Mr. P, you should enroll in a program like mine. My pleasure reading and reading for class are one and the same, mainly. This week's reading: Harry Potter #1, Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones, Dealing with Dragons (a very silly stupid book), and Bed-Knob and Broomstick. Also every book Russell Freedman ever wrote. Well, not quite, but close. And every book on Rosa Parks.
That's just this week.
So far this semester for my fantasy class, I've read:
Wizard of Earthsea (which I'm ashamed to say I'd never read before)
Elske by Cynthia Voight
Tom's Midnight Garden by Phillippa Pearce (another I should have discovered as a child)
The Golden Compass
The Hobbit (again)
Winnie-the-Pooh
The Indian in the Cupboard
The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Pope (another I should have discovered as a teen because I would have appreciated it more then)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (again)
The Wonderful Wizard of OZ
Peter Pan
Redwall
Hitty, Her First Hundred Years (story of a doll, quite annoying. Something my grandmother, who collects dolls, would have loved at the age of 9)
Charlotte's Web
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (VERY good, a retelling of Cinderella)
The Magic Circle (anything by Donna Jo Napoli is good)
Hans Christian Anderson's tales
Five Children and It by E. Nesbit (very Victorian)
Mary Poppins
Artemis Fowl
The Wind in the Willows....
and so on.
That's just for Fantasy/SF. The nonfiction class assigns about 5-8 books a week. At least in fantasy it's only 3 to 4. But they're all good books, usually.
Sheesh! I need to get some sleep. I've developed this strange eye-twitch from all the reading....
On the bright side, Russell Freedman will be in class on Wed. He wrote the Lincoln photobiography that won the Newbery in 1988, and several other well-written biographies, including Confucius, Babe somebody, Eleanor Roosevelt, and a history of the Declaration of Independence. He's got a book on the Bill of Rights in press now.
Anybody read Feed yet? If you have don't tell me about it, but I'll be reading it for class in a couple weeks and would love to discuss it later. It's gotten a bit of acclaim this year too, though I can't remember if it won the Newbery or an honor or what.
P.S.--upcoming reading in fantasy for next week: The Borrowers, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tuck Everlasting, and Neil Gaimon's Coraline. All except the last are books I read as a kid; will be interesting to read them with an adult's eyes. Anyone read Coraline?