Required Summer Reading List
*Junior & Senior AP students are required to read all the titles listed under their
required group of books!
Sophomores -
Fiction
The Chosen / Chaim Potak
In
1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders
together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an
intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a
Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together
they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered
when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey
to adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between
each son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique
backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and,
ultimately, the power of love.
Hoops / Walter Dean Myers
The novel
Hoops is a great book for kids that love basketball and kids that live in the
ghetto. It's realistic fiction and they
will realize that they are not alone.
Almost everyone gets along with seventeen year-old Lonnie Jackson. He
enjoys basketball and is the captain of his high school's basketball team. He
is so good that if he keeps it up he could make it to the NBA. His coach Cal
believes Lonnie could go all the way, but like any other kid, especially a kid
from the ghetto, he struggles. Someone
is paying to keep Lonnie off the court. He has haters after him because they
know he might go big and they are just jealous. Well, Lonnie is trying to find
out the culprit, but he's running
out of time.
Speak / Laurie Halse Anderson
Since
the beginning of the school year, high school freshman Melinda has found that
it's been getting harder and harder for her to speak out loud: "My throat
is always sore, my lips raw.... Every time I try to talk to my parents or a
teacher, I sputter or freeze.... It's like I have some kind of spastic
laryngitis." What could have caused Melinda to suddenly fall mute? Could
it be due to the fact that no one at school is speaking to her because she
called the cops and got everyone busted at the seniors' big end-of-summer
party? Or maybe it's because her parents' only form of communication is post-it
notes written on their way out the door to their nine-to-whenever jobs. While
Melinda is bothered by these things, deep down she knows the real reason why
she's been struck mute: Andy Evans. He's a senior at Melinda's high school, and
Melinda hasn't been able to speak clearly since he raped her at the senior
party last August.
Tex / S. E. Hinton
Easygoing,
thoughtless, and direct, Tex at fifteen likes everyone and everything,
especially his horse, Negrito, and Johnny Collins's blue-eyed sister, Jamie. He
thinks life with his seventeen-year-old brother, Mason, in their ramshackle
house would be just about perfect if only Mace would stop complaining about
Pop. Pop hasn't been home in five months. Mace wants to get out of Oklahoma.
Tex just seems to attract trouble and danger . . . Suddenly everything's
falling apart. Can Tex keep it all together?
Ender’s Shadow / Orson
Scott Card
Welcome
to Battleschool.
Growing up is never easy. But try living on the mean streets as a child
begging for food and fighting like a dog with ruthless gangs of starving kids
who wouldn't hesitate to pound your skull into pulp for a scrap of apple. If
Bean has learned anything on the streets, it's how to survive. And not with
fists. He is way too small for that. But with brains. Bean is a genius with a
magician's ability to zero in on his enemy and exploit his weakness. What
better quality for a future general to lead the Earth in a final climactic
battle against a hostile alien race, known as Buggers. At Battleschool Bean meets
and befriends another future commander - Ender Wiggins - perhaps his only true
rival. Only one problem: for Bean and Ender, the future is now.
What My Mother doesn’t Know / Sonya Sones
Meet Sophie. She sees herself as the
too-tall "Mount Everest of teenage girls," who, along with her
friends, often suffers from "lackonookie disease." She's dating
smoky, sexy Dylan, covertly chatting online with "cybersoul"-mate
Chaz, and secretly nursing a crush on sweet, geeky Murphy. Her two best friends
are closer to her than sisters, and she "hates hating" her soap
opera-addicted mom, wishing "she would show half as much interest in my
life as she does in Luke and Laura's." In other words, Sophie is a typical
teenage girl. What is not so typical is how author Sonia Sones records all of
Sophie's thoughts in a freewheeling verse that is such a naked outpouring of
inner longing, most readers will blush in embarrassed recognition of their own
remembered or current teenage desires. Sones gently leads both the reader and Sophie
towards an understanding of the difference between love and lust as Sophie
slowly comes to realize that Dylan's outsides are no match for Murphy's
insides. Autobiographical of Sones, perhaps? The author claims it isn't so, and
she's probably right. With her frank manner, lusty thoughts, and hidden
insecurities, Sophie reflects many teenage girls, past and present. No woman
will be able to read this heartfelt verse novel and not find a bit of herself
in Sophie's secret, sexy thoughts. Sones's decadent, almost shamefully
delicious collection of angst poems is a loving and amazingly accurate tribute
to adolescent girlhood.
