BUCKET LIST BOOKS
It is strongly recommended that you take notes on the books, or use sticky notes to mark passages you find
significant, confusing, amusing, or interesting. Think about: themes and messages, characters and relationships,
settings and their contribution to the action, conflicts, imagery and figurative language. Books marked with an
asterisk (*) are available online.
HIGH INTEREST Invisible Man, Ellison
Five People you Meet in Heaven , Albom As I Lay Dying, Faulkner
Band of Brothers, Ambrose The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , Angelou. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Frank
The DaVinci Code, Brown Lord of the Flies, Golding
Code Talker, Bruchac Death Be Not Proud, Gunther
The Canterbury Tales , Chaucer Roots, Haley
And Then There Were None, Christie The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne
Money Hungry, Flake A Farewell to Arms, Hemmingway
The Skin I'm In, Flake The Iliad, Homer
Beautiful Child, Hayden The Odyssey, Homer
Catch 22, Hayden Les Misérables, Hugo
The Outsiders, Hinton Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston
Brave New World, Huxley Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey
Giver, Lowry A Separate Peace, Knowles
Number the Stars, Lowry To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee
Child Called “It”, Pelzer To Build a Fire, London
The Watson’s Go to Birmingham , Paul The Natural, Malamud
Hatchet, Paulson Moby Dick, Melville
Where the Red Fern Grows , Rawls Death of a Salesman, Miller
West Side Story, Robbins The Things They Carried, O’Brien
Holes, Sachar 1984, Orwell
The Notebook , Sparks Cry, the Beloved Country, Paton
Bless the Beasts and Children, Swarthout Complete Tales and Poems, Poe
The Lord of the Rings Series , Tolkein Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque
Night, Weisel The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
The War of the Worlds, Wells Ivanhoe, Scott
Uglies/Pretties/Specials , Westerfield Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare
Frankenstein, Shelley
CLASSIC READS Ceremony, Silko
Pride and Prejudice, Austen The Jungle, Sinclair
Jane Eyre, Bronte The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
Wuthering Heights, Bronte The Pearl, Steinbeck
Don Quixote, Cervantes Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson
The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer Gulliver's Travels, Swift
Last of the Mohicans, Cooper Walden, Thoreau
The Chocolate War, Cormier My Life and Hard Times, Thurber
The Red Badge of Courage, Crane The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain
Robinson Crusoe, Crusoe The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain
A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens Our Town, Wilder
Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky The Glass Menagerie, Williams
Silas Marner, Eliot Native Son, Wright
http://www.phschool.com/curriculum_support/reading_list/high_school.html
Reading Program Bonus Assignment
Your task: Select a book that interests you; it must be at least 100 pages long. Read it over the
summer. Write a letter to me about the book you read with the following guidelines:
As you write your letter, be sure to use:
vivid, descriptive language
conventions (complete sentences, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc.)
and the format below (select what best fits):
General Nonfiction Book (how-to, informative, etc.) -- be sure to include:
title & author
main points of the book
new/interesting information learned
reason you would recommend the book
Novel about a Sport/Athlete or Hobby -- be sure to include:
title & author
sport/athlete discussed
your personal interest (do you play, have you watched live, etc.)
describe one memorable moment in that athlete's life that is worth knowing
new/interesting information learned
Biographical Novel -- be sure to include:
title & author
basic information (date of birth, birthplace, etc.)
main points of that person’s life (specific events that “made” them)
most interesting fact
if you could meet that person, what you’d ask
Historical Novel -- be sure to include:
title & author
setting (place & time)
main characters (describe the hero and villain)
main points/summary (let me know if it is fiction based on fact or pure fiction)
key historical references (Is the story believable for that time?)
reason you would recommend this book
General Fictional Novel -- be sure to include:
title & author
setting (place & time)
description of the protagonist (hero) & antagonist (villain)
description of the conflict (ex. man vs. man, man vs. nature, etc.)
brief summary (how events contribute to the conflict)
lessons that can be learned from the story