I was required to read a lot of books for my English literature degree, but I didn't always, and rarely all the way through. Uni's not really about the studying is it?
Here's what I remember reading from GCSE level (my most illiterate period ever) through A-level to degree level, for work and pleasure. Yellow for study books, in case you somehow couldn't tell them apart. It does get trickier when the study books eventually start to get good.
2001
Unknown, The Offspring – Star Profile: If You Can't Join 'Em, Beat 'Em
**
There's some great rock journalism and literature out there, but if you're a fan of childish punk bands, you have to lower your standards a bit. The accompanying interview CD was more insightful than the book, but it had lots of pretty pictures, and I was glad that it caught them around the time of Ixnay before they went all sell-out.
Read 2001
****
Ruined by repetitive GCSE-level over-analysis, but it's not like I would have sat down and read/watched it if I didn't have to. Lots of nice quotes and philosophising and stuff, but it's mainly valuable as the background context for Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.
2002
Read 2002
****
A worthy classic and all, but read in school at sixteen – too old to relate to the characters and too soon to appreciate children's literature nostalgically – I felt a bit patronised by the kid's-eye view when the grown-up story was clearly more interesting.
Read 2002
****
My brother had this. Rather than being a tacky cash-in, it turned out to be a valuable introduction to the horror canon for clueless goths, setting me on course for Expressionist vampires and Hammer horrors.
Read 2002
***
At just 79 pages, this isn't a Future Noir level of comprehensive depth, but there's still lots of nice behind-the-scenes trivia and pics, as well as a convoluted timeline map that blew my teenage mind.
Read 2002
****
"Read a book" was the entirety of my summer homework to prepare for A-level, so I thought I'd better go for a proper one. The first ebook I ever read (Word doc on CRT monitor), and the only novel I'd read recreationally for years that wasn't based on a TV programme (I hadn't seen the film yet), I thought it was pretty good, but ended up basing my coursework on different books instead.
Alessio Cavatore and artists, Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts (6th Edition)Read 2002
**
I didn't have the finances, the painting skill or the enthusiasm to collect Warhammer beyond a box of skeletons I never assembled, but I admired the art and the plagiarised lore. It's a shame the stats and tables kept interrupting that.
2003
Read 2003
*
Poetry has its work cut out to satisfy me generally, and this miserable prick couldn't be bothered. Which might be surprising, considering we share similar zest and optimism for life.
Read 2003, re-read 2019
*****
I read this before seeing the film, but I still couldn't escape its shadow thanks to my paperback's cash-in cover. Make a literary science fiction classic look like a bland novelisation, why don't you.
Read 2003
***
The first time I got to choose what I wanted to study and write about, I'm disappointed in myself for staying sensible and not analysing Red Dwarf or Blackadder or something, but at least I went sci-fi. Old, academic sci-fi that people have already studied in depth in Googlable articles, so I didn't have to do as much work. This one was more of a slog than I expected though.
Read 2003
***
Not well-versed in early-20th-century Soviet technocracy, there's a lot more subversive satire going on in Zamyatin's superficially simplistic far-future fable than I bothered getting into for the purposes of my A-level essay, when I plonked it at the far end of the timeline respective to a 1984 or BNW and concentrated on the sci-fi technicalities.
Read 2003
***
Still the only book I've read (collaboratively) in German, this falls into the same jolly category as When the Wind Blows and Threads, with the distinction that it's deliberately aimed at scaring the shit out of teenagers. It was a fitting choice for how I felt throughout A-level German.
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues
Read 2003***
When my German (not actually German) teacher found out I was studying First World War literature in another subject, he encouraged me to read this to get the German perspective (in English, I wasn't that dedicated). It wasn't any different, which was maybe the point he was making. Could have saved me the time, but it probably helped me to look clever and proactive on an exam. I made it all the way through, which is more than I can say for Birdsong.
Read 2003
****
Was Rob Grant's idiocratic dystopia a prophetic warning we didn't heed, or a privileged rant about political correctness gone mad? I thought it was funny at the time, but it could benefit from a re-read now I'm older and wiser or irrevocably brainwashed by the liberal fake media, whatever you like, dude.
Read 2003-05, re-read 2005, 2017
*****
I think it's pretty well established that I like these. For some reason, I imagined the cast as Futurama characters the first time around, which I didn't shake it off until I saw the TV version afterwards. I never even really watched Futurama. Generic cartoon archetypes are malleable, I guess.
