This is topic Help me pick a novel to write about in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
 
No this is not doing my homework for me. My professor encouraged us to consult friends and classmates for suggestions. What better place to turn than Hatrack?

My final research paper in my English research methods class needs to be on a novel - I can choose the novel and I can choose the topic. The only caveat is it has to be a novel the professor has read. He said that if it's contemporary, he probably hasn't read it. He specializes in early American lit.

It must be a novel, he won't allow me to write on Shakespeare. I asked. I then asked if I could write it on Beowulf (I LOVE Beowulf) and he said he would allow it, but he would prefer I didn't. So I probably shouldn't. Plus, next semester I'm taking an entire course on Beowulf, so I'll probably be sick of Beowulf before things are all said and done.

I'd like to get a list together of four or five good possibilities to present to him, hopefully he will have read something on the list. He told us that any novel we had studied in our literature classes would probably be okay. It needn't be an American novel, that's just what he specializes in. He suggested Hawthorne or Melville neither of whom I'm a fan of.

Help me denizens of Hatrack. you're my only hope.
 

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Posted by Amilia (Member # 8912) on :
 
What about Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? This is probably my all time favorite novel. It was written in the 1940s, so it's not "early American," but it's not really contemporary either.

Or what about Jane Eyre? I've been watching the new BBC adaptation (absolutely amazing) and have been reminded how much I love that book.
 

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Posted by ginette (Member # 852) on :
 
What exactly do you have to write about this novel Belle? I mean, it's a research methods class, so are you for example going to analyse the novel structure, write some sort of a technical review about it? Because then maybe you should pick one you don't like . It must be easy to write a lot about why it makes you

Anyway, my choice would be Jane Eyre. I love that book. But I guess he won't approve with that one either
 

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Posted by ginette (Member # 852) on :
 
Now isn't that a coincidence:)

I posted my reply before I saw yours Amilia.
 

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Posted by Amilia (Member # 8912) on :
 
Great minds think alike!
 

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Posted by ginette (Member # 852) on :
 

 

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Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
 
The topic is wide open. We can use any approach we want and formulate any thesis we want. The only requirement is that the novel be one he's read. I hate assignments that are so open-ended, I'd really prefer he gave us a little more narrowly defined topic.
 

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Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 
Heh. Melville and Hawthorne were going to be my first two suggestions.

I don't have a clear idea of what the assignment is, but I can't think of a novel that lends itself better to a close textual look than Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and it's a safe bet your professor has read it. If it's about doing secondary research, I know a lot of it has been done.

I think there are a lot of good reads within Southern fiction, which you might enjoy working with as a southerner yourself. The big issue is whether or not your professor has read it.

For a non-American suggestion, how about Gulliver's Travels?

Will he let you do the Canterbury Tales?
 

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Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
 
How early is early? I loved both The Old Man and the Sea and Huckleberry Finn, and I'm guessing your professor has read both. They're both very entertaining stories, and each has a great deal of depth, plenty for an assignment or ten.
 

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Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
 
If I had a topic this wide open, I'd pick a big book that influenced a people, like Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, The Iliad, or one of those Joyce books I've never read.
 

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Posted by crescentsss (Member # 9494) on :
 
portrait of the artist as a young man is, indeed, amazing. there's also lots to say about Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. it's also my favorite book
 

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Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 
Amazing crap, that is . . .


 

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Posted by crescentsss (Member # 9494) on :
 
*gasp* how dare you speak about Joyce this way??
 

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Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
 
The Old Man and the Sea is fantastic, I could do that one. I'm writing a short paper right now on "Hills Like White Elephants" so I could just have a Hemingway term, I suppose.

Keep suggestions coming...I want to get together a pretty good list.
 

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Posted by Kasie H (Member # 2120) on :
 
Is Irving too contemporary? What about A Prayer for Owen Meany?
 

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Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
I love Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I maintain it's one of the best books ever written. It's about a desire for fulfilment and a man's many paths to attain it. Plus Hesse won a Nobel Prize, so he was always on our lists of authors we should have read.

I loved Mutiny on the Bounty by James Hall and Charles Nordhoff. It's pretty popular, and it had some great moral dilemas. It was a much easier read than I was expecting.

I remember doing a report once on E M Forster's A Passage to India. I hated the book and couldn't read it, but reading the critics interpretation of the cave was fascinating. I've never had so much reading about a book before. (Forster's short stories are much better than his novels, IMO. I love the Mark of the Beast.)
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
"On Human Bondage"? I mean, it's not great, but I managed to finish it, which is moderately unusual for novels of that time period.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
The Sea Wolf by Jack London.

It's not his best work, but it's the one where he was attempting to make particular philosophical points (an anti-Nietzsche argument). I could see lots of great things to write about in it.
 

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Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :
 
I really enjoyed The Glass Bead Game by Hesse when we read it here several years ago.

I'm reading Paradise Lost so far with a couple of my friends who are classics majors, and that's really interesting. There are a lot of parallels with it and other Epic poems that I never would have noticed if I wasn't reading it with them.

That's all I can think of for now.
 

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Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 
The Lord of the Rings?
 

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Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Dagonee:
The Sea Wolf by Jack London.

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quote:

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Originally posted by King of Men:
"On Human Bondage"? I mean, it's not great, but I managed to finish it, which is moderately unusual for novels of that time period.

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quote:

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I love My Antonia by Willa Cather.

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