Cold Sassy Tree / Olive Ann
Burns
Cold Sassy Tree, a novel
full of warm humor and honesty, is told by Willy Tweedy, a fourteen-year-old
boy living in a small, turn-of-the-century Georgia town. Will's hero is his
Grandpa Rucker, who runs the town's general store, carrying all the power and
privilege thereof. When Grandpa Rucker suddenly marries his store's young
milliner barely three weeks after his wife's death, the town is set on its ear.
Will Tweedy matures as he watches his family's reaction and adjustment to the
news. He is trapped in the awkward phase of rising to adult expectations -
driving the first cars in town - while still orchestrating wild pranks and
starting scandalous gossip through his childish bragging. He seeks the wisdom
of his grandpa and has his eyes opened to southern "ways" under the
tutelage of Grandpa's new Yankee wife, Miss Love. Still, Will "couldn't
figure out...why in the heck she would marry the old man." But Miss Love's
influence seems to be transforming Grandpa into a younger man, and the answer
unfolds slowly and sweetly as Will Tweedy becomes the confidante and staunch
defender of this unlikely couple. The lessons of life and death, of piousness
and irreverence, form the basis of memorable characters and a story that is
both difficult to put down and hard to leave.
Sophomores – Nonfiction
Left for Dead: A Young Man’s Search For Justice for the USS Indianapolis / Pete Nelson
It's
an unlikely beginning to what became a momentous, history-changing history fair
project. Eleven-year-old Hunter Scott was watching Jaws one day when he first heard about the World War II sinking of
the USS Indianapolis. Intrigued, he investigated further, and discovered a
shocking, heartbreaking story behind what should have been a tale of heroism
and patriotism. Torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, the Indianapolis went down
in minutes, taking more than 800 sailors with it. Several hundred survived, but
only after spending days in the open sea with sharks diminishing their numbers
hourly. This is only the beginning of the tragedy, however. In an effort to
make an example of the ship's captain, and in order to deflect blame from
itself, the U.S. Navy unfairly court-martialed the captain, painfully changing
the lives of all the men involved. Basing much of his text on young Hunter Scott's
research, author Pete Nelson does a fine job of presenting this story through
the eyes of many of the survivors. Old and new photos allow readers to know
many of the men of the ship, and personal accounts reveal the horrors of those
days in the ocean--and later in the courtroom. A bittersweet ending will leave
the reader pensive and deeply moved.
Seabiscuit: An
American Legend / Laura Hillenbrand
He
didn't look like much. With his smallish stature, knobby knees, and
slightly crooked forelegs, he looked more like a cow pony than a thoroughbred.
But looks aren't everything; his quality, an admirer once wrote, "was
mostly in his heart." Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of the horse who
became a cultural icon in Seabiscuit: An American Legend. Seabiscuit
rose to prominence with the help of an unlikely triumvirate: owner Charles
Howard, an automobile baron who once declared that "the day of the horse
is past"; trainer Tom Smith, a man who "had cultivated an almost
mystical communication with horses"; and jockey Red Pollard, who was down
on his luck when he charmed a then-surly horse with his calm demeanor and a
sugar cube. Hillenbrand details the ups and downs of "team
Seabiscuit," from early training sessions to record-breaking victories,
and from serious injury to "Horse of the Year"--as well as the
Biscuit's fabled rivalry with War Admiral. She also describes the world of
horseracing in the 1930s, from the snobbery of Eastern journalists regarding
Western horses and public fascination with the great thoroughbreds to the
jockeys' torturous weight-loss regimens, including saunas in rubber suits,
strong purgatives, even tapeworms. Along the way, Hillenbrand paints wonderful
images: tears in Tom Smith's eyes as his hero, legendary trainer James
Fitzsimmons, asked to hold Seabiscuit's bridle while the horse was saddled; critically
injured Red Pollard, whose chest was crushed in a racing accident a few weeks
before, listening to the San Antonio Handicap from his hospital bed, cheering
"Get going, Biscuit! Get 'em, you old devil!"; Seabiscuit happily
posing for photographers for several minutes on end; other horses refusing to
work out with Seabiscuit because he teased and taunted them with his blistering
speed.
