Here is my summer reading list, the books I've given for my various students to read. I also must read them all, since it's been many years since I've read some of them.
Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway
Daisy Miller - James
All Quiet on the Western Front -Remarque
Animal Farm - Orwell
Lord of the Flies - Golding
The Power and the Glory - Greene
Fathers and Sons - Turgenev
As I Lay Dying - Faulkner
Billy Budd - Melville
My Antonia - Cather
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
Great Expectations - Dickens
Gulliver's Travels (only Lilliput & Brobdignag) - Swift
Dracula - Stoker
The Mayor of Casterbridge - Hardy
That's summer reading, 4 novels for each grade, 9th-12th. All I have to do is read them, and come up with one good essay question per novel. Our school is not requiring the summer reading this time, but the student gets extra credit for reading them & being assessed. I have all those books except Old Man and the Sea and As I Lay Dying, which have somehow been lost over our many moves. I priced them at B&N last night - their only copy of Old Man and the Sea was a fancy-shmancy hard cover for $20.00!!! No way. And the Faulkner sold for about $12.00 - too much. I found Dracula (also lost somewhere) for $4 with my teacher discount.
During the school year, we'll be studying a few more novels, in much more depth. Here they are:
9th/10th grades: A Tale of Two Cities & In the Land of White Death (I'm not crazy about this non-classic, but the school already owns the copies, and I taught it last year.)
11th - The Scarlet Letter & The Red Badge of Courage (I've already taught both several times.)
12th - Frankenstein & Heart of Darkness (I finished my in-depth study of Frank. I took 17 pages of teaching notes, plus a 5-day study schedule for teaching the themes of the novel in one week.)
I read Daisy Miller yesterday. I started All Quiet on the Western Front today. I'll begin my deeper study of A Tale of Two Cities this week - that will take awhile, as I haven't read it in years.
For my personal enjoyment, I make sure to read a little bit of "Over Sea, Under Stone" by Susan Cooper, each day. I really love children's literature more than adults, the older I get. This wonderful book always spirits me away to Cornwall.
2 comments:
I mostly buy my books or cds used. Half.com is a good place to go. For instance, you can get Old Man and the Sea for about $3-4 bucks in the very good-new range, or for 75 cents in the good range. Of course, you have to pay about $2.50 in shipping, which is a bit of a pain, but still better than 20 bucks.
Thanks - I'll check it out.
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