Agee, James. A Death in the Family A family reacts to the sudden accidental death of the father.

Allende, Isabel.  Eva Luna  Eva loves a Turkish merchant, a guerrilla fighter, and a German immigrant while triumphing over harsh reality through creativity and imagination.

Allende, Isabel. House of Spirits Four generations of women with unnatural powers witness upheaval in South America.

Austen, Jane.   Sense and Sensibility Happiness is a good balance of sense and sensibility.

Beckett, Samuel.  Waiting for Godot Despite Godot's failure to appear, Vladimir and Estragon endlessly hope for direction.

Buck, Pearl.  The Good Earth Before the Revolution a Chinese farmer and his wife go from poverty to land ownership.

Camus, Albert. The Stranger Meursault is innocently drawn into a senseless murder in Algeria.

Capote, Truman.  Other Voices, Other Rooms Joel, searching for his father and himself, finds the unexpected.

Catton, Bruce.  A Stillness at Appomattox The conflict between Lee and Grant foreshadows the end of hope for the Confederacy.

Cheever, John.  Collected Stories There can be darkness hidden behind happiness and success.

Cheever, John. The Wapshot Chronicle The breakdown of a small fishing village and its people is revealed.

Chekhov, Anton.  The Three Sisters Lives are monetarily brightened when the imperial army comes to town.

Cheng, Nien.  Life and Death in Shanghai Six years as a political prisoner during the Chinese Cultural Revolution are chronicled.

Chopin, Kate.  The Awakening Edna's affair inflames her heart and blinds her to all else, even her children.

Desai, Anita.  Baumgartner's Bombay A German Jew flees the Holocaust to remake his life in India.

Dickens, Charles.  Bleak House The legal system consumes the greedy and destroys the innocents.

Dostoevski, Fyodor.  The Brothers Karamazov Family drama depicts the Russian character and human nature.

Dreiser, Theodore.  An American Tragedy Dreams of wealth and status cause a poor boy to commit murder.

Elliot, George.  Adam Bede Women are destroyed by selfish men and their own weaknesses.

Erdrich, Louise.  Tracks White men's greed destroys the Chipawa Indians as told from two opposing view points.

Faulkner, William.  The Sound and the Fury Three children and the servants tell of the decline and fall of a family.

Flaubert, Gustave.  Madame Bovary Emma is unhappy with her marriage and feels trapped.

Friedman, Thomas.  From Beirut to Jerusalem The Middle East is explored in this thought-provoking book.

Fuentes, Carlos.  The Death of Artemis Cruz This portrait of an individual comments on Mexican society and the abuse of power.

Fuller, Charles.  A Soldier's Play A murder occurs in a black regiment in Louisiana during WWII.

Gardner, John.  Grendel The Beowolf epic is retold from Grendel's point of view.

Golden, Marita.  A Woman's Place A college friendship of three black women in the 60's guides them in later years.

Hardy, Thomas.  The Mayor of Casterbridge Michael tries to atone for selling his wife and daughter at a fair.

Hassler, Jon.  Staggerford A high school teacher's life turns into a tragicomedy. 

Hassler, Jon. Simon's Night A professor goes to the strange, delightful and frightening world of a retirement home.

Hassler, Jon.  Love Hunter A dangerous love triangle exists among a dying man, his wife, and his best friend.

Heller, Joseph.  Catch-22 The dehumanizing effects of the WWII military bureaucracy are satirically depicted.

Hemingway, Ernest.  The Sun Also Rises The lost generation after WWI struggles to make sense of life.

Hesse, Hermann.  Demian Led by a school mate, Emil descends into a world of petty crime and revolt. 

Hesse, Hermann.  Steppenwolf The protagonist wrestles with the conflict between the flesh and the spirit.

Hijuelos, Oscar.  The Mambo King Plays Songs of Love Cesar and Nestor come to New York in 1949 to emulate their heroes, Desi Arnaz and Xavier Cugart.

Ibsen, Henrik.  A Doll's House A wife confronts a male dominated and authoritarian society.

Joyce, James.  Dubliners This series of short stories give an idea of the feelings and thinking of Dubliners.

Keneally, Thomas.  To Asmara An alienated Australian journalist travels through war torn Africa.

Kennedy, William.  Ironweed An ex-ballplayer, and part-time grave digger, tries to make peace with ghosts of his past.

Kerouac, Jack.  On the Road The soul of the Beat Movement is revealed in this cross-country bohemian odyssey.

