The English Department invites you to complete the list. What is the list? It is easier to say what it is not than what it is. It is not a list of books that represents the canon. It is not even a list of all our favorite books or all the great works we hope you will someday read. Rather, it is the list of books that emerged when we asked this question of ourselves: what books do we think are essential; what books do we think no one鈥攁nd in particular, no English major鈥攕hould leave college without having read? We gave ourselves this limitation: we could each only offer up five books for the list and at least three of those had to come from our area of specialization. So, the list is idiosyncratic in the best sense of the word: each of us struggled individually to identify the five books we thought it most essential for you to read while in college. The books that emerged from those individual choices became 鈥淭he List.鈥�
We hope you will take the challenge to read these books along with us!
- Anyone who completes 5 works from The List receives an English Department mug.
- When you complete 10 works, you receive an exclusive List mug.
- Complete 20 works, you receive an exclusive List tote bag.
- Finish 30 works from the list, we will buy you a copy of your favorite work from The List and inscribe it, and then invite you at the end of the year to join us at a literary salon where we discuss these wonderful works.
- If you read all 41 of the books from this list while at Wittenberg, you get to make a difficult choice yourself: you get to choose your own essential work of literature to add to The List.
Here's how the challenge works:
- Sign up in the English department office (Hollenbeck 102) if you want to take the challenge. You have your college years to complete the list. If you want to print an alphabetized list to check off as you go,
, or if you want one divided by professor as below, - you can also pick either one up in the office when you sign up for the challenge.
- When you finish reading a work of literature from the list, pick up a slip from the English department office to fill out with your name and the title of the book.
- Take that slip with you and talk with the professor who recommended the book (or with one of the alternate professors if any are listed for that title) about what you found most interesting about the work, and get their signature on your completion slip. Return the slip to the English department office.
- Keep track of your progress on The (check)List and come to the English Department office to redeem your rewards as you reach each benchmark.
- To find the book in the Thomas Library/EZRA or through OhioLink, click the book title.
To see the 2018-2020 version of The List, .
To see the 2015-2018 version of The List, .
To see the 2013-2014 version of The List, .
The List
Note: While you should try to meet with the professor who chose the book for The List, many titles have alternate professors (listed parenthetically after the author) with whom you may also meet to discuss and earn credit for completing the work.
Dr. Lori Askeland
, Frederick Douglass
, Virginia Woolf (Fallon, Hinson, Mattison, Richards)
, Herman Melville (Hinson, Mattison, Starr)
, Zora Neale Hurston (Hinson, Richards, Starr)
, Malcolm X with Alex Haley
Professor Andy Graff
, Raymond Carver (Hinson, Starr)
, Gary Paulsen
, Charles Portis (Hinson)
, Shelby Van Pelt
, Flannery O'Connor (Askeland, Hinson)
Dr. John Gulledge
, William Shakespeare (Hinson, Richards, Starr)
, Ben Jonson (Richards)
, Christopher Marlowe
, Margaret Cavendish (Richards)
, Francois Rabelais (Hinson)
Professor D'Arcy Fallon
, Joan Didion (Mattison)
, Tim O'Brien (Hinson, Mattison, Richards, Starr)
, Jo Ann Beard
, Thomas Lynch (Mattison)
, Brian Doyle
Dr. Scot Hinson
, Marilynne Robinson (Askeland, Graff)
William Faulkner (Askeland, Richards, Starr)
Vladimir Nabokov (Askeland, Fallon, Mattison, Starr)
Margaret Atwood (Askeland, Starr)
James Joyce (Gulledge, Mattison)
Dr. Michael Mattison
, S.A. Cosby
David Foster Wallace (Hinson)
, Stephen Markley
(or ), David Markson
, Benjamin Bergen
Dr. Cynthia Richards
Samuel Richardson (Gulledge)
Laurence Sterne (Askeland, Gulledge)
Frances Burney (Gulledge)
(Gulledge)
, Aphra Behn (Gulledge)
Dr. Marlo Starr
, Marlene NourbeSe Philip
, Layli Long Soldier
, Solmaz Sharif
, Kazuo Ishiguro
, Anna Burns
Jordan Hildebrandt
Edwin A. Abbott [Mr. Hildebrandt is the first student to complete The List, reading 75 books, May 2012] (Mattison)