A. Fiction

Asimov, Isaac  Nemesis  Earthlings seek to escape the overcrowded planet in 2236.

Atwood, Margaret  Cat's Eye As an adult Elaine returns to Toronto to confront her unhappy past.

Baldwin, James  Go Tell it on the Mountain  A tale of the African-American experience.

Bellow, Saul    Adventures of Augie March  The only possessing is of the moment in Depression era Chicago.

Bellow, Saul  Seize the Day He attempts in one day to rescue himself and his dignity from ruin.

Binchy, Maeve  Light a Penny Candle  Elizabeth escapes war time London and maintains relations with her Irish family as she matures.

Brown, Charles Brockden  Wieland  An American Gothic written in 1798, the first true American novel.

Burns, Olive Ann  Cold Sassy Tree  An old man grows young, a young man grows up in 1906, in Cold Sassy, Georgia.

Cather, Willa  Death Comes for the Archbishop  Father Latour wins the Southwest for Catholicism.

Cather, Willa  O Pioneers!  Alexandra raises her brother, saves the family farm, and denies herself until tragedy strikes.

Chevalier, Tracy  Girl With a Pearl Earring  A seventeenth-century servant girl changes the life of her master, a famous Dutch painter.

Clarke, Arthur C.  Childhood's End  Earth is overtaken by a race who eliminates disease and poverty, but then mankind begins to end.

Clark,Walter Van Tilburg  The Ox-Bow Incident  A western adventure of honor.

Cooper, James Fenimore  The Deerslayer  The western frontier with Hurons, Mohicans and white bounty hunters.

Dinesen, Isak  Seven Gothic Tales  Seven tales of death, love, murder with singers, actors, princes and cardinals.

Emecheta, Buchi  The Bride Price  A young girl returns to her African village and finds herself still tied to the village's old ways.

Faulkner, William  As I Lay Dying  The whole family, including the deceased, narrate this trek across Mississippi to bury mother.

Faulkner, William Intruder in the Dust  A murder mystery that explores race relations.

Faulkner, William The Reivers  A comic story of an eleven-year-old car thief.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott  Tender Is the Night  A wife's growing strength highlights her husband's decline.

Garcia, Cristina  Dreaming in Cuban  Three generations of women divided by sea and sociology deal with the Cuban revolution.

Greenberg, Joanne  I Never Promised You a Rose Garden  Schizophrenia and mental illness.

Hamill, Pete  Snow in August  An eleven-year-old Catholic boy and an elderly Jewish rabbi form a friendship in 1940's Brooklyn.

Hassler, Jon  Grand Opening  A family moves to a small insular town.   How much do you give to those in emotional need?

Havemann, Ernst  Bloodsong and Other Stories of South Africa  The angst and emotional struggles of apartheid, rather than the physical violence.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel  The House of the Seven Gables  A tale of hereditary sin based on the legend of a curse.

Hemingway, Ernest  A Farewell to Arms  WWI love story - a farewell to a time and attitude.

Howells, William Dean  The Rise of Silas Lapham  This 19th century author addresses the conflict of Christian ideals and commercial success.

James, Henry  Daisy Miller  Emotional conflict between a young American girl and Europe's fast international rich.

James, Henry  The Turn of the Screw  A terrifying tale of the supernatural.

Kesey, Ken  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest  A fun loving mental patient struggles for the hearts of the patients against the Big Nurse.

LeGuin Ursula  The Left Hand of Darkness  A race of people who are both female and male in one body.

Lewis, Sinclair  Main Street  Attacks the complacency and ingrown mores of those who abhor change.

Lewis, Sinclair  Babbitt  Expresses the glibness and irresponsibility of the hardened professional social climber.

London, Jack  Martin Eden  A young seaman struggles for education and literary acclaim.

Marquand, John  Point of No Return  When are choices not yours, when are you beyond the point of no return?

McCullers, Carson  Heart Is a Lonely Hunter  Embraces white and black humanity with tenderness.

Melville, Herman  Typee Yankee sailors flee their ship for a flawed Eden in Polynesia.

Mitchell, Margaret  Gone with the Wind  Scarlett O'Hara survives the Civil War which kills the lifestyle of the South.