Read 2003
****
Regrettably the last hard sci-fi book I read for a very long time, thanks to a couple of abandoned SF Masterworks putting me off, Clarke's Dyson Cylinder awed me with its cosmic mystery, less so when the focus shifted to the relatably human. I shan't read the sequels, I don't want answers.
Read 2003
***
I liked Fear Factory and The Matrix, but the cyberpunk root directory didn't do much for me, I can't remember if I finished it. If I'd known that Gibson wrote the episode that made me quit The X-Files for good, I wouldn't have bothered.
Read 2003
**
Our English teacher would spend a disproportionate amount of the year making us provide the collaborative audiobook to novels she liked, then rush through the more traditional academic texts when deadlines approached. I wasn't into this one, it's like a boring Twin Peaks.
Read 2003
****
I eventually got around to reading the more acclaimed German one, but the English one with less romance and more tomfoolery is my preferred version (after Švankmajer's, anyway). Easily my favourite thing we studied at A-level, I was always content with a bit of fire and brimstone.
Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace, Are You Dave Gorman?
Read 2003*****
A super-low-budget acquired-taste comedy tucked away in the BBC schedule, The Dave Gorman Collection was naturally going to be a favourite, and the book version might be even better, turning a solo show into a semi-antagonistic double act. Released at exactly the right time – when search engines and email encouraged extravagant globetrotting, but before social networks would have rendered the whole thing [even more] pointless – it's a satisfying millennial time capsule.
H. R. Giger, HR Giger ARh+
Read 2003
****
Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Millennium, Book I – The Fall of Terok Nor
Read 2003
***
After a few years cavorting with other wormholes, I got back into Deep Space Nine when they started releasing the DVDs. As a prelude to the 'season eight' novels (that I wouldn't get around to for a long time), I invested in this giant paperback trilogy of what sounded like an epic plot... then was dismayed to get bored after book one. The Reeves-Stevenses are dab hands at writing servicable Trek, but not entertaining Trek.
2004
Paul Simpson and Ruth Thomas, Farscape: The Illustrated Season 3 Companion
Read 2004***
In the olden days, the series companion would cover more than a single run of episodes, but Farscape merch was always a bit on the exploitative side. The third season was the best season, so I paid my respects by buying the book. Aside from full-colour photos of various disgusting Muppets that were appreciated, the interviews with cast and crew weren't especially insightful – more TNG than DS9, companion aficionados! I've wasted my life.
Read 2004
**
From the Red Dwarf Programme Guide to the Nitpicker's Guides, I'd built up the idea that unofficial guides were more fun than stuffy authorised companions, with their impartial freedom to be opinionated and slag off bad episodes. Unfortunately, this one turned out to be pretty boring.
Read 2004
****
Would I get on better with Shakey today, now that I'm not pressured to understand it, or does it lose something if you don't spend ages going over and over the same lines and bestial imagery? I preferred this to Hamlet, for the more cunning villain and more exotic setting.
Read 2004, re-read 2018
****
I was too young to take sad, longing comfort in Blake's pastoral poems as an angsty teen, but the grim industrial ones and the fearful symmetry across the double album made more of an impression than any other poets I studied. I don't think it was just the paintings.
Read 2004
****
Richard Herring's non-sexist, no-homo male answer to The Vagina Monologues was adapted from a stand-up show, but it's so comprehensive and borderline academic that you wouldn't know it. Find comfort and horror in the cock survey of the average Lee and Herring fan.
Read 2004
***
Dave's wacky quests had diminishing returns for me, after his classic namesake odyssey and Important Astrology Experiment that few people seem to regard as highly as I did. The book adaptation also misses the dual voices of the previous one, and the China 'gag' was just irritating.
Read 2004
****
When you've watched as much Baddiel & Skinner Unplanned as I did before there was YouTube to fill time, you won't be able to see past the author in this semi-autobiography. I took comfort in it as a fellow insomniac, the difference being that my problem went away as soon as I stopped drinking Coke all the time. I still relate to the needy cat bits.
Read 2004
****
A fascinating artefact from Lee's millennial hiatus, this debut novel amalgamates disparate influences from his trips across America and other experiences and observations more succinctly summarised in his stand-up. Subsequently disowned by the author as a "bad novel," it is a bit of a mess, but I liked it. I am an insufferable fanboy though, so don't listen to me.
