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Summer Reading
Students going into the following English classes for the 2008-2009 school year should apply the questions below to the reading selections listed for their specific class and be ready to discuss and write on these texts the first week of class.
POINT OF VIEW
Through whose eyes and mind is the story told? Characterize the narrator. Is he/she a participant in the story, an observer, or an overriding presence? What is the narrator’s attitude toward the characters in the story? Is s/he judgmental or sympathetic? Give evidence for your answers by quoting from the text.
PLOT
What or who initiates the conflicts in the story? How are the conflicts resolved? Are the circumstances of the plot and the resolutions of the conflict believable? How significant is the setting of the plot (consider place and time period). Use quotes to illustrate each of your answers.
THEME
Are the characters dynamic or static? How do the characters change or grow? Illustrate these changes with quotes. How “universal” is the situation as far as human experience is concerned? What truth(s) does the author bring to your attention about conflict resolution or interpersonal relationships?
Dual Enrollment English
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
1984, George Orwell
Rosencrantz & Guildernstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard
Standard Senior English
The Importance of Being Ernest, Oscar Wilde
1984, George Orwell
Advanced Placement English
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
As I Lay Dying, Faulkner
Standard Junior English
Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury
Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
Honors Sophomore English
All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque
Things Fall Apart, Achebe
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Standard Sophomore English
Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque
Honors Freshman English
House on Mango Street, Cisneros
Night, Wiesel
The Acorn People, Ron Jones
Standard Freshman English
The Acorn People, Ron Jones
Night, Wiesel
Recommended Reading
The following selection of titles has been compiled by the St. Joseph
Academy English Department from a number of college preparatory reading lists.
It is offered as a tool for students when given "free choice" English
assignments for the outside reading component of the English Courses.
Recommended Reading List
| Adam Bede | Eliot |
| Adventures of Huck Finn | Twain |
| Adventures of Tom Sawyer | Twain |
| Aeneid of Virgil | Mandelbaum (trans.) |
| Age of Innocence | Wharton |
| Agony and the Ecstasy | Stone |
| And Then There Were None | Christie |
| Animal Farm | Orwell |
| Around the World in Eighty Days | Verne |
| As I Lay Dying | Faulkner |
| Babbitt | Lewis |
| Bean Trees | Kingsolver |
| Billy Budd | Melville |
| Bleak House | Dickens |
| Book of Merlyn | White |
| Bridge of San Luis Rey | Wilder |
| Caine Mutiny | Wouk |
| Call of the Wild | London |
| Candide | Voltaire |
| Chosen | Potok |
| Christy | Marshall |
| Count of Monte Cristo | Dumas |
| Crime and Punishment | Dostoyevsky |
| Cry, the Beloved Country | Paton |
| Cyrano de Bergerac | Rostand (Bair, trans.) |
| Daisy Miller | James |
| David Copperfield | Dickens |
| Death Comes for Archbishop | Cather |
| Death of Ivan Ilych | Tolstoy |
| Deerslayer | Cooper |
| Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde | Stevenson |
| Don Quixote Cervantes | (Starkie, trans.) |
| Dune | Herbert |
| Emma | Austen |
| Epic of Gilgamesh | (Sandars, trans.) |
| Exodus | Uris |
| Far From the Madding Crowd | Hardy |
| Fellowship of the Ring | Tolkien |
| For Whom the Bell Tolls | Hemingway |
| Friendly Persuasion | West |
| Gone With the Wind | Mitchell |
| Good Earth | Buck |
| Grapes of Wrath | Steinbeck |