Kosinski, Jerzy.  The Painted Bird  After losing his parents, a boy wanders throughout Europe after WWII.

Laguma, Alex.  A Walk in the Night This riveting book epitomizes the workings of the apartheid system.

Lawrence, D. H.  Sons and Lovers An abnormally close mother-son relationship makes Paul unable to love as an adult.

Mahfour, Naguib.  Palace Walk The second of a trilogy tells of a Muslim family in Cairo during the early 1900s.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia.  One Hundred Years of Solitude A hundred years in the live of the village of Macondo are revealed.

McCarthy, Cormac. The Crossing This second book of The Border Trilogy follows teenage Billy from his ranch to Mexico.

Moon, William Least Heat.  Blue Highways The protagonist takes a 13,000-mile journey along the blue roads of the highway map.

More, Thomas.  Utopia Four hundred years ago Thomas More dreamed of a better world.

Morrison, Toni.  Beloved Sethe lives an uneasy but comforting life with the spirit of her dead child, Beloved.

Mukherjee, Bharati.  Jasmine Widowed at seventeen, Jasmine travels around America and experiences a metamorphosis.

Naipaul, V. S.   A Bend in the River An Indian man moves to a newly freed African nation where both struggle to establish an identity.

Ngugui, James.  Decolonizing the Mind Collection of provocative and insightful essays on the pivotal role of language in the formation of identity in post-colonial Africa.

O'Neill, Eugene.  A Long Day's Journey into Night  An ostensibly respectful family is also greatly tormented.

Pasternak, Boris.  Doctor Zhivago A poet physician lives and loves during the Russian Revolution.

Paton, Alan.  Cry, the Beloved Country A Zulu pastor and his son experience the turbulence of South Africa.

Rand, Ayn.  Atlas Shrugged The female protagonist fights to manage a transcontinental railroad.

Rostand, Edmund.  Cyrano de Bergerac A soldier, a wit, but a timid lover, woos by proxy of a more handsome man.

Sartre, Jean Paul.  No Exit  In this existential play, hell is other people.

Shakespeare, William.  Henry IV, Part I Prince Hal carouses with his friend Falstaff.

Shaw, George Bernard.  Arms and the Man This farce criticizes Romanticism and embraces twentieth century Realism.

Shirer, William.  The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich WWII, the Holocaust, and the Nuremberg Trials are explored.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander.  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich A typical day in the labor camp of Siberia emerges.

Sophocles.  Oedipus at Colonus Blamed for the curse upon him, Oedipus is exiled.

Stegner, Wallace. Angle of Repose Wheelchair-bound Lyman writes about his grandparents whom he never knew.  

Steele, Shelly.   The Content of Our Character This look at the African-American experience argues for personal responsibility.

Stoppard, Tom.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet take on major roles in this existential comedy.

Tan, Amy.  The Kitchen God's Wife Winnie and her daughter Pearl have secrets that Auntie Helen wants to tell.

Tolstoy, Leo.  Anna Karenina Unhappy in her marriage, Anna develops a dangerous passion for Count Vronsky.

Voltaire.  Candide Candide believes that he lives in the "best of all possible worlds."

Walker, Alice.  The Color Purple Celie struggles for empowerment against a life of abuse and lack of education.

Wangerin, Walter.  The Book of the Dun Cow An animal fable tells of courage, sorrow, humor, character and love.

Warren, Robert Penn.  All the King's Men The life of Hughie Long, the governor of Louisiana, is fictionalized.

Wilde, Oscar.  The Picture of Dorian Gray A portrait hidden in the attic ages while Dorian himself does not.

Wilson August. Two Trains Running This play, set in a 60's Pittsburgh diner, boldly confronts racism.

Woolf, Virginia.  Mrs. Dalloway The feelings during a single day in the life of Mrs. Dalloway emerge.

Wouk, Herman.  The Caine Mutiny Mutiny aboard a World War II ship pits a maturing Keith against a fanatical Captain Queeg.

Wright, Steven.  Meditations in Green James survives Vietnam but not the effects of war.

NOTES ON SUMMER READING

Use this format for recording your notes on each of the books you read this summer.

Title:

Author:

Setting (both time and place):

Major Characters (names and most salient traits): 

Plot Summary (limited to three well-written sentences):

Theme (a generalization about life or human nature stated in a single declarative sentence): 

Personal Reaction/Evaluation: