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Reading Lists
The reading list is one of the things that distinguishes The Honors College at The University of Maine from other similar programs. It allows us to address our belief that Honors students should not only excel in their classes and produce independent scholarship in their chosen disciplines, but that they should have a strong foundation across the breadth of the ideas and perspectives.
Each student's reading list is made up of some twelve to fifteen titles which have played a significant part in her/his academic development. We interpret "text" quite broadly and one or two films, musical compositions, works of art, or buildings may be included in place of book titles. Your reading list should include texts that are reflective of your undergraduate years: from Honors courses, from other courses, or from your private experience. Often it is appropriate to include one or two texts encountered before arriving at The University of Maine
Students often ask for examples of past reading lists. Even though they are very idiosyncratic, we've decided to post some here. The first one is a hypothetical one assembled by the Dean of The Honors College, Charlie Slavin; it might have been his reading list had he had to put one together when he wrote his undergraduate thesis many years ago..
Charlie's Reading List:
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn)
Fourier Series and Integrals (H. Dym & H.P. McKean)
Classical Electromagnetic Radiation (Jerry Marion)
Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
Edge of Objectivity (Charles C. Gillispie)
Coming into the Country (John McPhee)
A Sense of Where You Are (John McPhee)
Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman)
Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
Glacier Bay, the Land and the Silence (David Bohn)
Rascal (Sterling North)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (George Roy Hill)
Tapestry (Carole King)
Now that you're done laughing, back to reality: here are some other sample reading lists. These were chosen randomly (really!) from the reading lists of the students who graduated from Honors at UMaine in the past few years.
1. English Major
The Republic (Plato)
Zen in the Art of Archery (Eugen Herrigel)
The Cinnamon Peeler (Michael Ondaatje)
The Dreaming Tree (Dave Matthews Band)
Sinister Mister (Bela Fleck & the Flecktones)
Robert Frost, Selected Poems
Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut)
Walden (Henry David Thoreau)
A Short Course in Writing (Kenneth A. Bruffee)
The Awakening (Kate Chopin)
1994 Inaugural Speech (Nelson Mandela)
"Fire and Ice" (Robert Frost)
A Plea for the Dead (Elie Wiesel)
The Harry Potter Series (J. K. Rowling)
2. Economics Major
1984 (George Orwell)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift)
Discipline & Punishment: The Birth of the Prison (Michel Foucault)
Propaganda (Edward Bernays)
Military Organization & Society (Stanislav Andreski)
Oeconomicus (Xenophon)
Hamlet (William Shakespeare)
"The Truman Show" (Peter Weir)
Contact (Carl Sagan)
The Theory of the Leisure Class (Thorstein Veblen)
Don't Worry, Make Money (Richard Carlson)
3. Mass Communications Major
The Republic (Plato)
The Holy Bible
"Schindler's List" (Steven Spielberg)
Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This? (Luke Sullivan)
Goodbye, Paper Doll (Anne Snyder)
The Art of Happiness (Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler)
Discovering the Universe (Neil F. Comins)
I Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (Rigoberta Menchu)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
How to Be Your Own Veterinarian (Ruth James)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
4. Chemistry Major
Flatland (Edwin A. Abbott)
"For Once, Then, Something" (Robert Frost)
Listen to the Shouldn'ts (Shel Silverstein)
A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
Dead Man Walking (Helen Prejean)
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Robert C. O'Brien)
Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo)
"Dead Poets Society" (Peter Weir)
Miss Rumphius (Barbara Cooney)
Rosie the Riveter (poster)
My Posse Don't Do No Homework (Louanne Johnson)
The Girl Scout Handbook (Girl Scouts of America)
How to Be an E. Q. Traveler (Girl Scouts of America)
5. Psychology Major
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl)
An Actors Nightmare (Christopher Durang)
April Morning (Howard Fast)
