One of the hardest decisions I've made...the question should be "What books would you require if you taught all course requirements for an English Lit degree."

Frankenstein???!!?

Very interesting. I attempted to make my own Top 5, but then I realized it would be better off in this list: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/39...

Emily wrote: "Frankenstein???!!?"

Hey, it was a hard decision ;) No, I picked Frankenstein thinking of a class fairly new to literary analyses and Frankenstein demands consideration of substantial character composition rather than social or systemic description. Plus, it was written by a female but comes off as a "male" story.

Yeah, it was tricky. Ironically, I didn't make my choices based on scholarly literary dogma. I had The Sun Also Rises in there but thought that I didn't want to have a book just for its own sake; just to showcase a genre or period in literature. For example, Down and Out in Paris and London is a great example of experiential writing, well written and resolved in a particular social theory.

Agree! Frankenstein a top fav. Concise, brilliant and plays off of other seminal works but poses big questions of its own. Can't believe she threw that together at 19 or so. Nice list indeed. I should read the last 2.