Summer Reading List
I was wondering what you guys were planning on reading this summer, I know most of you have only have a couple years of high school left. So what's on your reading lists? I found an interesting book list designed for 11th and 12th grades on The Well-Trained Mind website ( wow, I love that title).
"Eleventh grade, 1600-1850
Cervantes, Don Quixote (abridged)(1605)
Divine Meditations, John Donne (c. 1635)
Principles of philosophy, Rene Descartes (1644)
Paradise Lost (selections), Milton (1664)
Pensees, Pascal (1670)
Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1678)
"An Essay Concerning Human Understanding," John Locke (1690)
Gulliver's Travels, Swift (1726)
"On American Taxation," Burke (1774)
The War for Independence, Albert Marrin
"The Social Contract," Rousseau (1762)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1771)
The Declaration of Independence (1776)
"Critique of Pure Reason," Kant (1781)
The Federalist Papers, Hamilton et.al.
The Constitution of the United States (ratified 1788)
Songs of Innocence and Experience, Blake (1789)
"The Rights of Man," Paine (1792)
Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth and Coleridge (1798)
Pride and Prejudice, Austen (1813)
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (1818)
"Ode to a Nightingale" and other poems of Keats (1820s)
The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper (1826)
"The Lady of Shalott" and other poems of Tennyson (1832)
"The Fall of the House of Usher" and other stories of Poe (1839)
"Self-Reliance," Emerson (1844)
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte (1847)
Moby Dick, Melville (1851)
Twelfth grade, 1850-present day
Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engles (1848)
de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1805-1860)
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe (1852)
Walden, Thoreau (1854)
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman (1855)
Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky (1856)
On the Origin of Species, Darwin (1859)
Great Expectations, Dickens (1861)
Unconditional Surrender: U.S. Grant and the Civil War,
Albert Marrin Virginia's General: Robert E. Lee, Albert Marrin
"Gettysburg Address," Lincoln (1863)
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Sandburg (Pulitzer biography, 1940)
War and Peace, Tolstoy (1864)
The Return of the Native, Hardy (1878)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche (1883)
Huckleberry Finn, Twain (1884)
Selected Poems, W. B. Yeats (1895)
The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud (1900)
"The Innocence of Father Brown," Chesterton (1911)
Selected Poems, Wilfrid Owen (1918)
"A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes," Frost (Pulitzer, 1924)
"The Trial," Kafka (1925)
"Murder in the Cathedral," T. S. Eliot (1935)
"Our Town," Thornton Wilder (1938)
The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck (1939)
Mein Kampf, Hitler (1939)
Animal Farm, Orwell (1945)
The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank (1947)
Invisible Man, Ellison (1952)
Mere Christianity, Lewis (1952)
"The Crucible," Miller (1953)
"A Man for All Seasons, Bolt (1962)
"Why We Can't Wait," Martin Luther King Jr. (1964)
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," Stoppard (1967)
"The Gulag Archipelago," Solezhenitsyn (1974)
Night, Elie Wiesel (1982)
posted by Ashley @ 6:51 PM
23 comments
23 Comments:
"The Last of the Mohicans" is one of my favorite books. On my reading list I have all of Cooper's books. I was thinking about reading some of them.
Wow! Those books are really hard to read; I have read The Prairie, and part of the Deerslayer and the Pathfinder but it was just too hard for me so I never finished them. But The Last of the Mohicans was awesome!!! Do you have Ben-Hur on your reading list this year?
I'm definitely NOT reading "Don Quixote" !!! I read part of it and it was absolutely ridiculous! But I'll probably read most of the other books on the list.....
Yes Ashley, I do have Ben Hur on my reading list this year.
Hey...quite a list here...
I've read Don Quixote (you're right about it, MVB), Pilgrim's Progress (TOO MUCH allegory...now agreeing with Tolkien that over-blatant allegory kills literature), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (5 stars!), The Declaration of Independence (who among the GenJers hasn't read it?), Federalist Papers (another of that sort...), Constitution (another GenJ fave, lol), Rights of Man, Jane Eyre. I tried Moby Dick but it was absolutely HORRID...Melville needed some serious help in the "interest" department...
I've also read The Communist Manifesto (total fluff...), Democracy In America (not bad for a French work), Uncle Tom's Cabin, Great Expectations, the Gettysburg Address, The Grapes of Wrath, Mein Kampf (considering its author, not badly written but very badly intended). And that'd be all from those lists...
(Hey, if you like Locke, try his "On Tolerance" treatise...pretty good.)
