Everything I had to read in my first month as a literature student 

Enjoying Thomas Mann is such an appealing character trait

I'm doing a PhD in literature and my advice to people who want to study literature is please don't fall into the trap of thinking that studying literature means reading fiction all the time and having fun. It is different from your hobby of reading. Studying literature means that you will be reading criticism most of the time. We read more criticism than actual fiction. It also means you will be discussing the books you had to read, expressing your opinion and be ready to defend it with arguments. This is not to scare anyone, it is just that this degree is heavily romanticised which can be misleading. Good luck!

My tip for literature students is to get the reading list early and read the books in the holidays.

That sounds like an awful lot to savour and digest in a month. I was tempted to study literature at university, but I was worried that the compulsion to read might erode my passion. So, I studied history instead, utilising literary sources where I could.

I'm a slow reader. I'd drown quickly in that ocean. I'm impressed you can sail upon it, especially with such calm.

I just finished reading the madeleine moment in Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' and I just had to take a moment to thank you. Your comments about that series is what pointed me in that direction. I know this is going to be a great reading journey. When I was very young, our class would go to the school library and we'd each pick out a book for reading time. A little girl in class picked the same book that I wanted to read so we ended up sitting side by side and we read it together. We loved reading and it was one of the happiest days which I'll always remember. Now as I read at my desk, it's a madeleine moment that takes me back in time to that day. Thanks!

Okay just a massive thanks for including a timestamped list of the books you go through. I see and appreciate it and am v excited to watch the video ❤

Thank you for making this video. Have always been intrigued about knowing the readings for a literature course at university.

Thanks for sharing so much detail of your studies. Your professors sound respectful and humane. I’m glad you’re enjoying the course of study. It sounds great! 📕

Wonderful thank you! You’ve given me some ideas of what to read. My uni years are over (of course I can return but don’t want formal education) but I love their reading lists without the qualification/accreditation. These books give me ideas of what to read. Address Unknown was SUPERB!

Very interesting, it's nice to see how much you love what you're doing, and the way you explain things is also very clear. Engaging with literature can be a rewarding activity, if done right. And you are doing it right. :)

I'm an English literature student and I'm enjoying myself doing what I love the most. Good luck with your studies, very inspiring. ❤

Oeroeg is one of the most profound books I read in high school! So cool that it's being taught even outside the Dutch school system

I am so envious of you being in a center such as you are, among the greats of Europe. I want to go back to school for my literature degree. I am older but I contribute it in my love of classical literature. I do believe that the study of literature and the love of literature can be two different things. To read for enjoyment and entertainment is one of the highest pleasures. I think you should ask your professor if you can do an independent study on Proust. I can't believe you are studying in all those languages. If you are fluent in them, it adds another layer to your studies. I think that studying Freud and the Greeks gives your study a wonderful layer. I look forward to hearing more on your studies.

Dear, I love literature. Your speech on comparative literature and some books were so good and helpful to me. Good luck and thanks again 🙏 😊

Thank you for this look inside the curriculum. This is something few people get to see, it‘s a bit like as if we get to get to study with you. It sounds like it‘s a lot to read. I think it‘s a good decison on your part to print the excerpts because you now have a physical artifact of your studies to look back on to later, whereas the probability of you taking a look at digital excerpts in, say, 10 years is pretty slim and you probably wouldn‘t even have access to them anymore. Your dislike for the course about scientific work shows that there is a chasm between people that study comparative literature in order to become academics in the field later, and those who study because of their love of literature first and foremost. Please keep up your videos, I‘m looking forward to the next one. Have a great Sunday!

Such interesting topics, so many books to add to my TBR. I loved The Magic Mountain, but I would like too read more by Mann Thank you for sharing everything with us. ❤

I love your videos. I am so interested in knowing more about Mann’s time charts for the novel itself… You could make a video just about those!! It would be amazing

I'm a 30 year old English teacher and this video and you reminded me my university years a lot. Nowadays, I'm reading world literature and other important books on my own and I actually learn more when I genuinely want to read a book. However, you seem to be in good path with all these different books already via school and it's nice to think about it when you mention about these titles again :) Keep up the good work! :)

You're currently like my favorite person to watch, I am studying English and German to become a secondary school teacher (I am from Czechia, and I live like 3 hours away from Vienna) and I need to read a lot of books, mostly English ones but also some German ones (obviously a lot of Goethe and Schiller) and I truly found myself in literature studies, it became my new passion. And I love seeing someone being as passionate about their studies as I am, it is almost comforting.