Dante Alighieri, Inferno
Read 2004***
I'd enjoyed Iced Earth's musical summary, so thought I should check out the original. It's not the most thrilling or atmospheric journey through the underworld, and you have to be a 14th-century Florentine to get the full effect, but it has its iconic moments. I saw Allen Mandelbaum's blank verse translation being praised as the best available, so went to the trouble of importing an obscure paperback rather than just reading whatever passable version of the public domain poem I could find for free online. When did I stop being a connoisseur?
Read 2004
***
Recommended prep for my literature course, although I don't think we ended up studying it, so I just got to enjoy reading some adult fairy tales that weren't nearly as scary, sexy or feminist as they could have been.
Various, The Norton Anthology of Poetry: Fourth EditionRead 2004-05
*****
A bit of a boring and uselessly general thing to bring up retrospectively, obviously not everything in this heavy book is excellent, nor even most of it, but for its scope and quantity it would be a nice thing to have on the shelf. That is, if I hadn't reBayed my second-hand copy as soon as it had served its practical purpose, trading poncy poetry for food and basic needs.
David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language: Second Edition
Read 2004-05****
I'm not sure why I chose a three-pronged approach to university by studying English language, literature and creative writing, but the first of those got dropped at the end of the year for being too practical. In the meantime, this colourful and approachable guide was invaluable, even if its glossary of textspeak and emoticons was amusingly out of date even on publication, or just oddly informed.
Read 2004-07
***
This is still recommended on my university course today. It never felt that indispensible to me, just a useful source of definitions and introductory quotes for essays when I couldn't be arsed to dig up sources myself.
Read 2004
***
I don't know which of the several rhyming translations I took down off the shelf of my university's library, but I was impressed by that achievement. No doubt it requires blasphemous corruption of the original Italian to make every new line rhyme, but it lightened the load on this uphill struggle.
I started Paradiso, but didn't get very far. Not my scene.
2005
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are DeadRead 2005
****
One of my favourite things we studied in my first year of uni, and thus one of the few to get my full attention and lodge in the memory almost 15 years later, I still have the feeling that my fresher mind didn't fully appreciate just how good it was. If only there was some way I could read this short book again or watch a performance to find out. Oh well, never mind.
Read 2005, re-read 2006-
*****
One of the greatest things in the English language (I don't speak other languages), even if I need annotations to make it through Milton's epic "poem" (the lines don't go all the way to the end, but it's not stifled by rhyme). I was so chuffed to find something I liked so much in the syllabus that I ended up writing three essays on it for different modules over the couse of a year. Saved having to read other stuff.
Read 2005
*****
I got through this in about two sittings, finding it captivating in a way the film (watched a couple of years later) wasn't. It somehow didn't put me off moving to Edinburgh, where I eventually got so complacent that I forgot I was in the Trainspotting place and got mugged by some of the characters.
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
****
I never owned this one as a child. You'd think I'd have at least borrowed the core Narnia text from the library around the time I read most of the others, but I don't remember doing so. I'm just fascinating and anti-establishment, I suppose. Coming to it as a (borderline) adult and literature student, I found the religious and mythic parallels interesting and not overdone as they would be subsequently, and there was more violence than I was expecting. I belatedly decided it was an essential children's classic, even if I apparently couldn't be arsed with it myself.
Read 2005
***
I was staying at someone's house and she had the Narnia books; what's an underdeveloped manchild to do? Especially when I'd never read some of them. I even had this one as a kid, paired with Dawn Treader like the BBC series, but I didn't get far before switching to the more appealing quest book. I don't blame me, it's pretty grim for the most part and doesn't add much to the mythos.
C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn TreaderRead 1995, re-read 2005
*****
The first Narnia book I read and probably my favourite, it's the fresh take that was needed after the first mediocre sequel with less violence, a semi-rebooted cast and a rip-roaring voyage mining other cultures' mythologies, before Christianity returns with a vengeance for a weird ending. It's not as bad as what Christians have to put up with when reading Pullman, so I'll let Lewis off.
Read 2005
*****
Gloomy, squelchy and maybe even scary, this is another refreshing take on the series, another candidate for best of the bunch and another one I had on my bookshelf as a kid but inexplicably never read until it was too late and I grew out of it. Fortunately, I grew back into it. It took four books for the strongest character to show up in the form of Jill Pole, and Eustace has come a long way since the last one.
C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
Read 1995, re-read 2005***
The oddest duck in the Narnia series, this book-length footnote to a story mentioned by an owl in the previous book (written earlier, but published later) needn't have existed at all, but then the world would be marginally worse off. It's the dullest book of the series, and feels much longer than it needs to be, but I made it all the way through as a kid when I didn't read most of the others, so it must have done something right. My verdict on re-reading at 19 was that its portrayal of desert folk wasn't particularly racist. He saved that up for the finale.
