Required Readings: A Nostalgic Journey Through Literature

As I sit here reflecting on my academic journey, I am reminded of the countless books that have shaped me as a reader and thinker. From childhood favorites to literary masterpieces, these texts have left an indelible mark on my imagination and understanding of the world.

One of my earliest recollections is of reading classic children's stories with a critical eye. As a kid, I found them boring, but when you have an imagination as wild and free as mine, you're not going to enjoy them as much as when you're older and you see Ann's imagination in action. It's like I remember being a kid it just such the intense Nostalgia and it just really awakens that imagination in you and your inner child. It was just so much fun to read this story and the last book that I want to talk about that I read in second year is recyclopedia by Harriet mullon. I read this for a what was it gender and literature class and we focused a lot on like female writers which was awesome and this is one that really stuck out to me. We read also Ariel by Sylvia Plath which I found super interesting as well Sylvia Plath is very iconic and it's because she is an amazing poet and has such vivid and gritty and just grotesque images. It's crazy but I found that this book was just so weird it's so weird it's very much in the vein of oh what's it called Gertrude Stein her stuff like tender buttons and all that.

I annotated the crap out of this because you really need to read it like six times before you really understand what is going on because it's just like what is happening but I found this was such a pleasure to be analyzing because it really made me think and took me out of my comfort zone and I ended up really enjoying a lot of the Poetry in here. The last few books I'm going to be talking about are actually all books that I read in third year and that is because in fourth year I didn't really read that many books that really stuck out to me to include on this list a lot of them were repeats that I had read in previous years such as Alison Wonderland and Peter Pan so they are already on this list which Speaking of one of my favorite books that I read in third year was Peter Pan by JM Barry. This is just such a great story it's so weird when you actually think about it and you actually analyze it it's like how is this a children's story like what is going on it just brings so many questions to mind but I loved being able to uh read this alongside Alice and Wonderland.

I thought it was so interesting to analyze the two of them. I read this for my Victorian literature class even though this is actually Edwardian technically but it was still just such a pleasure to read and I loved that class because it was the Victorian child it was like everything that I love. I also for that class read the light princess by George McDonald which was just such a pleasure to read it's such a weird little fairy tale but it was tons of fun to read.

I totally lied I do have books from fourth year on here but it's funny because they're classes that I ended up dropping because I ended up changing my major and everything so I ended up dropping them but anyways one of the books that I read in fourth year that I really loved was the princess and the Goblin by George McDonald. I was going to do a whole paper on this because it's kind of like in Wonderland so it was cool to kind of look at both of them cuz I was taking a class that was the Victorian underworld so was all about how there was an underworld and like it's just it's really weird it's hard to explain but it was a super cool class and I loved reading this for that but I just never got to the point where I could read a paper on it because I stopped taking the class.

Then for a different class I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I've also read alliver Twist by Charles Dickens for a class and Dickens is something I struggle with this one is one that I really enjoy because it's it's easier for me to get through I find that Dickens is a bit too dense for me I do like him but don't really love love love him but I did love this one. I took it for a victorians in disability class which was super interesting but like I said I didn't end up finishing the class cuz I changed my major so yeah so those are all of the best of my required readings for my entire education it's crazy that I'm done like I might end up going back and taking a few more classes but I really don't think I am at this point in my life I feel like I know what I'm going to do and fine and yeah I don't really think I'm going to take more classes but never say never so I'm not saying never but yeah I hope you guys enjoyed this video let me know what some of your favorite required readings were.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everyone it's hay and today I'm going to be talking about the best of my required readings so last Thursday I wrote my last ever final exam the previous Monday I wrote my last ever essay I am officially done school which is just so crazy to me I can't believe it it felt like it just started but it also felt like it was never going to end which is so weird but I have had such a great time over these past four years and I've read a lot of amazing books over the past four years as well as a few from high school that I wanted to talk about so today in honor of my being done School in my upcoming graduation in June I'm officially done my English degree but my convocation isn't until June but I'm done but in honor of that I am going to be talking about the best of my required reading so these are just books that I was assigned to read for classes and I loved them so first up is a book that I actually had to read for grade school which is crazy because grade school was forever ago but that is The Giver by Lois Lowry I remember reading this book and I wasn't a big reader in grade school it just wasn't really my thing I just didn't want to do what my sister did so I didn't really read a lot but I remember having to read this book for language arts is what it was called in grade school and I remember