The Year of the Flood as Standalone Novel

I mentioned previously that I’ve been reading Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy in order to review them, in particular the forthcoming third book, MaddAddam.

I’ll be teaching my class on religion and science fiction this coming semester, and have been debating what novel or novels to include, along with the many short stories and

The second book in the trilogy, The Year of the Flood, has the most interesting content from the perspective of the class. That’s the one I mentioned previously, with the hymns of the God’s Gardeners. Reading all three novels is probably too much to attempt in a semester, at least without cutting other things that I think are important. I’m wondering whether reading only The Year of the Flood without reading the first book, Oryx and Crake, would work.

Has anyone read The Year of the Flood without reading Oryx and Crake first? Did it make sense reading it that way? Do you think that students would be receptive to my assigning, or encouraging, the reading of the first novel, without discussing it in detail except in the process of discussing The Year of the Flood?