The purpose of independent reading is to help you increase the breadth of experience and cultural literacy you need before attending college.
How to Choose?
Go to Goodreads.com or Amazon.com and read the description of the book and its reviews.
How Will Our Reading Be Assessed?
In-class essay on a topic to be revealed the day you take the assessment. Be prepared for a question that asks you to use the book as a support for an argument.
NOTE: These works were written for a general adult audience and as such, may not appeal to or be appropriate for all audiences. I urge you strongly to go on Goodreads or Amazon and read reviews and descriptions of your book to ensure that it is appropriate for you. If you have a suggestion for a college-level or college preparatory-level book with a meaningful and lasting literary reputation that is not on this list, please suggest it to me and I will absolutely consider your suggestions with respect and care.
LIST ONE - QUARTERS ONE AND TWO ONLY Note: I have tried to break up this list into sub-categories to make it easier to find a selection you might be interested in reading. Some books are multiply listed.
The Big Deals
Any book by Jane Austen EXCEPT Pride and Prejudice
Any novel by Charles Dickens EXCEPT A Christmas Carol
Any book by any Bronte sister. The Bronte sisters are Charlotte, Emily, and Anne.
Any novel by Thomas Hardy
Any novel by George Eliot
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: Gothic Novels
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White or The Moonstone
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Charlotte Bronte,Jane Eyre
If You Like Jane Austen
Any novel by Frances Burney, especially Evelina
Throwing Shade: Snark, Satire, Sarcasm, and Backstabbing
Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Voltaire, Candide
Bienvenue!
Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
¡Bienvenidos!
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
добро пожаловать!
Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Leo Tolstoi, Anna Karenina
Amurrica!
Any novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Any novel by Edith Wharton
Frederick Douglass, The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass
Any novel by Herman Melville
The Rake’s Progress: Rollicking Novels of the 18th Century
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
LIST TWO- QUARTERS THREE AND FOUR ONLY Note: I have tried to break up this list into sub-categories to make it easier to find a selection you might be interested in reading. Some books are multiply listed.
The Big Deals
Any book by Virginia Woolf
Any book by James Joyce
Haunted by the Past and Present
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Toni Morrison, Beloved
The Dystopian Future
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Cormac McCarthy,The Road
If You Like the Brontes
Any novel by Kate Chopin, especially The Awakening
John Fowles,The French Lieutenant’s Woman
If You Basically Want the Total Opposite of Jane Austen
Anything by Cormac McCarthy
Bienvenue! (Bonus points if you read them in French)
Albert Camus, The Stranger
¡Bienvenidos! (Bonus points if you read them in Spanish)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude
Isabel Allende, In the House of the Spirits
Julio Cortázar,Hopscotch (Rayuela)
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo
добро пожаловать! (Bonus points if you read them in Russian)
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Vladimir Nabokov,Pale Fire
Amurrica!
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Any novel by James Baldwin
Any novel by Richard Wright
Any novel by N. Scott Momaday
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Any novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald EXCEPT The Great Gatsby
Any novel by Ernest Hemingway EXCEPT The Old Man and the Sea