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Christopher Douce

A335 Journal – June 2025

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18 June 2025

A former A335 student has been kind enough to send me most of the set books they had bought for their studies, for which I am immensely grateful. There’s a couple of books that are missing which I need to buy. It’s always good fun finding copies of books online. (In return, I’m going to give away my A334 sets to someone. If you’re after a set of A334 texts, do get in touch!)

So far, I’ve listened to 5 hours of Bleak House whilst driving. I’ve also started to read the text since my concentration can necessarily drift whilst overtaking juggernauts on the A1. Since starting to read the text, I’m getting more of a feeling the characters and their importance. I’ve packed my newly acquired (and much thumbed) edition of Bleak House for my current travels, but I’m going to be taking my Kindle on holiday; 900 pages is a lot of pages to get through.

Since my mystery package of books also contained the module blocks, I’ve had a quick skim through the first two. I’m really looking forward to Mayhew’s London Labour and London Poor and, as mentioned, the George Elliot text. The lack of drama texts in this module is striking, but I understand we’ll be looking at two drama texts: one by Synd and another by Hare.

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Christopher Douce

A335 Journal – May 2025

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25 May 2025

My previous module, A334 hasn’t even finished. There are three more days to go before the EMA cut off date, and I’m starting to think about what I need to do for the next module.

Today, I’ve done three things. The first was to download an audio version of Bleak House onto phone, in anticipation of a really long drive. (Bleak House runs for over 40 hours, which is nearly as bad as Rousseau’s Confessions).

Following some chat on the A334 WhatsApp group, I picked up that another set text is Oranges are not the only fruit. I downloaded that too, and that came in at a slightly more digestible 6 hours.

I’m up to chapter 5 in Bleak House, and I have no idea what’s going on, so it’s time to download a version of the text from Project Guttenberg to my Kindle so I can try to make sense of it.

Wish me luck.

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Christopher Douce

Preparing for the summer: A335 Reading list

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Sunday, 30 Mar 2025, 20:28

Whilst studying literature modules over the last few years, I’ve been trying to get ahead during my summer holidays. Here’s a reading list blog post that I prepared last year for A334.

What follows is a version of the A335 Literature in Transition reading list. Where possible (in the cases where the books are out of copyright), I’ve added a link to an accompanying Project Gutenberg download page. My aim and intention is to get as much reading done as possible (after taking a bit of a break after the submission of my A334 end of module assessment, which look to be pretty hard going) over the summer. What tends to happen is that I start quite well, but then end up struggling towards the end of the module. 

Just as with my earlier A334 blog, I’ve adjusted the format of each of these references to make sure they more directly comply with the OU Harvard format. Do refer to the CiteThemRight website for further guidance.

Here are a list of the texts:

Eliot, G. (2015) The Mill on the Floss. Edited by G.S.Haight. Oxford World's Classics.

Calvino, I., McLaughlin, M., Parks, T. and Weaver, W. (2010) The Complete Cosmicomics. Penguin Modern Classics.

Ford, F. M. (2013) The Good Soldier. Wordsworth Editions.

Rhys, J. (2000) Good Morning, Midnight. Penguin Modern Classics.

Synge, J. M. (2021) The Playboy of the Western World. Edited by C. Collins. Methuen.

Salih, T. and Johnson-Davies, D. (2003) Season of Migration to the North. Penguin Modern Classics.

Lahiri, J. (2009) Unaccustomed Earth. Bloomsbury.

Dickens, C. (1996) Bleak House. Edited by N.Bradbury. Penguin.

Thomas, D. (2014) Under Milk Wood. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Thoreau, H.D. (2008) Walden, Civil Disobedience and Other Writings. Edited by W. Rossi. W. W. Norton & Company.

Hare, D. (2006) Stuff Happens. Faber and Faber. 

Eliot, T.S. (2001) Four Quartets. Faber and Faber.

Mayhew, H. (2008) London Labour and the London Poor. Wordsworth Editions.

Mansfield, K. (2008) Selected Stories. Oxford World's Classics.

Winterson, J. (2014) Oranges are not the Only Fruit. Vintage.

Woolf, V. (2023) Between the Acts. Edited by F. Kermode. E-BOOKARAMA 

Reflections

This is a pretty extreme example of preparing to study a module. This is also quite an intimidating list of texts. It is an interesting mix of classics and the modern. For a couple of these I haven’t managed to find a Gutenberg eBook equivalent. An example is, of course, Mansfield. Gutenberg also seems to offer a number of different volumes for the Mayhew text.

I’m not going to pretend I can get through even a quarter of these texts over my summer holiday. Besides, our reading is directed through the module materials. When I’m studying the module properly, I’m also likely to make use of the officially recommended version of the text, since the notes by the editor and the author are often really useful.

I have a memory of once seeing a production of Under Milk Wood at The National Theatre in 1995. I remember being blown away by the production. I'm looking forward to formally studying Thomas, along with reading Elliot and Rhys.

Acknowledgements

This reading list has been directly liberated from the A335 module summary page. I have no connection with the module team, and it is entirely possible that this reading list may change. Always rely on the recommendations from the module team, rather than any materials that are mentioned in this post.

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