I loved this video & am totally using it as personal reading inspiration as a post grad who’s looking to always be studying

Hi :D This video was perfect!!! I'm studying Literature too but our courses in my country are limited. So I want to have a self study for these topics. Please please do more of this in the future *-*🎉

Dammit, now I want to study literature, too! ;) Don Quixote is the only one on your list I have read (and loved). Wishing you all the best with your studies. Proust is on my list. Hopefully I'll get to him next year! :)

Woww for me I like sigmund Freud thoery and I was planning to read brother karamazov soon but I didn't notice before the relation between them. thank you for sharing with us your experience and your books ❤️

What a pleasant video! Thank you!

Don Quixote and Confessions by St Augustine are two of my favourite books!

I’m studying German Philology at the University of Vienna!! It was really interesting to see what other Comparative Lit students have to read

awesome vid!!

Wow, that's a lot of reading. But it's evident that you are enjoying it, or at least, most of it. I'm enjoying the other way to be able to spend as much time reading as I want. It's called retirement, but then you're obviously a long way off from that. I, too, enjoy Thomas Mann. My favourite is Buddenbrooks. I also remember reading Adressat Unbekannt. It completely blew my mind the first time I read. I even read it again last night after watching your video. Good look with your studies and keep enjoying reading.

i love how you had such a little amount of cuts in your video, it almost feels like you're holding a lecture to us. it reminds me of my german and later on history teacher, he just stood in front of the class and talked. that might sound boring, but what he said was so smart and you really felt all the new knowledge floating your brain. the whole class, even the ones who would typically not pay a lot attention in school were immersed by the way he taught. he always told us about history as if it was a story and stored all the important facts in it. he also has a youtube channel where he talks about books (and occasionally does whiskey tastings, he is so iconic), and he films his video in the same way: takes some notes beforehand, starts the camera, talks without a single mistake, doesn't edit the video and uploads it. this is really what i aspire to be: standing in front of people so confidently and being able to remember and talk about my knowledge coherently. he was always one of the smartest people i knew and i enjoyed his courses the most :')

Theresa of Avila has great reads too . Jack London's 'Martin Eden' another goody . Much thanks ! 🙂

Wonderful !

I know you don’t have time now, but, really, for pleasure, Don Quixote is a wonderful work!

Hello from Warsaw :) This was great to watch, I was surprised to hear Twardoch mentioned, he's quite a popular (and living) Polish author but I've never actually read him, I wonder which book of his is listed.

Im already waiting for the next list of literature month. as a bachelor of Russian literature it’s seems quite interesting 🧐

If you read Couperus, please read his "Boeken der kleine zielen". It's similar to "Buddenbrooks"... but (even) better... 😉 (Yes, I'm a Couperus fan). BTW: your Dutch is Beautiful!

This video helped me lots.

I like your originality

I really enjoyed Address Unknown. I thought it was amazing when it was written. I give my copies of Maus to all of my friends, because it is so important.

my heart was beating so crazy when you mentioned Nabokov, but it seems that Lolita was not on the list. My favourite book, though

So interesting. I'm on the fourth volume of Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah....I read Ulysses for the first time last year and plan on reading it again. I like Stephen King, but I find his novels bloated, perfect for airports, and I'm blown away you're interested in Proust. My friends who read him in college only read Swann's Way, and never went beyond that. I feel like now as I read it when I'm older it makes more sense than it ever would have made to me when I was younger. Books that changed me when I was around your age were Hunger by Knut Hamsun, Journey to the End of the Night by Celine, On the Road by Kerouac, Sexus by Henry Miller, etc. But, those may be of interest to more people of my ilk, from San Francisco learning with a library card and hope. Included also are Bukowski, James Baldwin, John Fante. Thanks for your video, very informative.

Wow that’s a lot. That’s probably more than I read in my whole English Lit degree! We used to do three courses per term and read six books (and background reading) per course. So 18 books a year and flicking through essays for quotes.

some books take us to direction we never thought of before. How many books that could potentially change us remain unknown to us.

I’m a Japanese student majoring in English Literature at university. In Japan we have abundant tradition of translation, which is admittedly helpful to be able to read a number of foreign literature in Japanese, but I must deem translation as a catalyst for the original text and try to decrease my dependency on translation. Watching your video galvanizes me into reading more. Thank you for sharing the books you read, it’s very stimulating.

