BISHOPS reading list
9th grade
Wolff, This Boy's Life: A Memoir
Grove/Atlantic, 9780802136688
In this unforgettable memoir of boyhood in the 1950s, we meet the young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and bumbling, and ultimately winning. Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move. Between themselves they develop an almost telepathic trust that sees them through their wanderings from Florida to a small town in Washington State. Fighting for identity and self-respect against the unrelenting hostility of a new stepfather, Toby's growing up is at once poignant and comical. His various schemes—running away to Alaska, forging cheeks, and stealing cars—lead eventually to an act of outrageous self-invention that releases him into a new world of possibility.
Suggested books:
Fugard, “Master Harold”…and the boys
This play about a young white boy and two African servants is at once a compelling drama of South African apartheid and a universal coming-of-age story.
Herbert, Dune
Set on the desert planet Arakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.
Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky. She escapes by buying a '55 Volkswagen and heading west. By the time she reaches Tucson, Arizona, she's "inherited" a three-year-old Indian girl named Turtle. This novel is about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging.
Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
While the powerlessness of the laboring class in a recurring theme in this classic work, Steinbeck narrows his focus, creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness - a parable about commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss.
Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
One of the world's great anti-war books, Slaughterhouse-Five centers on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden. Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.
Wells, The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells' famous novel about a Martian invasion.
Wilson, The Piano Lesson
A sister and brother fight over a piano that has been in the family for three generations, creating a remarkable drama that embodies the painful past and expectant future of black America.
10th graders:
Required:
Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Oxford, 9780199554713 or Penguin, 9780451530745
At the beginning of Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant's son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's. From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels. On its surface, Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery: reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution. Yet it is not a mystery novel. Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes.
Suggested books:
Adams, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
One Thursday lunchtime, Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this is already more than he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun. And the Galaxy is a very, very large and startling place indeed.
Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Forced to leave their home after their father's death, Elinor and Marianne must rely on making good marriages as their means of support. But unscrupulous cads, meddlesome matriarchs, and various guileless and artful women impinge on their chances for love and happiness.
Barker, Regeneration
Set in a British military hospital during WWI, this novel blends fact and fiction, drawing its two protagonists from the pages of history.
Cesaire, A Tempest
A troupe of black actors perform their own Tempest. Cesaire's rich and insightful adaptation draws on contemporary Caribbean society, the African-American experience, and African mythology to raise questions about colonialism, racism, and their lasting effects.
Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road
This is a charming record of bibliophilia,cultural difference, and imaginative sympathy. For 20 years, an outspoken New York writer and a rather more restrained London bookseller carry on an increasingly touching correspondence.
leCarre, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
With unsurpassed knowledge culled from his years in British Intelligence, le Carré brings to light the shadowy dealings of international espionage in the tale of a British agent who longs to end his career but undertakes one final, bone-chilling assignment.
Smith, White Teeth
At the center of this invigorating and hilarious novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and SamadIqbal, hapless veterans of World War II. The novel is set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, venturing across the former empire's past as it barrels toward the future.
11th AND 12TH graders:
Required:
Urrea,The Devil's Highway
Little, Brown, 9780316010801
The author of "Across the Wire" offers brilliant investigative reporting of what went wrong when, in May 2001, a group of 26 men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona. Only 12 men came back out.
Suggested books:
Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
This is a collection of essays that capture the mood of 1960s America, especially the center of its counterculture, California.
Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
In a combination of flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends, Kingsolver offers a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life's largest commitments.
Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies
Navigating between the Indian traditions they have inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in JhumpaLahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations.
Lee, Native Speaker
Korean American Henry Parks is a "surreptitious, B+ student of life, illegal alien, emotional alien, Yellow peril: neo-American, stranger, follower, traitor, spy..." or so says his wife. Henry is forever uncertain of his place, a perpetual outsider looking at American culture from a distance. And now, a man of two worlds, he is beginning to fear that he has betrayed both — and belongs to neither.
O’Brien, The Things They Carried
This is an unparalleled Vietnam testament, a classic work of American literature, and a profound study of war that illuminates the capacity, and the limits, of the human heart and soul.
Orlean, The Orchid Thief
A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession.
Wright, Native Son
In the words of Irving Howe, “The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. It made impossible a repetition of the old lies and brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear, and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture.”
McCarthy, The Road
This is a tale of the love shared between a father and son as they struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world of ash and ruin.
Bulgakov, Master and Margarita
Suppressed in the Soviet Union for twenty-six years, Bulgakov's masterpiece is an ironic parable of power and its corruption, good and evil, and human frailty and the strength of love. It combines fable, fantasy, political satire, and slapstick comedy into a wildly entertaining and unforgettable tale.
