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Summer's over, school's begun, and I'm going to try to make this the last year in my MFA program. This summer, I flushed the system by putting all my other reading aside and read straight through the Bible. Then I read the novels of two new professors to the CSU Fresno program: Alex Espinosa's Still Water Saints (interesting in places, but more graphic iniquity than most Christian readers will be comfortable with) and David Anthony Durham's Pride of Carthage (great historical). The last couple of weeks, I've mostly been reading background for my novel.

This week, I firmed up the reading list for my final exam next May. The first 20 are standard for everyone in the program. The last 10, I suggested and they approved with a little negotiation. Here's my 30 books: 1. Jane Austen, Emma, 2. Charlotte Bronte, Villette, 3. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 4. Fanny Burney, Evelina, 5. Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop, 6. John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever, 7. Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Pet Dog and Other Stories, 8. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 9. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, 10. George Eliot, Middlemarch, 11. Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, 12. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 13. Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, 14. James Joyce, Dubliners, 15. Madame de La Fayette, The Princess of Cleves, 16. Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks, 17. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 18. William Trevor, The Stories of William Trevor, 19. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 20. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, 21. Marilyn Robinson, Gilead, 22. Flannery O’Connor, Wise blood, 22. Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory, 23. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 24. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 25. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, 26. Helena Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus, 27. William Faulkner, Go Down Moses, 28. Lief Enger, Peace Like a River, 29. Ian McEwan, Atonement, 30. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited.

I must admit to feeling a little daunted when I look at this list (I also have another heavy reading course, and a novel/thesis to write). Fortunately, I've given a first read to about half the list, and read a couple of them twice. Some time ago, there was a thread here on reading the classics, and there really is some great reading on this list...I just may not show up to often here at F*I*F. I am hoping to be at Mt. Hermon in March, with my novel finished, and at least a first read for everything on the list.

There, I've put it out for y'all to hold me to it.
--Brian

Speaking of Miss Wyoming (I hadn't heard of the novel): the real-life Mrs. Wyoming who just won the Mrs. America contest is a graduate of my kids' high school here in small town California. She must have been one year ahead of my eldest daughter, who just (last Wed.) got married-ish in Brazil (they had to have a civil wedding, so he could get a visa, so they could come up here in December for their church wedding, which is why she insists they are only "married-ish.") I'm not sure how this fits on a thread about reading, but, uh...hey I've been reading the daily newspaper, and uh,...lots of e-mails from my daughter.