Sophomore PAP Summer Reading List
Cold Sassy Tree / Olivia Ann Burns
Cold Sassy Tree, a novel full of
warm humor and honesty, is told by Willy Tweedy, a fourteen-year-old boy living
in a small, turn-of-the-century Georgia town. Will's hero is his Grandpa
Rucker, who runs the town's general store, carrying all the power and privilege
thereof. When Grandpa Rucker suddenly marries his store's young milliner barely
three weeks after his wife's death, the town is set on its ear. Will Tweedy
matures as he watches his family's reaction and adjustment to the news. He is
trapped in the awkward phase of rising to adult expectations - driving the
first cars in town - while still orchestrating wild pranks and starting
scandalous gossip through his childish bragging. He seeks the wisdom of his
grandpa and has his eyes opened to southern "ways" under the tutelage
of Grandpa's new Yankee wife, Miss Love. Still, Will "couldn't figure
out...why in the heck she would marry the old man." But Miss Love's
influence seems to be transforming Grandpa into a younger man, and the answer
unfolds slowly and sweetly, as Will Tweedy becomes the confidante and staunch
defender of this unlikely couple.
The Chosen / Chaim Potok
In
1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders
together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual,
Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic
rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they
negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when
Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to
adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between each
son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique
backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and,
ultimately, the power of love.
Fourteen-year-old
Marina and sixteen-year-old Jed accompany their parents' religious cult, the
Believers, to await the end of the world atop a remote mountain, where they try
to decide what they themselves believe.
Left for Dead / Pete Nelson / NonFiction
It's an unlikely beginning to
what became a momentous, history-changing history fair project. Eleven-year-old
Hunter Scott was watching Jaws one day when he first heard about the World War
II sinking of the USS Indianapolis. Intrigued, he investigated further, and
discovered a shocking, heartbreaking story behind what should have been a tale
of heroism and patriotism. Torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, the Indianapolis
went down in minutes, taking more than 800 sailors with it. Several hundred
survived, but only after spending days in the open sea with sharks diminishing
their numbers hourly. In an effort to
make an example of the ship's captain, and in order to deflect blame from
itself, the U.S. Navy unfairly court-martialed the captain, painfully changing
the lives of all the men involved. Old and new photos allow readers to know many of the men of
the ship, and personal accounts reveal the horrors of those days in the
ocean--and later in the courtroom. A bittersweet ending will leave the reader
pensive and deeply moved.
The Life of Pi / Yann Martel
Pi Patel, having spent an idyllic childhood in
Pondicherry, India, as the son of a zookeeper, sets off with his family at the
age of sixteen to start anew in Canada, but his life takes a marvelous turn
when their ship sinks in the Pacific, leaving him adrift on a raft with a
450-pound Bengal tiger for company.
The Secret Life
of Bees /
Sue Monk Kidd
Fourteen-year-old Lily
Owens has spent her life living with an abusive father and a blurred memory of
the day her mother was killed. Lily and
her companion, Rosaleen, flee their home after Rosaleen is victimized by racist
police officers. They find a safe
harbor in Tiburon, South Carolina (a town that could hold the secret to Lily’s
mother) at the home of three beekeeping sisters.
Things Fall Apart / Chinua Achebe
Set in an Ibo village in Nigeria, the novel
recreates pre-Christian tribal life and shows how the coming of the white man
led to the breaking up of the old ways.
Pride and Prejudice / Jane Austen
In early nineteenth-century England, a spirited young
woman copes with the courtship of a snobbish gentleman as well as the romantic
entanglements of her four sisters.
1984 / George Orwell
In
a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching
You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man
in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He
knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows
the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations
through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual
from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned
inquiry to sexual passion. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds
the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood,
dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia,
he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.
Jane Eyre / Charlotte Bronte
When a penniless governess falls in love with the
brooding master of Thornfield, she is unaware of the tragic events that will
follow.
Lord of the Flies / William Golding
After a plane crash strands them on a tropical
island while the rest of the world is ravaged by war, a group of British
schoolboys attempts to form a civilized society but descends into brutal
anarchy.
Crime
and Punishment / Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A
desperate young man plans the perfect crime -- the murder of a despicable
pawnbroker, an old women, no one loves and no one will mourn. Is it not just,
he reasons, for a man of genius to commit such a crime, to transgress moral law
-- if it will ultimately benefit humanity? Raskolnikov, an impoverished student
living in a garret in the gloomy slums of St. Petersburg, carries out his
grotesque scheme and plunges into a hell of persecution, madness and terror.