Karate-Do, My Way of Life (Gichin Funakoshi)
Outsiders (S. E. Hinton)
Intensity (Dean Koontz)
The Weaponless Warriors (Richard Kim)
The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli)
Gilgamesh (Herbert Mason version)
Tao Te Ching: A New English Version (Stephen Mitchell)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig)
The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)
6. Psychology Major
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
And Still We Rise (Miles Corwin)
Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
As Nature Made Him (John Colapinto)
Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime (Milton Meltzer)
Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
Green Mile (Stephen King)
Number the Stars (Lois Lowry)
Our Mutual Friend (Charles Dickens)
Ritalin Nation (Richard DeGrandpre)
The Women of Brewster Place (Gloria Naylor)
White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
Selected Poems of Robert Frost
7. Women's Studies Major
Beloved (Toni Morrison)
Emile (Jean Jacques Rousseau)
"Beautiful Wall" (exhibit)
Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (Audre Lorde)
Refuge (Terry Tempest Williams)
Beauty Secrets (Wendy Chapkis)
School Girls (Peggy Orenstein)
Fighting for Faith and Nation (Cynthia Mahmood)
Massacre of the Dreamers (Ana Castillo)
Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (Karen McCarthy Brown)
Feminist Methods in Social Research (Shulamit Reinharz)
Silent Spring (Rachel Carson)
"Beyond Rangoon" (John Boorman)
Ophelia Speaks (Sara Shandler)
To Be Real (Rebecca Walker)
8. Zoology Major
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
The Holy Bible
Living Downstream (Sandra Steingraber)
Native America: Portrait of the Peoples (Duane Champagne)
Refuge (Terry Tempest Williams)
She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Mary Wollstonecraft)
The Inferno (Dante)
"The Slim Shady" (Eminem)
"Amadeus" (Milos Forman)
A Map of the World (Jane Hamilton)
Textbook of Medical Physiology (Saunders)
"The Nocturnes" (Frederic Chopin)
Summer Sisters (Judy Blume)
9. Child Development and Family Relations Major
And the Band Played On (Randy Shitts)
"Kids" (Larry Clark)
A Rock and a Hard Place (Anthony Godby Johnson)
Reviving Ophelia (Mary Pipher)
Ophelia Speaks (Sara Shandler)
Oh, the Places You'll Go (Dr. Seuss)
"American History X" (Tony Kaye)
Herland (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
A Time to Kill (John Grisham)
Much More than Sexuality (Elizabeth and John Sherblom)
AIDS: The Ultimate Challenge (Elizabeth Kubler-Ross)
The Courage to Grieve (Judy Tatelbaum)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Women's Sexualities (Carol Rinkleib Ellison)
10. Animal and Veterinary Sciences Major
Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
Silent Spring (Rachel Carson)
Breath, Eyes, Memory (Edwidge Danticat)
Their Eyes Were Watching Guard (Zora Neale Hurston)
One on One (Tabitha King)
Edith Sodergran (Collected Poems)
Self-Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
The Grapes of Wrath ( John Steinbeck)
Animal Farm (George Orwell)
1984 (George Orwell)
"Eyes Wide Shut" (Stanley Kubrick)
Walden Pond (Henry David Thoreau)
Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics: Sonatina Album (v. 51) (Haydn, Mozart,
Schubert)
11. Journalism Major
The Corpse had a Familiar Face (Edna Buchanan)
A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
The Stranger (Albert Camus)
Associate Press Stylebook (Norm Goldstein, editor)
The Stand (Stephen King)
Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
Hamlet (William Shakespeare)
"Titanic" (James Cameron)
"Gone With the Wind" (Victor Fleming)
The Lorax (Dr. Seuss)
Voyager Outward Bound School Readings Book (Tracey Pritchard and Jennifer
Severson)
Casey at the Bat (Ernest Lawrence Thayer)
The Passion of the Western Mind (Richard Tarnas)
12.
Wildlife Ecology Major
A Day No Pigs Would Die (Robert Newton Peck)
The Moon is Down (John Steinbeck)
Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)
Sweet Thursday (John Steinbeck)
The Iliad (Homer)
"My Mother's Castle" (Yves Robert)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
"Tombstone 1993" (George P Cosmatos)
"Last Temptation of Christ" (Martin Scorsese)
The Trial (Franz Kafka)
The Seven Storey Mountain (Thomas Merton)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
Les Misérables (Victor Hugo)
A Separate Piece (John Knowles)
Across Five Aprils (Irene Hunt)
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)