I'm taking (another) free online course offered by Coursera.org, which starts October 7th.
Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World taught by Eric Rabkin
All but two of the books/stories taught by the course are available legally for free in various formats either at gutenberg.org or
ebooks@adelaide.org.
Thought I'd post it here in case there were other folks looking for book recommendations or wanting to study/discuss their readings.
Here's the reading list for this course:
- Grimm — Children's and Household Tales (Lucy Crane translation with Walter Crane illustrations)
- Carroll — Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
- Stoker — Dracula (This reading is somewhat longer than most of the others. You may want to begin it in advance.)
- Shelley — Frankenstein
- Hawthorne & Poe — Stories and Poems (Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse includes "The Birthmark," "Rappaccini's Daughter," and "The Artist of the Beautiful" and his Twice-Told Tales includes "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"; The Portable Poe includes all the suggested Poe stories and poems
- Wells — The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, "The Country of the Blind," "The Star"
- Burroughs & Gilman — A Princess of Mars & Herland
- Bradbury — The Martian Chronicles (not available for legal, free download)
- LeGuin — The Left Hand of Darkness (not available for legal, free download)
- Doctorow — Little Brother (This reading is somewhat longer than most of the others. You may want to begin it in advance.)
Other courses (hundreds!) are available, in a wide variety of university departments. Here are a few that might tempt the reading crowd here:
Comic Books and Graphic Novels
Reason and Persuasion: Thinking Through 3 Dialogues by Plato