reading it for that and just I was like I want to know what happens like what happens at the end what happens after the end and I know there's books after the end but I've never picked them up I don't really think I'm going to just because that spark of Interest has kind of died in me and I'm happy with how this story ends and I just think it is such an interesting story it really makes you think and it was the first dystopian I ever actually read so now getting into books that I had to read for high school first up we have Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare I have read a ton of Shakespeare because I love Shakespeare and I've taken a couple of classes on him in University but when I was going to choose which one I wanted to put on this list Romeo and Julia is the one that stuck out I read this in grade nine and then I also read it for my class in University but I just think it is such an interesting story I love the writing of it I just really love Shakespeare and and I think this is one of his best plays it's one of my favorites and my other favorites are ones that I actually didn't read for school which is why this one is making my list next up is The Catcher in the Ry by JD Salinger I read this for my grade 11 English class and honestly it is just a story that I read at the right time in my life because I just felt like I really identified with Holden and his struggles and I think that's why I enjoyed it because I was in that kind of like angsty period of my life I think if I read this now I would be like oh my JH Holden stop it like I would be interested to see how my reaction is now as opposed to when I was younger but I definitely read it at the right time in my life and I really enjoyed it next up is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury I did a project on this in my grade 12 English class and I just think this is such an interesting story it's so relevant and it's a story that will always be relevant considering censorship and how important literature is and keeping it alive and seeing how without that it turns to this dystopian Society that is just terrible I think this is such an incredible book and I really loved it so the rest of the books were all read over my four years at University I'm trying to mention them in order but at the same time it's kind of hard CU I don't really remember like all the four years kind of blur together and I can't remember which class I took when so they're in kind of a rough order but basically in first year I kind of had to take a lot of required courses but then in second year you started being able to really choose your courses so I kind of specialized in Victorian and children's literature which is reflected in this list and that was what I absolutely adored so it was a ton of fun and I really enjoyed it so first up in first year we were assigned a lot of poetry first year second semester is when I really started to love University because I started loving the classes that we were taking because in the first semester we had to take early British literature which was like toser and stuff which I hate I don't really like medieval literature but then in the second semester we were able to take later British literature which encompasses Romanticism and Victorian which is like my favorite stuff so I was just in my heaven so that's really when I figured out what I loved and that was when I was also introduced to a bunch of Romantic Poets one of them being William Blake I love William Blake I haven't read cover to cover Songs of Innocence and experience I've only read what I've been assigned but I know that one day I will actually sit down and read this book cover to cover I just think he is so amazing I love his art he is truly an artist and an amazing Wordsmith I just love everything about him and like him and Wordsworth and Keith they are just some of my favorites and I just oh they are like my favorite poets and I love them so much and I'm not even kidding when I say at least once a year I would have to study a William Blake poem and I wasn't even mad about it it was amazing next up is a book that you guys know is near and dear to my heart and that is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and through the looking glass by Louis Caroll I my first time ever reading any of the Alice stories was for school which is crazy but I just thought it was so enjoyable to study them Alice's Adventures in Wonderland I actually didn't end up studying until second year but through the Looking Glass I studied in first year and that was my first time ever reading it and that's what sparked my love of this story and made me I actually made sure that every single year I took a class where a Carol work was studied and it was such a great decision I loved it cuz every Prof has a different view on it and it's such an interesting story to study it was just amazing so Through the Looking Glass this is actually the first copy that I ever read and I just I think it's so fun to look at it cuz I find it so interesting like it's all annotated and stuff but I find it so interesting to just go back and see what we were looking at because I think there's so many things going on in this story like underneath and it's just one of those things that as an English major makes me really happy so I just I so enjoyed studying this and obviously it's a story that has stuck with me for a while and I still remember studying it and just falling in love with it it's just a story that is near and deared my heart and I'm so glad that I had to read read it for that class in University so now moving on to second year one of my favorite books that I had to read was North anger Abby by Jane Austin this was my first introduction into Austin and it was on a class that I took it was a third- year class that I took in second year and it was intro to Romanticism I believe or early wrote it was early Romanticism that's what it was and after reading Blake and all that in my later britle class I decided that I really wanted to take a course in Romanticism and it was such a good idea because I loved all the Poetry that we studied but