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Paul Kreller

What are you currently reading?

I have just finished reading a student's essay (quite a good one, actually) on Vocation in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I still have about 25 more essays on that topic to go. In other reading, I recently finished Morton Cohen's biography of Lewis Carroll, and I recently bought A. S. Byatt's The Children's Book, which I hope to begin soon.

What are your five favourite texts?

The texts that I enjoy teaching because they usually stimulate good discussion include:  Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"; Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Shaw's Major Barbara; Orwell's 1984; and Alice Munro's stories, especially her collection Open Secrets.

What are the top five texts that you find to be the most useful for teaching?

For useful texts, I'd include three of my favourite ones--Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Major Barbara, and 1984--and I'd add Milton's Paradise Lost and Wordsworth's Prelude, though, for each of these works, I've only taught selections from various books (sections), mainly for survey courses.

What texts have you had the most fun researching?

I recently taught for the first time a course in Children's Literature, and I really enjoyed researching such works as Nursery Rhymes, Fairy Tales, Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, and some children's picture books. I've enjoyed researching a lot of other texts, but these are freshest in my mind.

What would you be if you weren't an English professor?

I think I'd enjoy managing a good used book store.