Seabiscuit: An American Legend / Laura Hillenbrand / NonFiction
He didn't look like
much. With his smallish stature, knobby knees, and slightly crooked forelegs,
he looked more like a cow pony than a thoroughbred. Seabiscuit rose to prominence with the help of an unlikely
triumvirate: owner Charles Howard, an automobile baron who once declared that
"the day of the horse is past"; trainer Tom Smith, a man who
"had cultivated an almost mystical communication with horses"; and
jockey Red Pollard, who was down on his luck when he charmed a then-surly horse
with his calm demeanor and a sugar cube. Hillenbrand details the ups and downs
of "team Seabiscuit," from early training sessions to record-breaking
victories, and from serious injury to "Horse of the Year"--as well as
the Biscuit's fabled rivalry with War Admiral. Along the way, Hillenbrand paints wonderful images: tears in Tom
Smith's eyes as his hero, legendary trainer James Fitzsimmons, asked to hold
Seabiscuit's bridle while the horse was saddled; critically injured Red
Pollard, whose chest was crushed in a racing accident a few weeks before,
listening to the San Antonio Handicap from his hospital bed, cheering "Get
going, Biscuit! Get 'em, you old devil!"; Seabiscuit happily posing for
photographers for several minutes on end; other horses refusing to work out
with Seabiscuit because he teased and taunted them with his blistering speed.
Eragon / Christopher Paolini
Eragon finds a mysterious blue stone and a dragon hatches
from it; he is then thrust into his new role as Dragon Rider and his adventure
begins.
Juniors –
Fiction
The Things They Carried / Tim O’Brien
The Things They Carried depicts the
men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders,
Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O'Brien who has survived
his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.
They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally
each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their
rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they
miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for
strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the
girl who grieves while she dances), and love for each other, because in Vietnam
they are the only family they have. We hear the voices of the men and build
images upon their dialogue. The way they tell stories about others, we hear
them telling stories about themselves.
Bleachers / John Grisham
The story
centers on the impending death of the Messina Spartans' football coach Eddie
Rake. One of the most victorious coaches in high school football history, Rake
is a man both loved and feared by his players and by a town that relishes his
13 state titles. The hero of the novel is Neely Crenshaw, a former Rake
All-American whose NFL prospects ended abruptly after a cheap shot to the
knees. Neely has returned home for the first time in years to join a nightly
vigil for Rake at the Messina stadium. Having wandered through life with little
focus since his college days, he struggles to reconcile his conflicted feelings
towards his former coach, and he assays to rekindle love in the ex-girlfriend
he abandoned long ago. For Messina and for Neely, the homecoming offers the
prospect of building a life after Rake.
Ender’s
Game / Orson Scott Card
In
order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack,
government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A
brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but
distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than
anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the
soldier-training program but didn't make the cut--young Ender is the Wiggin
drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.
Ender's
skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where
children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial
community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from
his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the
alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is
becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of
devotion to his beloved sister. Back on Earth, Peter and Valentine forge an
intellectual alliance and attempt to change the course of history.
The
Lovely Bones: a novel / Alice Sebold
When
we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. This was
before milk carton photos and public service announcements, she tells us;
back in 1973, when Susie mysteriously disappeared, people still believed these
things didn't happen.
Prey / Michael Crichton
High-tech whistle-blower Jack Forman used to
specialize in programming computers to solve problems by mimicking the behavior
of efficient wild animals--swarming bees or hunting hyena packs, for example.
Now he's unemployed and is finally starting to enjoy his new role as
stay-at-home dad. All would be domestic bliss if it were not for Jack's
suspicions that his wife, who's been behaving strangely and working long hours
at the top-secret research labs of Xymos Technology, is having an affair. When
he's called in to help with her hush-hush project, it seems like the perfect
opportunity to see what his wife's been doing, but Jack quickly finds there's a
lot more going on in the lab than an illicit affair. Within hours of his arrival
at the remote testing center, Jack discovers his wife's firm has created
self-replicating nanotechnology--a literal swarm of microscopic machines.
Originally meant to serve as a military eye in the sky, the swarm has now
escaped into the environment and is seemingly intent on killing the scientists
trapped in the facility. The reader realizes early, however, that Jack, his
wife, and fellow scientists have more to fear from the hidden dangers within
the lab than from the predators without.
The Five People You Meet In Heaven / Mitch Albom
Mitch Albom's The Five People
You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all told about the same
man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement
Park. As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only
minutes away from death as he goes about his typical business at the park.