I also really loved norer Abby Jane Austin is amazing I really love her and this was my very first introduction to her I loved reading this alongside the book that it's satirizing which is Castle of the Tonto like that sort of thing the gothic and I'm not a big fan of the gothic but I thought it was so funny how Jane Austin satirizes it and really is just she uses irony in such an expert way and I just I love her for it she's an amazing writer and this was a great introduction to her next up is an of Green Gables by Ellen Montgomery I read this for my Canadian literature class in second year and that was once again my first time reading this story I had grown up watching the movies with my mom because she loved them and just as a Canadian kid you can't really Escape knowing something about an of Green Gables but reading the story was such an enjoyable experience for me it surprised me so much how much I loved it because I remember watching the movies and I didn't really like them that much as a kid because I found them boring but when you have an imagination that's really wild of your own as a kid you're not going to enjoy it as much as when you're older and you see Ann's imagination and you're just like oh my gosh like I remember being a kid it just such the intense Nostalgia and it just really awakens that imagination in you and your inner child and it was just so much fun to read this story and the last book that I want to talk about that I read in second year is recyclopedia by Harriet mullon I read this for a what was it gender and literature class and we focused a lot on like female writers which was awesome and this is one that really stuck out to me we read also Ariel by Sylvia Plath which I found super interesting as well Sylvia Plath is very iconic and it's because she is an amazing poet and has such vivid and gritty and just grotesque images it's crazy but I found that this book was just so weird it's so weird it's very much in the vein of oh what's it called Gertrude Stein her stuff like tender buttons and all that and it's just like I annotated the crap out of this because you really need to read it like six times before you really understand what is going on because it's just like what is happening but I found this was such a pleasure to be analyzing because it really made me think and took me out of my comfort zone and I ended up really enjoying a lot of the Poetry in here so the last few books I'm going to be talking about are actually all books that I read in third year and that is because in fourth year I didn't really read that many books that really stuck out to me to include on this list a lot of them were repeats that I had read in previous years such as Alison Wonderland and Peter Pan so they are already on this list which Speaking of one of my favorite books that I read in third year was Peter Pan by JM Barry this is just such a great story it's so weird when you actually think about it and you actually analyze it it's like how is this a children's story like what is going on it just brings so many questions to mind but I loved being able to uh read this alongside Alice and Wonderland I thought it was so interesting to analyze the two of them I read this for my Victorian literature class even though this is actually Edwardian technically but it was still just such a pleasure to read and I loved that class because it was the Victorian child it was like everything that I love I also for that class read the light princess by George McDonald which was just such a pleasure to read it's such a weird little fairy tale but it was tons of fun to read I totally lied I do have books from fourth year on here but it's funny because they're classes that I ended up dropping because I ended up changing my major and everything so I ended up dropping them but anyways one of the books that I read in fourth year that I really loved was the princess and the Goblin by George McDonald I was going to do a whole paper on this because it's kind of like in Wonderland so it was cool to kind of look at both of them cuz I was taking a class that was the Victorian underworld so was all about how there was an underworld and like it's just it's really weird it's hard to explain but it was a super cool class and I loved reading this for that but I just never got to the point where I could read a paper on it because I stopped taking the class then for a different class I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens I've also read alliver Twist by Charles Dickens for a class and Dickens is something I struggle with this one is one that I really enjoy because it's it's easier for me to get through I find that Dickens is a bit too dense for me I do like him but don't really love love love him but I did love this one I took it for a victorians in disability class which was super interesting but like I said I didn't end up finishing the class cuz I changed my major so yeah so those are all of the best of my required readings for my entire education it's crazy that I'm done like I might end up going back and taking a few more classes but I really don't think I am at this point in my life I feel like I know what I'm going to do and fine and yeah I don't really think I'm going to take more classes but never say never so I'm not saying never but yeah I hope you guys enjoyed this video let me know what some of your favorite required readings that you guys have had are and yeah I will see you guys in the next one bye oh no no nohey everyone it's hay and today I'm going to be talking about the best of my required readings so last Thursday I wrote my last ever final exam the previous Monday I wrote my last ever essay I am officially done school which is just so crazy to me I can't believe it it felt like it just started but it also felt like it was never going to end which is so weird but I have had such a great time over these past four years and I've read a lot of amazing books over the past four years as well as a few from high school that I wanted to talk about so today in honor of my being done School in my upcoming graduation in June I'm officially done my English degree