Honors Faculty and Council members recommend books to first-year honors students.
Honors Class: HON 110- Literature and Expoloration
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick: or the Whale. Because of its length, I was never assigned this novel as an undergraduate, but I chose to read it on my own one summer, which is the only way to read it, I think. You need to take this voyage at your own pace. From the first paragraph, I was pulled into the current Melville's narration and 625 pages later resurfaced from a literacy immersion into one of the best novels written, knowing more about cetology, life aboard a sailing ship, faith and the nature of perception in the 19th century than I ever imagined. Moby-Dick is the most lyrical, meditative, encyclopedic, and narrative exploration of American character produced in any century.
Honors Class: COM 116- Performance of Literature
The Shack by William P. Young. When I was in college I began questioning all I had been taught about God and for many years explored a wide variety of avenus seeking the spirtual truth of the universe. I wish this book had been written 35 years ago! Highly recommended fiction for anyone seeking an intimate relationship with God.
Honors Class: HON 110- Human Nature: Evolution of Behavior
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez because the fantastic story easily made me suspend reality and introduced me to Latin American authors. I read it soon after college, and loved it.
Honors Class: HST 103- Intoduction to Global History
I would suggest Joys of Motherhood, by Buchi Emecheta, a novel about Nigeria (West Africa) during the twentieth century colonial period. It is a very moving story about a woman and her family, with much African flavor but also many universal themes and situations.
Honors Class: ENG 103- College Writing and Reading
I would recommend Cape Fear Rising by Philip Gerard. I think it is an important book that illustrates how quickly a community can fall apart . It also gives residents an important insight into the history of this area.
Honors Class: HON 210- Science in Contemporary Drama and Literature
My favorite novel is J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace. This astonishing, multilayered, yet never less thanlucidly clearbook deals with such topics as ethics, academic politics, sexual harrassment, racism, political violence, apartheid, revenge, the animal world, and possibilities for human redemption. It's an amazing experience. Historically speaking, the essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" by Richard Hofstadter is well worth reading in light of contemporary circumstances. The most politically and aesthetically inclusive play I know is Angels in America by Tony Kushner.
HON 120-302: Food for Thought (Spring 2009)
I would suggest a translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric; it is a text that is not often read by many people, but that has lots of practical advice that students can apply both to the real world and to their academics. I use the Rhetoric in my film courses (my students always rave about it after they’ve read it) in English courses, and just in dealing with life’s issues. It can be dry reading for folks not into that sort of stuff, but I find Aristotle’s Rhetoric to be truly fascinating; the students will apply his principles to their lives in some way or the other. Also, it’s a good read for students interested in Theatre, Com Studies, Philosophy, History, even Classical Studies!
English Class: SPN 201- Intermediate Spanish
Without a doubt, number one has to be Don Quixote de la Mancha, author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Great literature speaks eloquently of the universal human experience. The Quixote does that on multiple levels, and keeps you in stitches at the same time! Four centuries down the line, this novel is unmatchable for insight into not only Spanish life and culture, but human life and culture as well.
It's a bit unusual, but also These Were the Vaqueros, author Arnold Rojas. He writes in the most exquisite manner of the cowboys of California (of which he was one). Rojas explains their daily life but so much more; Spanish, Mexican, American history, culture and customs of all three, the horse, I could go on and on. It is, without a doubt, one of the finest books I've ever read, and many friends to whom I've lent it agree.
Honors Class: HON 210: Family, Culture, Travel: Reading & Writing Memoir
I recommend The Uncommon Reader, a lovely little novella about the joy of books, by the playwright Alan Bennett. The Queen of England stumbles accidentally upon the public library’s mobile book van behind Buckingham Palace. Out of politeness (not desire) she borrows a book. Thus begins an unexpected love affair with reading that changes everything about life in the palace. Very funny and moving, full of delightful characters. It’s a perfect little book that explains why books are so perfect.
Honors Class: PLS 111- Politics and Government in Global Perspective
My recommendation would be Pramoedya Ananta Toer's This Earth of Mankind. Pram is and Indonesian author who wrote beautifully about what colonialism was like and how the first glimmerings of nationalism grew in the colonies. This is a story of Indonesia, but it has much to teach us about colonialism and the birth of nationalism all over the world. It is also a human story of striving, love, difference, awakening, and cruelty. Fascinatingly, Pram developed the stories for This Earth of Mankind and other books in the Buru Quartet series while he was a political prisoner held by Indonesia's long-serving dictator Suharto. Denied pen and paper, he recited the stories tp his fellow inmates until finally in his last years of jail he was allowed to write the tales down.