Hey, I really enjoyed this video. Do you know if you can study this degree online? Or do you have to be there in person? :) thanks

Address unknown was a bash. Cant thank you enough for recommending!

The great book haul is nearing completion. I am beginning the digitization now. Trying to avoid getting bogged down by random grabbings. Denis Diderot: Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream? Is he worthwhile? A French enlightenment atheist? The type of person I would despise nowadays?

How can you possibly understand a novel if you're not even required to read the whole thing? That sounds depressing to me!

love ur videos! can i know which university/city you study? (if ur comfortabke sharing)

I'm glad to see that there were also Dutch classics! You're Dutch is pretty good!!

How do I get used to reading for several hours per day. I am not a literature student. I am an Anthropology and museum studies student while we aren't reading these types of books we are reading a lot of books and articles. I know I like to read and want to do it often but I fall asleep after some time and I have taken measures to avoid this yet nothing works other than to stop reading and start again.

can you link the introduction course to literature please

Oh yes, I LOVE Mrs Dalloway. Virginia Woolf is amazing. I was reading Harold Bloom on Woolf the other night, and he writes that she's been hijacked by the feminist movement. In fact (according to Bloom) she was above all an aesthete, and her big influences were English/British aesthetes like Walter Pater.

I want to study literature!! I'm from Perú

"One day, when Plato was on a morning walk by the side of the sea, he saw a man. It was early in the morning, a little dark - the sun had not risen yet. He could not figure out who the man was. This man was Diogenes and in a spoon he was bringing…He would go to the ocean, take the water in the spoon - he had made a small hole in the sand - pour the water into the sand, and then go back. Plato, standing there, saw him doing it. He looked like a madman. For a moment he thought, “I should not interfere.” But such is the mind - it becomes curious: “Maybe he is not mad; perhaps he is doing something meaningful and I am not aware of it. And what is wrong if I ask him?” So he said, “Please forgive me for interrupting. I don’t want to interrupt you - you may be involved in some great work - but what is going on?” Diogenes said, “I am trying to empty the ocean.” Plato said, “My God, with this teaspoon?” And then the sun was rising and Diogenes started laughing and said, “Plato, what else are you doing?” Then Plato recognized Diogenes. He used to live naked, but that day he was covered with a cloth, just to hide himself, so Plato would not know him at first. Otherwise he might not have interrupted. Plato was simply stunned, he could not answer. Diogenes said, “That’s what you are trying to do. Your mind is nothing but a teaspoon and with it you are trying to exhaust the oceanic existence. What I am doing is just to remind you…I know it is not possible. You should also remember that what you are doing is impossible."

Can you tell me the name of the author of the article at 27:50 pls?

Cannot hear a thing, Is the vol that low?

I’m writing a dissertation and political science right now, and I kind of wish I went for literature instead. Luckily there is research done on politics portrayed in literature, so I can find my happy place there lol

Wonderful syllabus. Have you read Hermann Hesse? (I am a big fan of him.)

Hey, have you read Jules Verne's books before? What is your opinion on science fiction literature (like 2001 a space odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov's books) Lovely video btw

I used to read two hours per day, almost every day, and at first I primarily read fiction, mostly extremely popular fiction books like Hunger Games, Harry Potter, The Great Gatsby, Sherlock Holmes stories, etc. I then switched over to reading nonfiction. I honestly regret spending so much time reading fiction. Nonfiction is far more useful in the modern world... books about History, psychology, science, economics, sociology, etc. I found well-written textbooks to be extremely fascinating and informative. I regret spending hundreds of hours reading fiction when I could have been reading nonfiction. Just wanted to share my experience.

The Shining? cool

Thats it? I was expecting you to have read more books than that! Suppose their is always next year.

So many books🫨

I read Don Quixote every year since 2020. My copy is 1800 pages long and reading 50 pages per day it takes me 36 days. I read it in Spanish.

this channel looks interesting🤔❤️

Im such a slow reader I think I would never have been able to do literature studies even if I wanted to

Hello 👋 You seem to be enjoying your classes and the college environment! What are your plans after you graduate? Would you like to be a high school teacher of Literature?

The University of Helsinki awarded me an honorary doctorate for my 20 years of enormous contribution to pop culture.

👍👍👍👍👍👍

the macphone speeaker is too much lower to hear clear my dear

Eagleton's Literary Theory should be a highschool requirement

What is your university?

you’re sure you didn’t study acoustics right?