| Great Expectations | Dickens |
| Great Gatsby | Fitzgerald |
| Gulliver’s Travels | Swift |
| Hard Times | Dickens |
| Heart of Darkness/Secret Sharer | Conrad |
| Hobbit | Tolkien |
| Hound of the Baskervilles | Doyle |
| House of Seven Gables | Hawthorne |
| Hunchback of Notre Dame | Hugo |
| Hunt for Red October | Clancy |
| Iliad Homer | (Fitzgerald, trans.) |
| Inferno Dante | (Ciardi, trans.) |
| Ivanhoe | Scott |
| Jane Eyre | Bronte |
| Journey to the Center of the Earth | Verne |
| Joy Luck Club | Tan |
| Jude the Obscure | Hardy |
| Killer Angels | Shaara |
| King Solomon’s Mine | Haggard |
| Last of the Mohicans | Cooper |
| Les Miserables | Hugo (Wilbour, trans.) |
| Lesson Before Dying | Gaines |
| Light in August | Faulkner |
| Little Prince | Exupery (Woods, trans.) |
| Little Women | Alcott |
| Look Homeward, Angel | Wolfe |
| Lord Jim | Conrad |
| Lord of the Flies | Golding |
| Main Street | Lewis |
| Maltese Falcon | Hammett |
| Mayor of Casterbridge | Hardy |
| Middlemarch | Eliot |
| Moby Dick | Melville |
| Moonstone | Collins |
| Mrs. Dalloway | Woolf |
| Murder of Roger Ackroyd | Christie |
| Murder on the Orient Express | Christie |
| Mutiny on the Bounty | Nordhoff and Hall |
| My Antonia | Cather |
| Mysterious Island | Verne |
| Natural | Malamud |
| Northanger Abbey | Austen |
| O Pioneers! | Cather |
| Odyssey | Homer (Butler, trans.) |
| Of Human Bondage | Maugham |
| Old Man and the Sea | Hemingway |
| Oliver Twist | Dickens |
| Once and Future King | White |
| Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained | Milton |
| Passage to India | Forster |
| Pickwick Papers | Dickens |
| Picture of Dorian Gray | Wilde |
| Pigs in Heaven | Kingsolver |
| Pilgrim’s Progress | Bunyan |
| Poisonwood Bible | Kingsolver |
| Portrait of a Lady | James |
| Power and the Glory | Greene |
| Pride and Prejudice | Austen |
| Prince and the Pauper | Twain |
| Razor’s Edge | Maugham |
| Rebecca | duMaurier |
| Red Badge of Courage | Crane |
| Return of the King | Tolkien |
| Return of the Native | Hardy |
| Rise of Silas Lapham | Howells |
| Robinson Crusoe | Defoe |
| Room with a View | Forster |
| Saint Joan | Twain |
| Scarlet Letter | Hawthorne |
| Scarlet Pimpernel | Orczy |
| Sea Wolf | London |
| Sense and Sensibility | Austen |
| Separate Peace | Knowles |
| Silas Mariner | Eliot |
| Slaughterhouse Five | Vonnegut |
| Sound and the Fury | Faulkner |
| Stranger | Camus |
| Tale of Two Cities | Dickens |
| Tess of the D’Urbervilles | Hardy |
| Their Eyes Were Watching God | Hurston |
| Things Fall Apart | Achebe |
| Three Musketeers | Dumas |
| Time Machine | Wells |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Lee |
| To the Lighthouse | Woolf |
| Trial | Kafka |
| Turn of the Screw | James |
| Two Towers | Tolkien |
| Uncle Tom’s Cabin | Stowe |
| Unvanquished | Faulkner |
| Utopia | More |
| Vanity Fair | Thackeray |
| Vicar of Wakefield | Goldsmith |
| War and Peace | Tolstoy |
| Washington Square | James |
| Watership Down | Adams |
| Winds of War | Wouk |
| Wuthering Heights | Bronte |
| Yearling | Rawlings |
| NONFICTION SELECTIONS | |
| All Creatures Great and Small | Herriot |
| All Things Bright and Beautiful | Herriot |
| Anne Frank:Diary of a Young Girl | Frank |
| Apollo 13 | Lovell and Kluger |
| Black Like Me | Griffin |
| Blue Highways | Moon |
| Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee | Brown |
| Death Be Not Proud | Gunther |
| Gorillas in the Mist | Fossey |
| Kaffir Boy | Mathabane |
| Kon-Tiki | Heyerdahl |
| Life on the Mississippi | Twain |
| My Life for the Poor | Mother Teresa Gonzales, ed. |
| Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas | |
| Profiles in Courage | Kennedy |
| Roughing It | Twain |
| Travels with Charlie | Steinbeck |
| Tuesdays with Maurie | Alborn |
| Up From Slavery | Washington |
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