Lahser High School English Department
Required Summer Reading
updated 6-22-11
All students will be required to read over the summer and will be responsible for this reading in September. Refer to the course you will be taking in the 2011-2012 school year and the accompanying required reading.
English Classes | Humanities | AP English | IB English HL
English Classes Reading Selections
Writing through World Literature I: Read 1
Zlata’s Diary ~ Zlata Filipovic
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time ~ Mark Haddon
DP Cohort/Honors Level Students: Read 1 of the above. In addition, read...
Of Mice and Men ~ John Steinbeck
Writing through World Literature II: Read 1
The Help ~ Katherine Stockett
The Watsons go to Birmingham, 1963 ~ Christopher Paul Curtis
DP Cohort/Honors Level Students: Read 1 of the above. in addition, read...
Mister Pip ~ Lloyd Jones
Humanities: Read 3
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ~ Mark Twain
Read 2 books (1 English, 1 Social Studies) from the Humanities online media center reading list
Writing through American Literature III: Read 1
The Secret Life of Bees ~ Sue Monk Kidd
The Five People You Meet in Heaven ~ Mitch Albom
Tuesdays with Morrie ~ Mitch Albom
Have a Little Faith ~ Mitch Albom
British Literature: Read 2
The Picture of Dorian Gray ~ Oscar Wilde
Read 1 other book from the British Literature online media center reading list
Writing through Film Genre: Watch 1
Citizen Kane
Casablanca
Gone with the Wind
Writing through Modern Literature: Read 1
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier ~ Ishmael Beah
Into Thin Air ~ Jon Krakauer
The Glass Castle ~ Jeannette Walls
My Sister's Keeper ~ Jodi Picoult
Advanced Placement English: Read 3
Read 3 texts from the AP online media center reading list
Creative Writing: Read 1
Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times
Zen in the Art of Writing ~ Ray Bradbury
Writing for Publications : Read 1
Hiroshima ~ John Hersey
Tuesdays with Morrie ~ Mitch Albom
Please read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and 2 other books--one "English" and one "Social Studies"--from the selections below. An asterisk (*) denotes a "Social Studies" book.
*Age of Betrayal ~ Beatty, Jack. Beatty provides a fresh look at the "revolution from above" of the industrialization that forged modern America. A depression brought on by railroad speculation throws millions out of work, the hungry riot for bread in Buffalo, the homeless sleep on Chicago's streets, "tramps" are arrested, strikers are shot, and the nation's presidents avert their eyes.
All the King's Men ~ Warren, Robert Penn.
Willie Stark, a well-intentioned, idealistic, back-country lawyer
is
unable to resist greed for power and lust for politics during his rise
and fall as an American demagogue.
*Andrew Carnegie ~ Nasaw, David. America's first modern titan, this biography of Cargnegie brings to
life a period of unprecendented transition -- a time of self-made millionaires, scabs, strikes, and a new kind of philanthropy -- through the fascinating rags-to-riches story of one of our most iconic business legends.
*Autobiography of Malcolm X ~ Haley, Alex. He rose from hoodlum, theif, dope peddler, pimp...to become the most dynamic leader of the Black Revolution. He said he would be murdered before this book appeared.
The Bean Trees ~ Kingsolver, Barbara. Taylor, a poor Kentuckian, makes her way west with an abandoned baby girl and stops in Tucsan. There she finds friends and discovers resources in apparently empty places.
*Brave New World ~ Huxley, Aldous. Bernard Marx becomes a citizen in an utopian World-State where babies are born in laboratories, there is no violence, all citizens take drugs for depression,
and contentment overrides the free will of the populace.
The Catcher in the Rye ~ Salinger, J.D. Unable to conform despite pressure from his family, teachers, and friends, Holden Caufield embarks on a journey of self-discovery.
*A Century of Dishonor ~ Jackson, Helen Hunt. A classic account of the U.S. government's flawed Indian policy and the unfair and cruel treatment afforded North American Indians by expansionist Americans.
*Crazy Horse ~ Bray, Kingsley M. This account corrects older, idealized legends to expose the real Crazy Horse: not the brash Sioux warrior we have come to expect but a modest, reflective man whose courage was anchored in Lakota piety.
Ethan Frome ~ Wharton, Edith. Ethan Frome, a New England farmer who is married to a hypochondriac, is in love with his wife's lively cousin, Mattie.
*Edison ~ Josephson, Matthew. The biography of Thomas Edison, portraying the man and the myth
behind the genius.
Fahrenheit 451 ~ Bradbury, Ray. After learning that books are a vital part of a culture he never knew,
a book-burning official in a future fascist state clandestinely pursues reading until he is betrayed.
*The Feminine Mystique ~ Friedan, Betty. A reissue of the 1963 text which sparked the feminist movement through its analysis of the changing role and status of women.
For Whom the Bell Tolls ~ Hemingway, Ernest. The story of an American, Robert Jordan, who fought during the Civil War in Spain with the anti-facist guerrillas in the mountains of Spain.
Go Tell It on the Mountain ~ Baldwin, James A. Describes a day in the life of several members of a Harlem fundamentalist church. The saga of three generations of people is related through flashbacks.
*The Great Bridge ~ McCullough, David. Celebrating the centennial of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, here is the classic account of one of the greatest engineering feats of all time.
*The Guns of August ~ Tuchman, Barbara. Intensive study of the background of the first World War, and of the battles of Liege, Tannenberg, Mons and others fought during the first thirty days.
*The House of Morgan ~ Chernow, Ron. The most ambitious history ever written about an American banking dynasty, The House of Morgan traces the astonishing path of the J.P. Morgan empire with the sweep of an epic novel.