Wow, you didn't like Pilgrim's Progress? That's rare, I thought everyone liked that. What did you think of Jane Eyre? :) :) :)Did you like The Grapes of Wrath? I'm really not looking forward to reading that especially after seeing that horrid movie with Henry Fonda...
I think the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are awesome! Have you ever read Dr. Farris's textbook on constitutional law? I finished it last week and I thought it was great! Very interesting reading at least, most of it was Supreme Court rulings.
Sara, are you going to read Ben-Hur this year? Because I think that is one of the greatest novels ever!!
Ashley, I am not sure if I will read it this year. It will depend how busy my summer is this year. Have you ever read The Crucible Ashley?
No! I haven't read it yet, but it's laying on my bookshelf just waiting to be read. :) Have you read it?
No, I have not read it.
I thought Jane Eyre was pretty good...not bad at all. Grapes of Wrath was good for historical/social purposes - understanding the Great Depression better, etc. and it was well-written but I will say that the dialogue was less than appropriate...very..."adult content" I guess you would say if you go by movie ratings...language, innuendo...not a clean piece of literature.
I haven't read Dr. Farris' work on the topics, but from what I have read of his articles, etc., I'm sure it was awesome. David Barton's books are also very good...like Original Intent.
Ben-Hur, btw, is one of my favorites!
I'm going to read great Expectations this summer, and I want to read Pilgrim's Progress and Ben-Hur too. :)
Yes, Sara, definitely read Ben-Hur, although you might not enjoy it as much as I did since you've seen the movie already. But the book was totally, totally awesome!
Well, if Ben-Hur is as good as you say it is, I should like it right away! :) I just hope it is more interesting than Great Expectations- please say it is!
Oh goodness, yes it is more interesting! Although I liked Great Expectations too. You have to get farther in the book before it picks up. What was also very good was Crime and Punishment, that book was awesome, but extremely hard to follow in parts.
Anybody going to dare Paradise Lost? I don't think you could pay me to read that... it's so long! And it's just a poem for goodness sake!
I am probably going to read it. My mom says that everyone should read the book. Ashley, it will be better than Wuthering Heights and it won't be as long as Ivanhoe. :) Ashley, how long did it take you to read Ivanhoe?
Another good Dostoevsky book is "The Brothers Karamazov" - it deals with the conflict between secularist science, materialist ignorance, and religious fervency (all embodied in three brothers). It's long but very interesting.
Ahh yes, The Brothers Karamazov! I have that book and I'm reading it very slowly, trying to savor it. :) I can tell it's going to be awesome! I love Russian authors; have you read any Tolstoy or Solzhenitsyn?
I can't really remember how long it took me to read Ivanhoe. Probably 2 or 3 weeks. But that was a really hard book to get into, it didn't get really interesting until about 10 chapters in. :) But it was worth it! Uncle Tom's Cabin was another really good book ( also long, unfortunately ) and so was To Kill A Mockingbird. Also Watership Down, a very under-rated book, IMO. You should definitely read that Sara, it is totally awesome!!!
Ok, Ivanhoe took you 2 or 3 weeks, it will probably take me 2 or 3 months. lol:) Ashley, who are the authors of To Kill A Mocking Bird and Watership Down?
I've read very little of Tolstoy (my bad), and that was Ivan the Fool and Other Stories or something like that...very comical and very good. I could swear I read something else by him but I can't remember the title (much less the story...). I'll probably get into more of his works this coming school year (Tolstoy over Shakespeare anytime!)
Well, actually anything is better than Shakespeare, lol. They are the only "books" I have to force myself to read, ick!:(
To Kill A Mockingbird was written by Harper Lee, and it was her only major novel. Watership Down was written by Richard Adams, and that was his only major novel too. :) Are you reading The Crucible next? Because of you are maybe I will read it with you... it's nice and short. :)
No, I am reading The Scarlet Letter. I have not gotten far in it yet. If this does not take me long I will read The Crucible next. Can you wait till I finish The Scarlet Letter? Then we can read The Crucible together. Read any more of the Villette?
Sure, I'll wait for you, no big rush anyway. :) So you're trying The Scarlet Letter? Do you like it so far? It will be interesting to see what you think of it. :) Nope, I haven't read anymore of Villette since Saturday ( VERY bad, I know ). I've been a bit busy though.
Yes, I am reading The Scarlet Letter. I have not gotten too far to decide if I like or not. :) I know how it is about not getting time to read. It seems like there is not enough hours in the day.
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