Read 1995, re-read 2005
*****
Maybe the most enchanting thing I read as a child, this is one for that very short list of prequels that surpass the original, though maybe that comes down to whether you're more of a fantasy or sci-fi kid. For Aslan's sake, follow publication order rather than chronological order and don't tell your kids to read this one first.
C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle
***
Revelation to Magician's Genesis, the controversial ending to Narnia has some pretty major problems, from the violence to the inexcusable racism and old-man sexism, but at the end of my last read-through I decided, for all that, it was still "an enjoyable romp." So there you go. It was the only one to be recognised with a prize, but I think that was the same celebratory deal as the last Lord of the Rings film getting all the belated awards.
William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona
***
Having picked up a very cheap complete Shakespeare, that it turns out I'd never actually need thanks to early-bird course selection, I thought I'd best read at least one, so chose a random one I'd never heard of. I can't remember much of the content, but actually being able to read it through without pausing to discuss every sentence and watch two comparative filmed productions of the scene back to back before continuing, it was better than school trauma had let me to expect. The language wasn't a problem, I'm a native English speaker.
Read 2005, re-read 2015
*****
One of the most straightforward coffee table books out there, I spotted this at school and in a couple of other places before I found it on someone's bookshelf while dog sitting and gave it a good old viewing. She had the pocket one, not the la-de-la big one, but it's the same pics.
Read 2005
**
Someone bought me this for my birthday when I was visiting London, but there wasn't enough time left to go and see anything. Never mind, it didn't last anyway. eBayed.
Various, The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth Century Verse and Prose
**
I don't think I ever went into a bookshop and bought any of these study books full price. Most of them were eBayed second-hand; a couple were Amazoned when I earned enough dooyooMILES; some I read online; this one I loaned from the library the month before term began and kept renewing all year long. As for the contents, it's useful for studying the period, but nothing I'd sit down and read today, especially as it deliberately omits the famous works that are widely available elsewhere. Why would I want to buy that?
Read 2005
**
Rather than the university-recommended edition of Paradise Lost, I upgraded to one (Christopher Ricks ed.) that attached Milton's short sequel and retained the original, archaic spelling, which as you can imagine made me look very clever when quoting in essays. I read the disappointing sequel out of interest, since it didn't come up academically. There's not that much to it.
Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic: A Sequel to The Colour of Magic
Read 2005
***
My brother and various other people I came across had assorted Discworld books between them, and I eventually caved and bought a few from a charity shop. This was the only one I read at the time, which isn't the smartest thing to do if you haven't read the book it's a direct sequel to and that the characters you're suddenly expected to be familiar with keep referring to. I like his way with words, but it didn't do much for me. Even as someone who'd recently re-read all of Narnia, I felt I was a bit old for it.
****
This was recommended in the 'nice to have' section for my literary theory course, so nobody bought it until I saw it offloaded in a charity shop. It turned out to be much friendlier and more understandable than the big anthology, so Barry got passed around at essay time.
Fun fact: After giving up being vegetarian after a year, I had a guilty nightmare that I was microwaving the cat's head from the cover.
Read 2005, re-read 2019
*****
If only all required course reading was as short and sinister as this, I would have read more of them. Stevenson's split personality classic was read alongside psychoanalytic theory, but I still wrote my Freudian essay on Star Wars because I'm a twat.
2006
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four
Read 2006****
Like most people who quote 1984, I didn't bother to actually read it when I wrote an essay comparing it to other dystopias at high school. It was only a high school essay and we had Google by then. Instead, I curiously read it for leisure in the middle of my university course when I could have been reading other dreary things that would have been more beneficial. Maybe I felt guilty.
It's 1984, you know what it's about. Even if you haven't read it. Who actually reads it?
Stanislav Grof, Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy
Read 2006****
I first came across Grof's perinatal matrices being applied to imagery in Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and the like, and he became my favourite alternative authority for grasping literary criticism outside of the approved establishment. I found this in the uni library and took enthusiastic notes that I had fun applying to Hitchcock films and alien abduction experiences in essays written academically and for no particular reason.
Read 2006
**
Someone's misguided recommendation, if I wasn't trying to get in her pants I wouldn't have persevered through a book I found so relentlessly annoying in its mass-market edginess.
Read 2006
****
I skipped over the Romantics and Victorian realists to arrive at the good shit. Imagine being cocky enough to only write one novel in your life which then becomes the core text of a literary movement that has its own course at universities over a century later. I shan't read any of his plays, just to spite him.
