WCMC-Q library boosts stocks with 100 classic works of literature
March, 2012
Dr. Marco Ameduri,
Associate Dean for Pre-medical Education;
Dr. Javaid Sheikh, Dean of WCMC-Q; Ellen Sayed, Director of DeLib;
and Dr. Lyuba Konopasek, Associate Dean for Medical Education,
with a selection of the new books.
One hundred of the greatest novels in literature have been added to WCMC-Q’s campus library.
Between them the novels cover all the great themes of humanity: love, death, compassion, revenge, courage and redemption among others. The idea behind the scheme is to provide medical and pre-medical students with easy access to some of the world’s greatest authors, so expanding their educational boundaries beyond the world of science and medicine.
WCMC-Q’s Assistant Professor of English, Dr. Rodney Sharkey, was asked to select the novels that he thought would help enrich the learning experience of the college’s students.
Dr. Sharkey said that once he began making a note of the novels he thought should be added to the library, the question of whether Jane Austen should be included loomed large.
“One voice – most probably the angel on my shoulder – insisted on Austen’s inclusion, arguing that a list that purported to represent the best of literature could not afford to omit the iconic nineteenth century novelist,” he said. “On the other hand, I found it hard to imagine the students clambering over one another at the mouth of the library to be the first to borrow Northanger Abbey.”
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice did eventually make the cut along with 99 other novels which span the centuries, hence The Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh stand alongside Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666.
The selection also had to appeal to a wide audience.
“As a result,” Dr. Sharkey said, “some of the crispest, clearest most simply written books in the English language are included: Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Watership Down by Richard Adams, and The Call of the Wild by Jack London.
“Our hope is that as these books are borrowed and read, readers will make their own recommendations so that soon we can have 200 classics, as determined by the readership of WCMC-Q. That is a list I really look forward to reading.”