*Inhuman Bondage ~ Davis, David. This compelling narrative links together the profits of slavery,
the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism in a portrait of the dark side of the American dream.
Invisible Man ~ Ellison, Ralph. In the course of his wanderings from a Southern college to New York's Harlem, an African-American man becomes involved in a series of adventures.
*The Jungle ~ Sinclair, Upton. A fictional description of the conditions of the Chicago stockyards through the eyes of a young immigrant struggling in America at the beginning of the twentieth century.
*Lighting the Way ~ Schiff, Karenna Gore. The stories collected highlight the lives of nine extraordinary women, each of whom was ridiculed and ostracized for arguing for the changes in national policy that are taken for granted today.
My Antonia ~ Cather, Willa. A successful lawyer remembers his boyhood in Nebraska and his friendship with an immigrant Bohemian girl.
*Nothing Like It in the World ~ Ambrose, Stephen. Profiles the men who built the transcontinental
railroad, the investors who risked their businesses to fund it, the politicians who understood its
importance, the Irish and Chinese immigrants who worked on it, and the other laborers who did the dangerous work of laying the track.
*On the Road ~ Kerouac, Jack. Presents a thinly fictionalized autobiography of Jack Kerouac's cross-country adventure across North America on a quest for self-knowledge as experienced by his alter-ego,
Sal Paradise and Sal's friend Dean Moriarty (Kerouac's real life friend Neal Cassidy).
*Over Here ~ Humes, Edward. This is the story of how the G.I. Bill made homeowners, college graduates, professionals, rocket scientists, and a booming middle class out of a Depression-era generation that
never expected such opportunity.
*The Path Between the Seas ~ McCullough, David. A fact-filled account of the unprecendented creation of the Panama Canal, the costliest single effort ever mounted anywhere on earth. It is also the story of the people who were caught up in it -- some to win fame and fortune, others to have their reputations and even their lives destroyed.
The Red Badge of Courage ~ Crane Stephen. During his service in the Civil War a young Union soldier matures to manhood and finds peace of mind as he comes to grips with his conflicting emotions about war.
Sea Wolf ~ London, Jack. Humphrey Van Weyden is pressed into service aboard the "Ghost" a schooner led by Captain Wolf Larson, whose abuse results in violence, mutiny, and shipwreck.
*Silent Spring ~ Carson, Rachel. The work that started the modern American environmental movement,
*The Souls of Black Folk ~ Du Bois, W. E. B. This landmark in the literature of black protest eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind.
The Sound and the Fury ~ Faulkner, William. The members of a genteel Southern family are portrayed as petty failures, drunkards, suicides, pathological perverts, and idiots.
*Theodore Rex ~ Morris, Edmund. This biography begins with Roosevelt's emergency oath of office and tells the story of the following seven and a half years during which TR entertains, infuriates, amuses, strong-arms, and secudes the body politic into a state of almost total subservience to his will.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ~ Smith, Betty. Young Francie Nolan, having inherited both her father's
romantic and her mother's practical nature, struggles to survive and thrive growing up in the slums of Brooklyn in the early twentieth century.
*Truman ~ McCullough, David. Full scale biography of Harry S. Truman, his life and times, drawn from newly discovered archival matieral and interviews with Truman family, friends, and political figures.
*The Worst Hard Time ~ Egan, Timothy. The dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since, and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told until now.
**You may also choose to read any Presidential biography or autobiography.
Please read 3 texts from the following list.
Burger’s Daughter ~ Gordimer, Nadine. The story of a young woman's evolving identity in the political environment of South Africa in 1980.
Catch 22 ~ Helle, Joseph. A bombardier, based in Italy during World War II, repeatedly tries to avoid flying bombing missions while his colonel tries to get him killed by demanding that he fly more and more missions.
Cat’s Eye ~ Atwood, Margaret. When controversial painter Elaine Risley returns to Toronto for a
showing of her art, she must come to terms with her identity and her past.
Cold Mountain ~ Frazier, Charles. The story of a soldier's perilous journey back to his beloved at the
end of the Civil War.
The House of the Spirits ~ Allende, Isabel. The story of the Trueba family, following them from the turn of the century to the violent days of the overflow of the Salvador Allende government in 1973.
Invisible Man ~ Ellison, Ralph. In the course of his wanderings from a Southern college to New York's Harlem, an African-American man becomes involved in a series of adventures.
Love Medicine ~ Erdrich, Louise. The saga of two extended families on a North Dakota Chippewa reservation, exploring the impact of intense poverty, insensitive government policies, alcoholism, and the Catholic Church on a culture that nonetheless surivives.
Madame Bovary ~ Flaubert, Gustave. A novel about a young woman of the bourgeois class whose unhappiness in her marriage leads her to several affairs and a tragic fate.
One Hundred Years of Solitude ~ Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Translation of the Spanish novel which traces the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo, through the history of the Buendia family.
A Passage to India ~ Forster, E. M. A story about the clash between Eastern and Western cultures during British rule in India.
The Plague ~ Camus, Albert. A coastal city in Algeria is struck by bubonic plague and is shut off from the world for months.
Possession ~ Byatt, A. S. While researching the lives of two long-dead Victoria poets, a pair of young academics uncover a clandestine love affair and find themselves drawn into the historical world of mystery and passion.
Things Fall Apart ~ Achebe, Chinua. Set in an Ibo village in Nigeria, the novel recreates pre-Christian
tribal life and shows how the coming of the white man led to the breaking up of the old ways.
In addition to 1984, by George Orwell, please read ONE title from the AP Summer Reading List. We also recommend that you read the book, Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose.