Some colleges ask for two lists of recently read books. One should have those assigned by the teachers at school, and the other should have the ones read by pleasure. I believe it’s wiser to have a list full of college-level books rather than a list full of teen novels such as divergent or hunger games. Which books do you suggest I should read? Is jurassic park a nice book as to include it in my list? Or zoo by james patterson? What about the lord of the rings?
Thank you!
Read “Our Declaration” by Danielle Allen and “No Man Is an Island” by Thomas Merton.
The question is a way to get to know you, and your interests. It is perfectly okay to list Lord of the Rings and Zoo. Adding Jurassic Park shows that you are interested in comparing what you see in a movie and what the author of the book originally wrote. That is fine as well. Be true to yourself.
Is LotR that much more “prestigious” than the Hunger Games?? Jeez.
I simply did not list ALL of the books he listed. Jeez.
I…was responding to the original post??
In which OP said that THG and Divergent are kids’ books. But LotR (especially The Hobbit) isn’t much more intellectual, so the distinction of what’s good enough seems arbitrary.
just list whatever you read. it seems fake and snobbish to list/read books just because you think it’ll make you look more mature or something. it’s arrogant to talk smack about teen novels just because they’re popular. sure they’re not perfect but should we really be condemning the popularity of reading? at least they’re reading something.
just read whatever honestly interests you. be yourself. it’s worth a lot more than you think.
I agree that you should not read simply for the purpose of filling out this list! But I also think it’s a good idea to read as much as you can at higher levels. Two of my favorite books are the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (it’s really interesting because it follows the lives of several characters and I really learned a lot from it) and The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
List books you’ve actually read and enjoyed. This is not a test of who’s most literate or well read. As others said, the personal booklist tells the schools what type of person you are. FWIW, my daughter had a lot of Terry Pratchett, Orson Scott Card and maybe one Shakespeare. No non-fiction that I can recall.
yeah you should definitely list books that are sophisticated/show you read at a high level, but the most important thing is to list books that you enjoy and/or relate to. The colleges probably want to get to know you better, so don’t write something like War and Peace just to flatter them cause it’ll probably negatively affect you or just give the wrong impression of you. Two that I read over the summer that were really good were Life of Pi and Ender’s Game. Currently reading Into Thin Air and it’s really interesting and exciting.
I was not talking smack about teen novels! I just thought they wouldn’t be very impressive, but I understand now what the real objective of this list is and I will definitely be myself on it as I will on the rest of my app. Thank you very much and I’m sorry if I offended someone with my thoughtless comments.
By the way, I didn’t say those were kids’ books. I’ve read them and I really liked them. Then again, please excuse me.
Please forgive me, I meant.