but my convocation isn't until June but I'm done but in honor of that I am going to be talking about the best of my required reading so these are just books that I was assigned to read for classes and I loved them so first up is a book that I actually had to read for grade school which is crazy because grade school was forever ago but that is The Giver by Lois Lowry I remember reading this book and I wasn't a big reader in grade school it just wasn't really my thing I just didn't want to do what my sister did so I didn't really read a lot but I remember having to read this book for language arts is what it was called in grade school and I remember reading it for that and just I was like I want to know what happens like what happens at the end what happens after the end and I know there's books after the end but I've never picked them up I don't really think I'm going to just because that spark of Interest has kind of died in me and I'm happy with how this story ends and I just think it is such an interesting story it really makes you think and it was the first dystopian I ever actually read so now getting into books that I had to read for high school first up we have Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare I have read a ton of Shakespeare because I love Shakespeare and I've taken a couple of classes on him in University but when I was going to choose which one I wanted to put on this list Romeo and Julia is the one that stuck out I read this in grade nine and then I also read it for my class in University but I just think it is such an interesting story I love the writing of it I just really love Shakespeare and and I think this is one of his best plays it's one of my favorites and my other favorites are ones that I actually didn't read for school which is why this one is making my list next up is The Catcher in the Ry by JD Salinger I read this for my grade 11 English class and honestly it is just a story that I read at the right time in my life because I just felt like I really identified with Holden and his struggles and I think that's why I enjoyed it because I was in that kind of like angsty period of my life I think if I read this now I would be like oh my JH Holden stop it like I would be interested to see how my reaction is now as opposed to when I was younger but I definitely read it at the right time in my life and I really enjoyed it next up is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury I did a project on this in my grade 12 English class and I just think this is such an interesting story it's so relevant and it's a story that will always be relevant considering censorship and how important literature is and keeping it alive and seeing how without that it turns to this dystopian Society that is just terrible I think this is such an incredible book and I really loved it so the rest of the books were all read over my four years at University I'm trying to mention them in order but at the same time it's kind of hard CU I don't really remember like all the four years kind of blur together and I can't remember which class I took when so they're in kind of a rough order but basically in first year I kind of had to take a lot of required courses but then in second year you started being able to really choose your courses so I kind of specialized in Victorian and children's literature which is reflected in this list and that was what I absolutely adored so it was a ton of fun and I really enjoyed it so first up in first year we were assigned a lot of poetry first year second semester is when I really started to love University because I started loving the classes that we were taking because in the first semester we had to take early British literature which was like toser and stuff which I hate I don't really like medieval literature but then in the second semester we were able to take later British literature which encompasses Romanticism and Victorian which is like my favorite stuff so I was just in my heaven so that's really when I figured out what I loved and that was when I was also introduced to a bunch of Romantic Poets one of them being William Blake I love William Blake I haven't read cover to cover Songs of Innocence and experience I've only read what I've been assigned but I know that one day I will actually sit down and read this book cover to cover I just think he is so amazing I love his art he is truly an artist and an amazing Wordsmith I just love everything about him and like him and Wordsworth and Keith they are just some of my favorites and I just oh they are like my favorite poets and I love them so much and I'm not even kidding when I say at least once a year I would have to study a William Blake poem and I wasn't even mad about it it was amazing next up is a book that you guys know is near and dear to my heart and that is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and through the looking glass by Louis Caroll I my first time ever reading any of the Alice stories was for school which is crazy but I just thought it was so enjoyable to study them Alice's Adventures in Wonderland I actually didn't end up studying until second year but through the Looking Glass I studied in first year and that was my first time ever reading it and that's what sparked my love of this story and made me I actually made sure that every single year I took a class where a Carol work was studied and it was such a great decision I loved it cuz every Prof has a different view on it and it's such an interesting story to study it was just amazing so Through the Looking Glass this is actually the first copy that I ever read and I just I think it's so fun to look at it cuz I find it so interesting like it's all annotated and stuff but I find it so interesting to just go back and see what we were looking at because I think there's so many things going on in this story like underneath and it's just one of those things that as an English major makes me really happy so I just I so enjoyed studying this and obviously it's a story that has stuck with me for a while and I still remember studying it and just falling in love with it it's just a