Chatwin, In Patagonia
This is an exquisite account of Chatwin’s journey through the "uppermost part of the earth"==that stretch of land at the southern tip of South America where bandits were once made welcome and Charles Darwin formed part of his "survival of the fittest" theory.
Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
This is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society.
Ondaatje, The English Patient
The novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II.
Roy, The God of Small Things
Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969.
Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Ignatius J. Reilly is a flatulent frustrated scholar deeply learned in Medieval philosophy and American junk food, a brainy mammoth misfit imprisoned in a trashy world of Greyhound buses and Doris Day movies. He is in violent revolt against the entire modern age.
Winterson, The Passion
Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice's compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny.
FRANCIS PARKER reading list
ENGLISH 9
Good Earth • 2005
A poignant tale about the life and labors of a Chinese farmer during the sweeping reign of the country¹s last emperor.
A concise introduction that gives readers important background information
- A chronology of the author's life and work
- A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
- An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations
- Detailed explanatory notes
- Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work
- Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
- A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience
Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.
SERIES EDITED BY CYNTHIA BRANTLEY JOHNSON
Two Years Before the Mast • 2007
Two Years Before the Mast, byRichard Henry Dana, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features ofBarnes & Noble Classics: All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest.Barnes & Noble Classicspulls together a constellation of influences-biographical, historical, and literary-to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. When doctors toldRichard Henry Danathat an ocean voyage might halt his impending blindness, the nineteen-year-old Harvard undergraduate dropped out of school and became an ordinary deckhand on the brigPilgrim. The perilous journey from Boston, begun in 1834, took the ailing yet determined youth past Cape Horn and around the Americas, concluding in the Mexican territory California. This expedition inspiredTwo Years before the Mast, a first-hand account of “the life of a common sailor" and a work that combines history, philosophy, and personal experience. Published in 1840, the book convincingly re-creates life at sea-the beauty and adventure but also the cold, danger, and backbreaking labor. Dana's depiction of the inhuman conditions suffered by seamen at the hands of capricious, brutal, and even mad captains and ship owners was so stark that the book fueled urgent cries for reform. It also was deeply admired by Herman Melville, Dana's most famous literary confidante. Dana eventually became a lawyer, devoting himself to fighting for the rights of sailors-and slaves-in court. He went on to help form the anti-slavery Free Soil Party, work for the federal government during the Civil War, and serve on the Massachusetts legislature. Anne Spenceris the a
Tree Grows in Brooklyn • 2001
The American classic about a young girl's coming of age at the turn of the century.
Treasure Island (Trade) • 2005
The most popular pirate story ever written in English, featuring one of literature’s most beloved "bad guys," Treasure Island has been happily devoured by several generations of boys--and girls--and grownups. Its unforgettable characters include: young Jim Hawkins, who finds himself owner of a map to Treasure Island, where the fabled pirate booty is buried; honest Captain Smollett, heroic Dr. Livesey, and the good-hearted but obtuse Squire Trelawney, who help Jim on his quest for the treasure; the frightening Blind Pew, double-dealing Israel Hands, and seemingly mad Ben Gunn, buccaneers of varying shades of menace; and, of course, garrulous, affable, ambiguous Long John Silver, who is one moment a friendly, laughing, one-legged sea-cook . . .and the next a dangerous pirate leader!
The unexpected and complex relationship that develops between Silver and Jim helps transform what seems at first to be a simple, rip-roaring adventure story into a deeply moving study of a boy’s growth into manhood, as he learns hard lessons about friendship, loyalty, courage and honor--and the uncertain meaning of good and evil.
ENGLISH 10
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters • 2009
From the publisher ofPride and Prejudice and Zombiescomes a new tale of romance, heartbreak, and tentacled mayhem.
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monstersexpands the original text of the beloved Jane Austen novel with all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, and other biological monstrosities. As our story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. While sensible Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon. Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rogues to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles that are forever snapping at their heels? This masterful portrait of Regency England blends Jane Austen's biting social commentary with ultraviolent depictions of sea monsters biting. It's survival of the fittest-and only the swiftest swimmers will find true love!
Fahrenheit 451 • 2012
Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.
Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family." But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn't live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.
When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.
Separate Peace • 1959
Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.
A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowles's crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic.
Cry, the Beloved Country • 1987
Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully told and profoundly compassionate story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s.
The book is written with such keen empathy and understanding that to read it is to share fully in the gravity of the characters' situations. It both touches your heart deeply and inspires a renewed faith in the dignity of mankind. Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic tale, passionately African, timeless and universal, and beyond all, selfless.