Read 2006, re-read 2014
****
Until I go through all the samey Holmes stories and struggle to rank them, we won't know what the best collection is, but there are plenty of good ones among the first twelve shorts. I worked out that my budget Penguin Popular Classics edition came in at approx 17p per story, there's no arguing with that value.
Read 2006
*****
There were a couple of isolated female precursors who shouldn't be overlooked, but this is where science fiction really kicks off, and it's an absolute belter all the way to the giant crabs. Alright, so Back to the Future's better, but that's better than everything.
Daniel Leonard Bernardi, Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future
Read 2006***
When I spotted this in the university library, and realised I didn't have to write my final "English literature" dissertation on hard books after all, all those years wasted in front of the TV retroactively became worthwhile research, I tell myself. Bernardi's insightful book went into the pot with other sci-fi histories and sociological studies to produce this bastardisation. If I'd stayed on, maybe I would have produced something original eventually.
Various, Star Trek and Sacred Ground: Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture
Read 2006****
Star Trek's political, racial and sexual allegories are all ripe for frivolous academic scrutiny, but I found this collection of essays a lot more interesting, putting Roddenberry's didactic atheism in context and exploring how the spin-offs have lightened up on that front since he shuffled off his mortal coil and went to no afterlife. This theme ended up forming about a fifth of my whistlestop essay, but it probably should have been the whole thing.
Read 2006
***
Narrowing its focus to a single series, there's still 178 episodes to pick and choose from to present a complex study of a 1990s TV show not being quite as good as it could have been for women and frankly appalling for the gays. Most of it's reasonable, some of it's really stretching, but that's the fun of overanalysis.
Jan-Jul 2007
Read 2007
***
I'm not very interested in autobiographies, but make it semi-fictionalised and muck around with the prose and I'll pay attention. I found this a nice read, despite it doing its best to be annoying. You'll have to try harder next time, give it your best shot.
Read 2007, re-read 2017, 2019
*****
I can't say I fully grasped Eliot's epic poem to the extent you probably should if you're going to write an essay on it, but over-confidence and passing off smarter people's opinions as my own saw me through. You know, for a change.
Read 2007, re-read 2016
***
I don't know if I read the whole thing the first time around, but I had a strong sense of the opening scene and could quote some, and what more do undergraduates need? Overrated Woolf.
Read 2007, re-read 2016
*****
Arguably the best use of stream-of-consciousness out there (even after re-reading some of these classics, I feel ill-equipped to adjudicate), this one made an impression that many other purposefully difficult books didn't. Maybe I was just waiting for nicer scenery.
Read 2007, re-read 2015
*****
I didn't read it all at the time I studied it – they weren't sadistic enough to require us to – but I felt bad about that and eventually remedied it. One of the most remarkable if not particularly entertaining books ever written, it has lots in common with The Odyssey apart from the fun.
Read 2007
***
Short enough to be spared from the skim-reading fate of Lord Jim, A Passage to India and many others I was supposed to read, this complex racist classic was a vivid voyage, even if it wasn't as infernally psychedelic as I would have liked.
Read 2007
****
It's strange; reading a synopsis as a reminder, this sounds like an appalling celebration of twats, but I remember it being really good and flying past. Stick it on the re-read pile to confirm, or maybe read some of his others if he's so good.
Read 2007
****
That's how you make Modernist stream-of-consciousness stylistic wank readable, Joyce & co – make it funny! Unless it wasn't supposed to be a dark comedy and I'm just sick. I keep planning to commit to more Faulkner, but a failed attempt at The Sound and the Fury put me off trying for another decade or so.
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Read 2007, re-read 2015, 2016*****
This was probably my favourite book I pretended to read at university. The entry representing postmodernism in American literature, it naturally came towards the end of my final year, by which point the prospect of sitting down to read less than 200 pages over a week was evidently too daunting. It sounded good in the online notes and blagged seminar discussion though, and I got around to it eventually.
Read 2007
**
The last book on my literature course, which had all been building up to this manifesto of entitled narcissism. What an anticlimax.
Read 2007
***
I didn't realise I was entering the bowel-upsetting realm of Bizarro fiction when I bought this as a semi-joke for someone who'd been nostalgically enjoying authentic Choose Your Own Adventures and [I] Give Yourself Goosebumpses, probably as an antidote to all the difficult study books. It was quite a funny parody, but we would have got more out of the real thing.