You are so pretty

Do you have goodreads

I am surprised about the amount of Dutch authors ... Couperus and Haasse, Bloem en Brouwer. Well, that's not a punishment ... (except fot Brouwer :-))

El Rey de Amarillo, nena..

Do they ever actually teach how to write in college?

作者是做什么的呢？

Very nice madam

I use Tablet to read the College things. It's been great. Much Better than print everything. I also hate to read on the laptop. I am a brazilian psychology student.

What's the point of reading Augustine Confessions?

What the whole field of "literature" needs is more of the above -explaining to laypeople why a book merits their time, and less of turning reading a book into an IQ test.

But you must realize, disciples of the new faith ... all moments are eternal and equally useful, be they at age 19 or age 91.

Great video! A Teenager’s Guide on how to Invest Like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger is a great book for teens.

Is this undergrad?

'Literature' without Austen?

always remember that contemporary comparative literature stems from the seeds of philosophy in crisis after wwii

Re Plato " “Plato is simply a record-keeper - he has not a single idea of his own! He is a devoted lover of Socrates, and whatever Socrates says, he goes on recording it, writing it. Socrates has not written anything - just as no great master has ever written anything. And Plato is certainly a great writer; perhaps Socrates may not have been able to write so beautifully. Plato has made Socrates’ teachings as beautiful as possible, but he himself is no one. Now the same work can be done by a tape recorder. And Aristotle is merely an intellectual, with no understanding of being, or even a desire to search for it. These people are taught in the universities. I was constantly in a fight with my professors. When they started teaching Plato, I said, “This is absolute nonsense, because Plato has nothing to say of his own. It is better to teach about Socrates. Plato can be referred to - he has compiled it all. But Socrates’ name has become almost a fiction, and Plato has become the reality” Plato’s allegory is of slaves who, working in a cave, see only their shadows on the walls and believe that what is happening on the walls is the only reality. They don’t know of any other reality except those shadows… they don’t even know that those shadows are their own. They know nothing about the outside world, outside their cave; it doesn’t exist for them. This is one of the most beautiful allegories - of tremendous importance. It is our allegory. Translated into our life, it means we are living in a certain cave and we are seeing shadows on a certain screen and we know nothing else about the screen. We know nothing about there being a world beyond the screen; we know nothing about these shadows on the screen, even that they are our own. Looked at rightly, it is the allegory of our mind. What do you know of the world? Just a small skull is your cave; and just the screen of your mind… and the things which you call thoughts, emotions, sentiments, feelings, are all shadows - they don’t have any substance in them. And you get angry, you get depressed, you are in anguish - because you have learned to be identified with those shadows. You are projecting them; they are your own shadows. It is your own anger that is projected on the screen of the mind. And then it becomes a vicious circle: that anger makes you more angry, more anger projects more anger, and so on and so forth. And we go on living our whole life without ever thinking that there is a world of reality beyond the mind, on the outside, and there is also a world of reality beyond all these sentiments, feelings, emotions - beyond your ego. That is your awareness. The whole art of meditation is to bring you out of the cave so that you can become aware that you are not those shadows but that you are a watcher. And the moment you become a watcher, a miracle happens: those shadows start disappearing. They feed on your identity; if you feel identified with them, then they are there. The more you identify with them, the more nourished they are. When you are just a watcher - just seeing, not judging, not condemning - slowly, slowly those shadows disappear, because now they don’t have any food. And then there is such a tremendous clarity, perceptivity, that you can see the world beyond - the world of sunrise and the world of clouds and the world of the stars; that is your outside. And you can become aware of your inside, which is far more mysterious. The outside world is so beautiful, but the inside world is a thousand fold more beautiful. Once you are somehow capable of getting out of the cave you become part of a universal consciousness."

Sorry, but you lost me the moment you said you only had to read a fraction of Don Quixote. . .for a LITERATURE class. . .as a student. Having started, but not finishing, several ambitious/classic works, I only think of myself who failed to complete the task, and definitely not a "student" of literature.

lol what kind of uni are you at that you're reading this much in one month for a lit degree?? that's madness

Not fair? I was only an immigrant for six years prior (1997-2003). And I never studied anything worthwhile (literature, philosophy, science) until 2008 when I was already 40yo. I had no unfair head start.

No one reads that many books in one month. It is a scam.

you need to speak up!!!