Albom then traces Eddie's world through his tragic final moments, his funeral,
and the ensuing days as friends clean out his apartment and adjust to life
without him. In alternating sections, Albom flashes back to Eddie's birthdays,
telling his life story as a kind of progress report over candles and cake each
year. And in the third and last thread of the novel, Albom follows Eddie into
heaven where the maintenance man sequentially encounters five pivotal figures
from his life (a la A Christmas Carol). Each person has been waiting for
him in heaven, and, as Albom reveals, each life (and death) was woven into
Eddie's own in ways he never suspected. Each soul has a story to tell, a secret
to reveal, and a lesson to share. Through them Eddie understands the meaning of
his own life even as his arrival brings closure to theirs.
How the Garcia
Girls Lost Their Accents / Julia Alvarez
How the Garcia Girls Lost
Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez, is an in depth look at the lives of four
sisters, from childhood to adulthood. In every chapter a different person
narrates the book, and each chapter includes stories that help the reader
to get to know the characters, and the events in their lives that have shaped
who they are when the book first starts.
The book begins in the present, with the eldest daughter's return to the Dominican
Republic, her home land, and travels from there backwards in time to the point
that the Garcia Family moves to the United States. I think that this was a
very interesting way to slowly give you glimpses of the family's history,
and the events throughout the chapter slowly build up to the main event that
caused them to flee their home and family.
Julia Alvarez does a commendable job of packing this book full of culture.
Her descriptions of the jungle in the Dominican Republic make you feel like
you are alone in a safari, and her use of Spanish in the dialogue suggests
that very nearby is a town full of the native people.
The book mostly deals with the problems that the four daughters encountered
when they first arrived in the United States, and also when they returned
to the Dominican Republic on summer vacations as visitors, now Americans.
The girls have an extremely difficult time figuring out how they fit in amongst
all of their peers, and do not know why people laugh and talk about them behind
their backs, and sometimes right to their faces. Alvarez does a great job of showing the confusion and pain that
they must've felt : "Here they were trying to fit in America among Americans;
they needed help figuring out who they were, why the Irish kids whose grandparents
had been micks were calling the spics."
Junior AP Summer
Reading List
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn/ Mark Twain
The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an adventure book written by Mark Twain. Huck
Finn sails down the Mississippi River on a raft. Huckleberry Finn shows his
bravery by trying to escape from
his father. In order to live Huck Finn has to try to run away or escape from his abusive father. To
find out if he escapes from his father be sure to read this book.
This is a must read! The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will make reader feel
like your Huck Finn. The reader will realize how hard it actually is for Huck
Finn to live with his father and how hard it is to escape. This book is a book
the reader just can't put down. The book takes a long time to get into so don't
put this book down until you finish.
The Red Badge of Courage/Stephen Crane
Henry Fleming had
no idea how horrible war really was. Attacks
come from all sides, bullets fly, bombs crash. Men everywhere are wounded, bleeding, and dying.
Now, Henry's fighting for his life and he's scared.
He must make a decision, perhaps the most difficult decision he will ever
make in his life: save himself-run from the enemy and desert his friends-or
fight, be brave, and risk his life.
If he stays to fight, he may die with his regiment. If he runs, he'll have to
live with knowing he was a coward. Can Henry find the strength within himself
to earn his red badge of courage?
Death of a
Salesman/Arthur
Miller
A play in "two acts and a
requiem" by Arthur Miller, written in 1948 and produced in 1949. Miller
won a Pulitzer Prize for the work, which he described as "the tragedy of a
man who gave his life, or sold it" in pursuit of the American Dream. After
many years on the road as a traveling salesman, Willy Loman realizes he has
been a failure as a father and husband. His sons, Happy and Biff, are not
successful--on his terms (being "well-liked") or any others. His career
fading, Willy escapes into reminiscences of an idealized past. In the play's
climactic scene, Biff prepares to leave home, starts arguing with Willy,
confesses that he has spent three months in jail, and mocks his father's belief
in "a smile and a shoeshine." Willy, bitter and broken, his illusions
shattered, commits
Seniors –
Fiction
Out of the
Silent Planet / C.S. Lewis
The first
book in C. S. Lewis's acclaimed Space Trilogy, which continues with Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, Out of the Silent Planet
begins the adventures of the remarkable Dr. Ransom. Here, that estimable man is
abducted by a megalomaniacal physicist and his accomplice and taken via
spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra. The two men are in need of a human
sacrifice, and Dr. Ransom would seem to fit the bill. Once on the planet,
however, Ransom eludes his captors, risking his life and his chances of
returning to Earth, becoming a stranger in a land that is enchanting in its
difference from Earth and instructive in its similarity. First published in
1943, Out of the Silent Planet
remains a mysterious and suspenseful tour de force.
Anthem
/ Ayn Rand
ANTHEM tells
the story of a man who rediscovers the individualism and his own "I"
- in a world of absolute collectivization, a world where sightless, joyless,
selfless men exist for the sake of serving the State; where their work, their
food and their mating are prescribed to them by order of the Collective's
rulers in the name of society's welfare - a world which has lost all the achievements
of science and civilization, when it lost their root, the independent mind, and
has reverted to primitive savagery - a world where language contains no
singular pronouns, where the "We" has replaced the "I," and
where men are put to death for the crime of discovering and speaking the
"unspeakable word." The story
tells of one man who rebelled, of his struggle and his victory. Assigned to the
life work of street sweeper by the rulers who resented his brilliant,
questioning, unsubmissive mind - he becomes a scientist, secretly, risking his
life for the sake of his quest for knowledge. In the midst of collective
stagnation, where men toil at manual labor by the light of candles - he
discovers electricity. In the midst of eugenic planning and State-controlled
Palaces of Mating - he discovers a personal love and a woman of his own choice.
In the midst of brutal morality which proclaims that man is only a sacrificial
animal to the needs of others - he discovers that man's greatest moral duty is
the pursuit of his own happiness. He endures danger, denunciation,
imprisonment, torture - but he breaks the chains of the Collective, he escapes
with the woman he loves, to start a new life in an uncharted wilderness, and he
reaches the day when he is able to predict that "my home will! become the
capital of a world where each man will be free to exist for his own sake."
The
Catcher in the Rye / J.D. Salinger
Since
his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in
the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent."
Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life,
just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy
even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins,
"If
you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know
is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents
were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind
of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In
the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would
have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about
them."
His
constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies
(the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the
eternal teenage experience of alienation.
Welcome
to the Monkey House / Kurt Vonnegut
"Welcome
to the Monkey House" by Kurt Vonnegut has a great combination of comedy,
drama, suspense, and action. Mr. Vonnegut has a way of including a lot of
detail but not so much as to bore you. You often find yourself getting so
caught up in the story that you feel almost as if you are there. The story
"Epicac" was among the best in the book. It takes place in the
fifties and the first super computer has been built. A man tells the computer
about the problems in his love life and the computer actually has an answer for
him. He and the computer continue to have these conversations until one day the
computer develops emotions. He feels the need to be loved and burns out trying
to figure out why he can't be. "Welcome to the Monkey House" is
another good story in the book. It takes place in a future where sex is outlawed.
Then this man comes along who refuses to take his hormonal control pills. He
persuades many women to join him on his quest. He then kidnaps a woman and
takes him to a hidden place where they make love. "Welcome to the Monkey
House" is a fast paced book for any reader. It will keep you enthused with
its detail and entertained with its humor.
Senior AP - Summer Reading List
Heart of Darkness / Joseph Conrad
Horror awaits Marlow, a seaman assigned by an ivory company
to retrieve a cargo boat and one of its employees, Mr. Kurtz, stranded deep in
the heart of the African Belgian Congo. His journey up the treacherous dark
river soon becomes a struggle to maintain his own sanity as he witnesses the
brutalization of the natives by white traders and discovers the enigmatic Mr.
Kurtz. Kurtz, once a genius and the company’s most successful representative,
has transformed into an atrocious savage. His compound is decorated by a row of
human heads mounted on spears. The demonic mastermind, liberated from the
conventions of European culture, has traded his soul to become ruler of his own
horrific sovereignty.
The Metamorphosis / Frank Kafka
Adult/High School-Gregor Samsa
wakes up and discovers he has been changed into a giant cockroach. Thus begins
"The Metamorphosis," and Kuper translates this story masterfully with
his scratchboard illustrations. The text is more spare, but the visuals are so
strongly rendered that little of the original is changed or omitted. Though the
story remains set in Kafka's time, Kuper has added some present-day touches,
such as fast-food restaurants, that do not detract from the tale. He has used
the medium creatively, employing unusual perspectives and panel shapes, and
text that even crawls on the walls and ceilings, as Gregor does. The roach has
an insect body but human facial expressions. Once he is pelted with the apple,
readers can watch his rapid decline, as his body becomes more wizened and his
face more gaunt.