College bound reading list
COLLEGE BOUND READING LIST
The following titles were taken from the American Library Association web site as recommended reading for high school students who are college bound. All of these titles are available for checkout from the Senior High Library.
FICTION
Anderson, Sherwood Winesburg, Ohio. Winesburg, Ohio charted a new direction in American fiction--evoking with lyrical simplicity quiet moments of epiphany in the lives of ordinary men and women. In a bed, elevated so that he can peer out the window, an old writer contemplates the fluttering of his heart and considers, as if viewing a pageant, the inhabitants of a small midwestern town. Their stories are about loneliness and alienation, passion and virginity, wealth and poverty, thrift and profligacy, carelessness and abandon.
Atwood, Margaret The Handmaids Tale.
Margaret Atwood's story is set in the future after the United States has undergone a nuclear war and the government has been destroyed. In place now is a strict and dangerous political scene, where any type of crime can result in an execution and a public hanging on The Wall. Not only that, but women are made secondhand citizens and are no longer able to hold jobs, mak
Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennet is the perfect Austen heroine: intelligent, generous, sensible, incapable of jealousy or any other major sin. That makes her sound like an insufferable goody-goody, but the truth is she's a completely hip character, who if provoked is not above skewering her antagonist with a piece of her exceptionally sharp -- but always polite -- 18th century wit. The point is, you spend the whole book absolutely fixated on the critical question: will Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy hook up?
Bradbury, Ray Fahrenheit 451. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.
Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre. This book was written in the 19th century when women's roles were limited. The story follows a young woman who sets out to find her place in the world with the education she has received. Jane goes through some interesting and hard experiences that teach her forgiveness, understanding, and help her discover the inner strength she possesses.
Bronte, Emily Wuthering Heights. Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: of the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and her betrayal of him. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.
Camus, Albert The Stranger. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character.
Card, Orson Scott Enders Game. Aliens have attacked Earth twice and almost destroyed the human species. To make sure humans win the next encounter, the world government has taken to breeding military geniuses -- and then training them in the arts of war... The early training, not surprisingly, takes the form of 'games'... Ender Wiggin is a genius among geniuses; he wins all the games... He is smart enough to know that time is running out. But is he smart enough to save the planet?
Carroll, Lewis Alices Adventures in Wonderland. The Mad Hatter, the Ugly Duchess, the Mock Turtle, the Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat-characters each more eccentric than the last, and that could only have come from Lewis Carroll, the master of sublime nonsense.
Cather, Willa My Antonia. Set in Nebraska in the late 19th century, this is a tale of the spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family planning to farm on the untamed land ("not a country at all but the material out of which countries are made") comes to us through the romantic eyes of Jim Burden. He is, at the time of their meeting, newly orphaned and arriving at his grandparents' neighboring farm on the same night her family strikes out to make good in their new country.
Cervantes, Miguel de Don Quixote. After recruiting a sidekick and choosing a lady to woo per narrative convention, he sets out to conquer the forces of evil, which include, among other things, giant windmills and rogue "knights".
Clark, Walter Van Tillburg The Ox-bow Incident. Set in 1885, The Ox-Bow Incident is a searing and realistic portrait of frontier life and mob violence in the American West. First published in 1940, it focuses on the lynching of three innocent men and the tragedy that ensues when law and order are abandoned.
Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness explores the mind of an educated European as he travels to Africa. It is the story of a man named Marlow. Conrad has created a complex narrator in Marlow, a man who is not all good or all bad. He travels to Africa with a vague belief of the goodness behind the imperialist venture, but what he finds is totally opposite.
Cormier, Robert The Chocolate War. Stunned by his mother's recent death and appalled by the way his father sleepwalks through life, Jerry Renault, a New England high school student, ponders the poster in his locker-Do I dare disturb the universe? Part of his universe is Archie Costello, leader of a secret school societ-the Virgils-and master of intimidation. Archie himself is intimidated by a cool, ambitious teacher into having the Virgils spearhead the annual fund-raising event-a chocolate sale. When Jerry refuses to be bullied into selling chocolates, he becomes a hero, but his defiance is a threat to Archie, the Virgils, and the school. In the inevitable showdown, Archie's skill at intimidation turns Jerry from hero to outcast.
Crane, Stephen The Red Badge of Courage. Imagine standing in the middle of a battlefield having to watch your friends suffer and eventually die from bullet shots. This is a typical scene from the Civil War, which had the most loss of American life than any other war. The Red Badge of Courage horrifically, yet accurately, depicts the true nature of war.
Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe. This novel is about a young man, Robinson Crusoe, and his journey from a rich life in England to being a mariner and eventually being stranded on a remote island for twenty-eight years. The book is based on the true story of a mariner named Andrew Selkirk, who was also stranded on a remote island for five years. This book is a great example of the realism movement. Defoe talks about real life and its hardships.
Dickens, Charles Great Expectations. Orphaned Pip is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentlemanand one day, under sudden and enigmatic circumstances, he finds himself in possession of great expectations.
Dorris, Michael A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. Michael Dorris has crafted a fierce saga of three generations of Indian women, beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of kinship. Starting in the present day and moving backward, the novel is told in the voices of the three women: fifteen-year-old part-black Rayona; her American Indian mother, Christine, consumed by tenderness and resentment toward those she loves; and the fierce and mysterious Ida, mother and grandmother whose haunting secrets, betrayals, and dreams echo through the years, braiding together the strands of the shared past.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and punishment. Mired in poverty, the student Raskolnikov nevertheless thinks well of himself. Of his pawnbroker he takes a different view, and in deciding to do away with her he sets in motion his own tragic downfall.
Ellison, Ralph The Invisible Man. Invisible Man chronicles the travels of its narrator, a young, nameless black man, as he moves through the hellish levels of American intolerance and cultural blindness.
Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying. In the story, the members of the Bundren family must take the body of Addie, matriarch of the family, to the town where Addie wanted to be buried. Along the way, we listen to each of the members on the macabre pilgrimage, while Faulkner heaps upon them various flavors of disaster.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby. This eloquently written novel, full of symbolism and wonderful imagery is set among a millionaire community on Long Island. The enigmatic bachelor Gatsby gives huge all night parties at his mansion, dancing, drugs and sex are the season's most fashionable events. His fascinated neighbour, the book's narrator Nick Carraway, makes friends with him and begins unravelling the secrets of his personality.
Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary. This is a tale of a provincial woman who cannot bear the discrepancy between her romantic dreams and the dull routine of her daily life. She seeks adventure but finds only tragedy.
Frazier, Charles Cold Mountain. Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, Inman, a Confederate soldier, decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains and to Ada, the woman he loved there years before.
Gaines, Ernest The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a witness to the black military of the 1960's.
Golding, William Lord of the Flies. Lord of the Flies is about a group of boys trapped on an island in the middle of nowhere because their plane crashed. Lord of the Flies described how the kids dealt with life on the island with no adults and no sign of rescue in sight.
Hardy, Thomas Tess of the DUrbervilles. First published in 1891, Tess... is a very sad book: a young girl's life is slowly but surely destroyed -not by her enemies, but by the people who say they love her.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter. The Scarlett Letter tells of a woman named Hester Prynne in late 17th century who committed the then-unforgivable sin of adultery. She had been living in Boston for two years and had been found guilty of bearing a child (Pearl) by an unknown father. As punishment for her sin, Hester was forced to wear a scarlet A (adultery) on the bodice of her dress and to stand on a public scaffold before Boston's townspeople.
Heller, Joseph Catch-22. Set in final months of World War II, Joseph Heller's novel depicts a world where the human language has become obsolete. Hardly a single exchange takes place that doesn't contain some form of self-contradiction or circular reasoning. Heller's stories of the horrors of war are a satire that is at one-moment whimsical and acidic the next.
Hemingway, Ernest A Farewell to Arms. A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse.
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World. A science fiction book for the ages. In the beginning Bernard Marx (the person who brought him to the civilized world) and his quest for happiness and a love-live, also finds problems with society, but still craves what it has to offer him.
Joyce, James A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man portrays Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, providing an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce. At its center are questions of origin and source, authority and authorship, and the relationship of an artist to his family, culture, and race.
Keneally, Thomas Schindlers List. How the German Oskar Schindler came to save more than one thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust is one of the most fascinating stories of the century.
Kesey, Ken One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Nurse Ratched, the inmates of a mental hospital are galvanized by a new patient, the free-spirited McMurphy, who enters a pitched battle of wills with the nurse.
Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird. Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman.
Lewis, Sinclair Main Street. The story of Main Street is seen through the eyes of Carol Kennicott, a young woman married to a Midwestern doctor who settles in the Minnesota town of Gopher Prairie (modeled on Lewis' hometown of Sauk Center). The power of the book derives from Lewis' careful rendering of local speech, customs, and social amenities.