Norris, Frank  The Pit  The Chicago board of trade in the age of the robber barons.

O'Connor, Edwin The Last Hurrah  The final race for mayor of Boston by an Irish political boss.

Pullman, Philip  Broken Bridge  Ginny leaves Wales for Liverpool where she learns about her Haitian mother.

Salinger, J. D.  Catcher in the Rye  Holden leaves prep school and goes underground in New York for three days.  He keeps the pain to himself and gives the pleasure away.

Salinger, J. D.   Franny and Zooey  Two stories about members of the Glass family of New York.

Shange, Ntozake  Betsey Brown  A young black girl grows up in St. Louis at the beginning of integration.

Sinclair, Upton  The Jungle  The working man's lot at the turn of the century in a story that started a government investigation.

Steinbeck, John  The Grapes of Wrath  Repossessed farmers flee the dust bowl for California during the depression.

Steinbeck, John   Tortilla Flat  A humorous tale of a group of Mexican American, "King Arthur's knights."

Updike, John  Rabbit Run  Harry (Rabbit) runs away from family and responsibility.

Vonnegut, Kurt  Slaughterhouse Five  Billy Pilgrim survives WWII, is kidnapped to the planet Tralfamadore and becomes part of their zoo display.

Walker, Margaret  Jubilee  The life of a girl who is a slave during the Civil War and becomes a freed woman.

Wolfe, Thomas  Look Homeward, Angel  Coming of age, a journey from rural North Carolina to Harvard and Boston.

B. Drama

Hellman, Lillian  Watch on the Rhine  An American family is affected by fascism and the refugees they help.

Miller, Arthur  All My Sons  The event and actions of the past are always in the present and the future.

Parks, Suzan-Lori  Topdog/Underdog  The 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner is a shocking tale about sibling rivalry and its effects.

O'Neill, Eugene  Mourning Becomes Electra  Based on The Oresteia

Shepard, Sam  Buried Child  Burying the loneliness and the secret lives of families.

Williams, Tennessee  The Glass Menagerie  A family of misfits struggles for a place in society.

C. Biography, Autobiography, and Non-Fiction

Alderman, Clifford  Devil's Shadow: Story of Witchcraft in Massachusetts

Baldwin, James  The Fire Next Time  An early Harlem childhood leads to involvement in the civil rights movement.

Brown, Claude  Manchild in the Promised Land  Portrays struggles to escape desperate poverty in Harlem.

Brown, Dee  Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee  A Native American history of the American West.

Brown, Michael  Laying Waste  The poisoning of America by toxic waste.

Capote, Truman  In Cold Blood  A gruesome small town murder recorded in a "nonfiction novel."

Cary, Lorene  Black Ice  An African-American woman in an all white school struggles to succeed without selling out.

Dillard, Annie  An American Childhood  Memories of childhood (you do what you do out of a private passion for the thing itself).

Haley, Alex  Roots  From 1750 in an African village to seven generations later in America.

Hersey, John  Hiroshima  The story of those who survived the bombing of Hiroshima.

Galarza, Ernesto  Barrio Boy  This author wrote about the farm workers and California agriculture.

Guiliani, Rudolph  Leadership  The former mayor of New York writes of his career before, during, and after September 11.

Kaplan, Justin  Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain  A biography of Mark Twain.

Kaplan, Justin  Walt Whitman  A biography of Walt Whitman.

Kennedy, John F.  Profiles in Courage  Hard decisions by eight US Senators who favored the good of the nation, often ending their careers.

MacDonald, Michael Patrick  All Souls  A young man reflects on his and his many siblings' tumultuous childhoods in South Boston.

Reich, Ruth  Tender at the Bone: Growing Up At the Table  A food critic shares lessons learned at the hands of family and friends.

Rodriguez, Richard  The Hunger of Memory  What price to immigrant children pay for social assimilation and academic success?

Terry, Wallace  Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans  

Van Devanter, Lynda  Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam

Washington, Mary Helen  Memory of Kin: Stories About Family by Black Writers

Wolfe, Tom  The Right Stuff  Space flight from 1947 to the Mercury project, astronauts Yeager, Conrad, Grissom and Glenn.

NOTES ON SUMMER READING

Use this format for recording your notes on each of the five 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: