This section is from the book "Two Years' Course In English Composition", by Charles Lane Hanson. Also available from Amazon: Two Years' Course In English Composition.
We are not necessarily to read for the sake of finding subjects on which to write. Sufficient motive comes from the companionship of a good book. Yet it is interesting and profitable to write out our impressions of what we read - not to reproduce the story, but to tell how we like it and what something in the book has set us to thinking about.
Sometimes we are hungry for a good book but cannot think of one which seems likely to suit our mood. The following list includes books which have appealed to the various tastes of pupils in many schools.
Abbot, The........ | Walter Scott |
Adventures in the Wilderness............... | W. H. H. Murray |
Alexander the Great......... | T. A. Dodge |
Animal Intelligence....... | G. J. Romanes |
Ants, Bees, and Wasps.......... | John Lubbock |
Arabian Nights | |
Audubon, John James...... | Mrs. L. Audubon |
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin | |
Betty Alden................ | Jane G. Austin |
Bird Ways............... | Olive Thorne Miller |
Bits of Travel......... | .Helen Hunt Jackson |
Bracebridge Hall ................ | Washington Irving |
Christmas Carol............... | Charles Dickens |
Cicero, Life of ............. | Anthony Trollope W. Forsyth |
Columbus, Christopher.......... | Washington Irving |
David Balfour.......... | Robert Louis Stevenson |
Engineers, Lives of the .......... | Samuel Smiles |
Garfield, Life of............. | Sarah K. Bolton |
Gulliver's Travels (abridged) . . | Jonathan Swift |
Gypsy Breynton Series............ | Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward |
Heroes and Kings.......... | A. J. Church |
Hoosier Schoolmaster, The . . | Edward Eggleston |
Iliad, The........ | Lang, Leaf, and Myers Bryant |
Irving, Life of ............. | Charles Dudley Warner |
Ivanhoe ......... | Walter Scott |
Jungle Books, The..... | Rudyard Kipling |
Kidnapped............... | Robert Louis Stevenson |
Last Days of Pompeii, The . . | E. L. Bulwer Lytton |
Last of the Mohicans, The . . | James Fenimore Cooper |
Lay of the Last Minstrel, The | Walter Scott |
Lays of Ancient Rome............. | Thomas B. Macaulay |
Lincolin, Life of ............. | Ida M. Tarbell |
Lionel Lincoln.............. | James Fenimore Cooper |
Little Women....... | Louisa M. Alcott |
Longfellow, Life of.......... | Samuel Longfellow |
Man without a Country, The | Edward Everett Hale |
Master of Ballantrae, The . . . | Robert Louis Stevenson |
Memoirs of U. S. Grant | |
Monastery, The ........... | Walter Scott |
My Winter on the Nile .... | Charles Dudley Warner |
Odyssey, The............. | G. H. Palmer Butcher and Lang |
Oliver Twist............. | Charles Dickens |
Outdoor Papers...... | Thomas W. Higginson |
Pathfinder, The...... | James Fenimore Cooper |
Pilgrim's Progress, The .... | John Bunyan |
Plutarch's Lives | |
Poor Richard's Almanac . . . | Benjamin Franklin |
Prince and the Pauper, The . . | Mark Twain |
Quentin Dyrward............. | Walter Scott |
Ramona ................ | Helen Hunt Jackson |
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm ............... | Kate Douglas Wiggin |
RobRoy............ | Walter Scott |
Scott, Life of.................. | John G. Lockhart |
Scottish Chiefs........... | Jane Porter |
Sharp Eyes........... | W. H. Gibson |
Standish of Standish............. | Jane G. Austin |
Tales from Shakespeare....... | Charles Lamb |
Tales of a Grandfather.......... | Walter Scott |
Tales of a Traveller.......... | Washington Irving |
Talisman, The........... | Walter Scott |
Tom Brown's School Days............. | Thomas Hughes |
Treasure Island......... | Robert Louis Stevenson |
Wake Robin........... | John Burroughs |
Wilderness Ways......... | W. J. Long |
Woodstock.............. | Walter Scott |
12. Write the titles of all the books in the above list that you have read. Underscore once those which you disliked, twice those which you liked fairly well, and three times those which you particularly enjoyed.1
13. Bring to class a list of all the subjects for compositions that are suggested by the foregoing titles.
For example, you may not have read "The Abbot," but the sight of Scott's name reminds you that you have read "Quentin Durward" or "Ivanhoe" or "Kenilworth," and you may have some opinion not only of one of these books as a whole, but of several incidents or characters in it.
 
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