LeGuin, Ursula The Left Hand of Darkness. Genly Ai is an emissary from the human galaxy to Winter, a lost, stray world. His mission is to bring the planet back into the fold of an evolving galactic civilization, but to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own culture and prejudices and those that he encounters. On a planet where people are of no gender--or both--this is a broad gulf indeed.
London, Jack Call of the Wild. In this quintessential adventure story, Jack London takes readers on an arduous journey through the forbidding Alaskan landscape during the gold rush of the 1890s. Buck, a rangy mixed breed used to a comfortable, sun-filled life as a family dog, is stolen by a greedy opportunist and sold to dog traffickers.
McCullers, Carson The Member of the Wedding. This novel depicts the inner life of 12-year-old Frankie Addams, a Georgia tomboy who imagines that she will be taken by the bride and groom (her brother) on their honeymoon. Frankie finds refuge in the company of two equally isolated characters, her ailing six-year-old cousin John Henry and her father's black housekeeper, Berenice, who serves as both mother figure and oracle.
Melville, Herman Moby-Dick. Moby Dick is the epic saga of the fanatical Captain Ahab, who swears vengeance on the mammoth white whale that has crippled him. Often considered to be the Great American Novel, Moby-Dick is at once a starkly realistic story of whaling, a romance of unusual adventure, and a searing drama of heroic courage, moral conflict, and mad obsession.
Morrison, Tony Beloved. In the troubled years following the Civil War, the spirit of a murdered child haunts the Ohio home of a former slave. This angry, destructive ghost breaks mirrors, leaves its fingerprints in cake icing, and generally makes life difficult for Sethe and her family; nevertheless, the woman finds the haunting oddly comforting for it is the ghost of her dead baby only known as Beloved.
Morrison, Tony Sula. Toni Morrison tells the story of two women--friends since childhood, separated in young adulthood, and reunited as grown women. Nel Wright grows up to become a wife and mother, happy to remain in her hometown of Medallion, Ohio. Sula Peace leaves Medallion to experience college, men, and life in the big city, an exceptional choice for a black woman to make in the late 1920s.
Orwell, George Animal Farm. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. Eventually the pigs decide by virtue of their intelligence, that they should be the leaders and trouble begins to beset the comfortable animals.
Pasternak, Boris Doctor Zhivago. Doctor Zhivago is a beautiful book about life, love, war and peace set during the Russian Revolution of 1917. The novel follows the intertwined lives of Yurii Andreievich Zhivago and Larisa Feodorovna Antipova as well as tracing the course of the civil war/Bolshevik revolution.
Paton, Alan Cry, the Beloved Country. Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully told and profoundly compassionate story of South Africa during the changes of the 1940's.
Plath, Sylvia The Bell Jar. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. The real Plath committed suicide in 1963 and left behind this scathingly sad, honest and perfectly-written book.
Potok, Chaim The Chosen. In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to adulthood.
Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front. Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. This story details the two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, he searches for truth and rails against the "phoniness" of the adult world. He ends up exhausted and emotionally ill, in a psychiatrist's office. After he recovers from his breakdown, Holden relates his experiences to the reader.
Scott, Sir Walter - Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe, banished by his father, Cedric, for falling in love with Cedric's ward Rowena, wins the patronage and friendship of Richard the Lion-Heart on Crusade in the Holy Land. On his return to England, eager to reclaim both his birthright and his fair lady, he is drawn into the struggle between honourable ole' Richard I and his scheming, moustache-twiddling brother John.
Shaara, Michael Killer Angels. The Killer Angels tells the story of the Battle of Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, the Confederate army and the Union army fought the largest battle of the American Civil War. When the battle ended, 51,000 men were dead, wounded, or missing. The characters in the novel are based on real historical figures. Most of the main characters include, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate army, General James Longstreet, Lee's second-in-command; and Union Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain, who participated in one of the most famous battle of Gettysburg, the fighting on Little Round Top.
Shelley, Mary W. - Frankenstein. A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.
Sinclair, Upton The Jungle. The Jungle shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon descends into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and despair.
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. This novel details the experiences, motivations and practicalities of life that Ivan Denisovich encounters within a Russian labour camp.
Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath. The Joads, a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers are forced off the land that they have maintained for generations because the crops have dried-up and disappeared. Try as they might, the weather conditions and climate of a time in Oklahoma known as "The Dust Bowl" are not conducive to their continued survival as simple farmers. Gathering all that they can carry and raising little money from what they can sell to uninterested profiteers, they head westward to California.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Toms Cabin. Uncle Tom is a pre-civil war black slave, routinely trodden on due to his non-human status. Even with the luxuries he is given, he is continually reminded that his status before the law is only property-he has no rights, no freedom. Yet he always manages to unconditionally love his owners: the Shelbys, the St. Claires, and finally even Simon Legree. And in the course being sold and purchased, he changes the lives of many people around him.
Swift, Jonathan Gullivers Travels. Shipwrecked castaway Lemuel Gulliver's encounters with the petty, diminutive Lilliputians, the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the abstracted scientists of Laputa, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and the brutish Yahoos give him new, bitter insights into human behavior.
Tolstoy, Leo Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina is Tolstoy's classic tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of high society in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
Twain, Mark The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck Finn is a young American growing up without a family and a home. He runs away from home to find happiness somewhere else where nobody knows him. Along the way he meets up with Jim, a runaway slave.
Vonnegut, Kurt Slaughterhouse-Five. Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore.
Walker, Alice The Color Purple. Sisters Nettie and Celie, the former a missionary in Africa, the latter a southern woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, share their thoughts and experiences throughout a thirty-year correspondence.
Wells, H.G. The Time Machine. The Time Traveller has ridden his machine hundreds of years into the future. Buildings, cities, and civilizations rise and fall before his eyes. He is welcomed to 802701 by the frail and simple Eloi. The future seems safe--until the Time Traveller encounters the shadowy, carnivorous Morlocks, inhabitants of the Underworld. The Morlocks terrorize the Eloi, hunt the Time Traveller, and capture the Time Machine.
Wolfe, Thomas Look Homeward, Angel. Look Homeward, Angel is the coming-of-age story of Eugene Gant, whose restlessness and yearning to experience life to the fullest take him from his rural home in North Carolina to Harvard.
Wright, Richard Native Son. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection of the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.
Yolen, Jane Briar Rose. Briar Rose is about a twenty-three year old woman who makes a promise to her dying grandmother, and is puzzled by her grandmother's last words.' I am Briar Rose...' Could this statement be connected to her grandmother's favorite fairy tale, Briar Rose/Sleeping Beauty? Then Rebecca and her family find a mysterious box, hidden away for years, that belonged to her grandmother. What does the box conain?
NON-FICTION
For annotations of the following non-fiction, play and poetry titles, please see http://www.amazon.com and click on books or http://www.bn.com. Type the title of the selection in the location line and press return.
Angelou, Maya I Know Why Caged Birds Sing
Bronowski, Jacob The Ascent of Man
Brown, Dee Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
Carson, Rachel Silent Spring
Curie,Marie Madam Curie: a Biography
Darwin, Charles The Origin of the Species
Dorris, Michael The Broken Cord
Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Frank, Anne The Diary of a Young Girl
Franklin, Benjamin The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Haley, Alex Roots
Hamilton, Edith - Mythology
Hersey, John Hiroshima
Keller, Helen The Story of My Life
Kovic, Ron Born on the Fourth of July
Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Moody, Ann Coming of the Age in Mississippi
Pipher, Mary Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent
Girls
Thoreau, Henry David Walden
Truman, Harry S. - Truman
Williams, Juan Eyes on the Prize: Americas Civil Rights Years, 1954-65
Wright, Richard Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth
DRAMA
Berstein, Leonard West Side Story
Hansberry. Lorraine Raisin in the sun
Ibsen, Henrik A Dolls House
Miller, Arthur Death of a Salesman
ONeill, Eugene Long Days Journey into the Night
Shakespeare, William Hamlet
Shakespeare, William King Lear
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare, William Twelfth Night
Shaw, George Bernard Candida
Shaw, George Bernard Man and Superman
Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion
Wilde, Oscar The Importance of Being Ernest
Wilde, Oscar Our Town
Williams, Tennessee A Streetcar Named Desire
POETRY
Carlson, Lori M., ed. "Cool Salsa"
Frost, Robert "The Poetry of Robert Frost"
Dunning, Stephen "Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle"
Miller, E. Ethelbert, ed. "In Search of Color Everywhere"
Poe, Edgar Allan Great Tales and Poems.
Sandburg, Carl "Complete Poems"
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