story that is near and deared my heart and I'm so glad that I had to read read it for that class in University so now moving on to second year one of my favorite books that I had to read was North anger Abby by Jane Austin this was my first introduction into Austin and it was on a class that I took it was a third- year class that I took in second year and it was intro to Romanticism I believe or early wrote it was early Romanticism that's what it was and after reading Blake and all that in my later britle class I decided that I really wanted to take a course in Romanticism and it was such a good idea because I loved all the Poetry that we studied but I also really loved norer Abby Jane Austin is amazing I really love her and this was my very first introduction to her I loved reading this alongside the book that it's satirizing which is Castle of the Tonto like that sort of thing the gothic and I'm not a big fan of the gothic but I thought it was so funny how Jane Austin satirizes it and really is just she uses irony in such an expert way and I just I love her for it she's an amazing writer and this was a great introduction to her next up is an of Green Gables by Ellen Montgomery I read this for my Canadian literature class in second year and that was once again my first time reading this story I had grown up watching the movies with my mom because she loved them and just as a Canadian kid you can't really Escape knowing something about an of Green Gables but reading the story was such an enjoyable experience for me it surprised me so much how much I loved it because I remember watching the movies and I didn't really like them that much as a kid because I found them boring but when you have an imagination that's really wild of your own as a kid you're not going to enjoy it as much as when you're older and you see Ann's imagination and you're just like oh my gosh like I remember being a kid it just such the intense Nostalgia and it just really awakens that imagination in you and your inner child and it was just so much fun to read this story and the last book that I want to talk about that I read in second year is recyclopedia by Harriet mullon I read this for a what was it gender and literature class and we focused a lot on like female writers which was awesome and this is one that really stuck out to me we read also Ariel by Sylvia Plath which I found super interesting as well Sylvia Plath is very iconic and it's because she is an amazing poet and has such vivid and gritty and just grotesque images it's crazy but I found that this book was just so weird it's so weird it's very much in the vein of oh what's it called Gertrude Stein her stuff like tender buttons and all that and it's just like I annotated the crap out of this because you really need to read it like six times before you really understand what is going on because it's just like what is happening but I found this was such a pleasure to be analyzing because it really made me think and took me out of my comfort zone and I ended up really enjoying a lot of the Poetry in here so the last few books I'm going to be talking about are actually all books that I read in third year and that is because in fourth year I didn't really read that many books that really stuck out to me to include on this list a lot of them were repeats that I had read in previous years such as Alison Wonderland and Peter Pan so they are already on this list which Speaking of one of my favorite books that I read in third year was Peter Pan by JM Barry this is just such a great story it's so weird when you actually think about it and you actually analyze it it's like how is this a children's story like what is going on it just brings so many questions to mind but I loved being able to uh read this alongside Alice and Wonderland I thought it was so interesting to analyze the two of them I read this for my Victorian literature class even though this is actually Edwardian technically but it was still just such a pleasure to read and I loved that class because it was the Victorian child it was like everything that I love I also for that class read the light princess by George McDonald which was just such a pleasure to read it's such a weird little fairy tale but it was tons of fun to read I totally lied I do have books from fourth year on here but it's funny because they're classes that I ended up dropping because I ended up changing my major and everything so I ended up dropping them but anyways one of the books that I read in fourth year that I really loved was the princess and the Goblin by George McDonald I was going to do a whole paper on this because it's kind of like in Wonderland so it was cool to kind of look at both of them cuz I was taking a class that was the Victorian underworld so was all about how there was an underworld and like it's just it's really weird it's hard to explain but it was a super cool class and I loved reading this for that but I just never got to the point where I could read a paper on it because I stopped taking the class then for a different class I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens I've also read alliver Twist by Charles Dickens for a class and Dickens is something I struggle with this one is one that I really enjoy because it's it's easier for me to get through I find that Dickens is a bit too dense for me I do like him but don't really love love love him but I did love this one I took it for a victorians in disability class which was super interesting but like I said I didn't end up finishing the class cuz I changed my major so yeah so those are all of the best of my required readings for my entire education it's crazy that I'm done like I might end up going back and taking a few more classes but I really don't think I am at this point in my life I feel like I know what I'm going to do and fine and yeah I don't really think I'm going to take more classes but never say never so I'm not saying never but yeah I hope you guys enjoyed this video let me know what some of your favorite required readings that you guys have had are and yeah I will see you guys in the next one bye oh no no no\n"