Romantics to Modern (University
of Florida Press, 2003). Gordon describes how concepts of body and mind
have evolved in the last two centuries and traces those changes in the
interplay between the medical and literary arts.
-recommended by Professor Martin Bock
The Greening of Literary Scholarship: Literature, Theory, and the Environment,
ed. Steven Rosendale. 2002. Essays on ecocriticism, one of the hottest
current approaches to literature.
Close Listening by Charles Bernstein.
-recommended by Kate Basham
Encounters in High School English. New York: Teachers College Press,
2001. Provides methods for high school students to use multiple lenses
to read literature, introducing them to critical theory which is both
motivating and empowering. -recommended by Professor Linda Miller Cleary
Pleasure Reading
The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith.
The first in a series (4 so far) of novels featuring a heroine that
The New York Times Book Reviews calls "The Miss Marple of Botswana."
A pleasure to read: light, engagning, humerous. The characters are delightful.
- recommended by Professor Carol Bock.
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt (2002) a suspenseful, alternately
humerous and chilling, absolutely fascinating murder mystery in a ruthless
12-year-old heroine (Harriet the Spy meets Tony Soprano) seeks revenge
for the murder of her 9-year-old brother.
- recommended by Professor Carolyn Sigler.
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand. A strictly true account of an
odd horse and three broken characters who brought a despressed nation
to its knees, in a kind of prayer. Written by a young woman whose own
story is an inspiration and against all odds.
- recommended by Professor Joseph Maiolo
Bushwacked: Life in George W. Bush's America, by Molly Ivins and Lou
Dubose. 2003. Incisive, well written, witty and depressing as hell.
Details how and why students will be paying for Dubya's disastrous policies
for many years to come. -recommended by Professor Stephen Adams
