HARTSBROOK HIGH SCHOOL
SUMMER 2018 READING ASSIGNMENT
Grades 11 and 12
Dear Rising Juniors and Seniors:
Summer break can be a wonderful time to catch up on your reading—to discover new genres or authors, to re-read old favorites, or to finally tackle a literary classic. We encourage you to explore the titles on the attached lists. If you liked a book in one of your courses last year, you might want to try another by the same author this summer. When you return to school in the fall, your advisor will be interested to hear what you have read and your responses.
On the next page, you will find for instructions for your summer 2018 reading assignment. Please read the directions carefully.
If you have any questions, you can contact me by e-mail over the summer.
Enjoy your summer reading!
Sincerely,
Liz Bedell
HARTSBROOK HIGH SCHOOL
SUMMER 2018 READING ASSIGNMENT
Grades 11 and 12
Your summer reading assignment has two parts:
Part 1: All High School Read:
First, join the rest of the high school and the high school faculty (and any parents who wish to participate) in our All High School Read. What’s that? A book we all read together, in common, to form a basis for conversations and exploration throughout the school year.
This summer, we are asking all high school students (including incoming 9th graders) to read Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates as part of their summer reading. This is an autobiographical and reflective account, written as a letter to his teenage son, which describes Coates’ experience of growing up as an African-American young man in Baltimore. We encourage high school families to read this book together, via audiobook or passing the volume around, and to talk about it before we gather again in September.
We will be discussing this book as a high school community in our first weeks back.
We have asked Amherst Books to order copies of Between The World And Me for us, and you will find them there. The book is widely stocked and will be in your local library as well.
Part 2: General Reading
Second, we want you to read a minimum of TWO books this summer. Reading more is better and heartily encouraged, but at least two books (for a total of 3, counting the All High School Read).
We ask that you read one NONFICTION book (from the attached NONFICTION list) and one FICTION book (from the attached FICTION list). If there is another book you’d like to substitute in lieu of something from one of these lists, please email Ms. Bedell (especially if you want personalized suggestions).
HAVE FUN READING!
FICTION
Adichie, Chimamanda –Half a Yellow Sun; Americanah
Adiga, Aravind –White Tiger
Allende, Isabel –House of Spirits
Atwood, Margaret –Cat’s Eye; A Handmaid’s Tale
Austen, Jane –Mansfield Park; Sense and Sensibility
Baldwin, James –Go Tell it on the Mountain; Giovanni’s Room
Camus, Albert –The Stranger
Castillo, Ana –So Far From God
Doerr, Anthony – All The Light We Cannot See
Eliot, George –The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph –Invisible Man
Eugenides, Jeffrey –Middlesex
Fadiman, Ann –The Spirit Catches Youand You Fall Down
Faulkner, William –Light in August
Fitzgerald, F. Scott –Tender is the Night; This Side of Paradise
Harbach, Colin – The Art of Fielding
Hawthorne, Nathaniel –The House of Seven Gables
Hamid, Mohsin –The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Exit West
Hemingway, Ernest –The Sun Also Rises
Highsmith, Patricia –The Talented Mr. Ripley
Ishiguro, Kazuo –Remains of the Day; Never Let Me Go
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer –The Nature of Passion
Kafka, Franz –The Trial
Kalman, Maira –The Principles of Uncertainty
Kincaid, Jamaica –A Small Place
Kingsolver, Barbara –The Poisonwood Bible
Lahiri, Jhumpa –Unaccustomed Earth; The Lowland
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia –One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera
McCann, Colum –Let the Great World Spin
McCarthy, Cormac –All the Pretty Horses
McEwan, Ian –Atonement; Saturday
Munro, Alice –Lives of Girls and Women
Naipaul, V.S. –A House for Mr. Biswas
Obrecht, Tea – The Tiger’s Wife
O’Brien, Tim – The Things They Carried
O’Connor, Flannery –Everything That Rises Must Converge
Ondaatje, Michael –The English Patient
Oyeyemi, Helen –Boy, Snow, Bird
Patchett, Ann –Bel Canto
Robinson, Marilyn – Housekeeping
Roy, Arundhati –The God of Small Things
Saramago, Jose –Blindness
Silko, Leslie Marmon –Ceremony
Smiley, Jane –A Thousand Acres; Ordinary Love and Good Will
Smith, Zadie –White Teeth
Steinbeck, John –The Grapes of Wrath; East of Eden
Walker, Alice –The Color Purple
Ward, JesmynSing, Unburied Sing; Salvage the Bones
Welty, Eudora –Delta Wedding
Wharton, Edith –House of Mirth; The Age of Innocence
Woolf, Tobias. Old School
NONFICTION
Greenburg, Paul – Four Fish: the Future of the Last Wild Food
Calvino, Italo –If on a Winter’s Night A Traveler; Invisible Cities
Anzaldua, Gloria, Cherrie Moraga This Bridge Called My Back
Angell, Roger The Summer Game
Beah, IshmaelA Long Way Home
Bernstein, Carl and Bob Woodward All the President’s Men
Calvino, Italo If on a Winter’s Night A Traveler
Invisible Cities
Carson, Rachel Silent Spring
Chiang, JungWild Swans
Conway, Jill KerThe Road From Coorain
Dillard, AnnieAn American Childhood
Fadiman, AnneThe Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Grealy, LucyAutobiography of a Face
Greenburg, Paul Four Fish: the Future of the Last Wild Food
Leopold, AldoA Sand County Almanac
Malcolm XThe Autobiography ofMalcolm X
Mann, Charles1491
McBride, James The Color of Water
Neihardt, JohnBlack Elk Speaks
Pirsig, RobertZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Redniss, LaurenMarie and Pierre Curie--A Tale of Love and Fallout
Simpson, EileenReversals
Smith, AlisonName All the Animals
Ward, Peter D. & Donald BrownleeRare Earth
Wilkerson, Isabel The Warmth of Other Suns
Wolff, TobiasThis Boy’s Life