The Book List
This book list is provided to aid you in the selection of a reading book. Your selection must be at the adult reading level (S.E.
Hinton books are a thing of the past!). This assignment is intended to challenge you. The books on this list are the only ones I
have approved to earn credit for book reports. This is quite an extensive list and if you take the time to look through it, I am
confident that you will find something you will be interested in. Because of the mature themes in many of these books, you must
discuss your book choice with your parents and be sure that they approve of your selection. Sorry, but books on this list that are
or have been required reading in other English classes will also not receive credit. You may read additional works by any author
listed here, even if the title does not appear here.
CLASSICS
Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio (small-town life in the U.S. at the dawn of the 20th century)
Austen: Pride & Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility
Bronte Sisters: Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre
Camus: The Stranger, The Plague
Cather: My Antonia
Chaucer: Canterbury Tales
Chopin: The Awakening
Conrad: Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness
Crane: The Red Badge of Courage (young soldier in the Civil War; you might like it if you enjoyed All Quiet…)
Dickens: Great Expectations, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Pickwick Papers
Dostoyevsky: Crime & Punishment (intense psychological study of a violent criminal), The Brothers Karamzov
Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Dumas: Count of Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers
Eliot: The Mill on The Floss, Middlemarch, Silas Marner
Faulkner: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury
Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Flaubert: Madam Bovary
Hardy: Return of the Native, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Old Man & the Sea, The Sun Also Rises
Hugo: Les Miserables
Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley: Brave New World
James: The Portrait of a Lady, Daisy Miller, The Europeans
Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses (a real challenge!)
Kafka: Metamorphosis, The Penal Colony, A Hunger Artist
Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
London: Call of the Wild
Melville: Billy Budd
Miller: Crucible, Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, Incident at Vichy
Malory: Le Mort D’Arthur (authoritative Arthurian legend)
Orwell: Animal Farm, 1984
Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago
Paton: Cry the Beloved Country
Poe: Short Stories
Salinger: Catcher in the Rye
Shelly: Frankenstein
Scott: Ivanhoe
Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, Travels with Charley , Tortilla Flats
Thoreau: Walden
Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
Twain: Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer
Wells: War of the Worlds, The Time Machine
Wilder: Our Town
Williams: Streetcar Named Desire, Glass Menagerie
MODERN CLASSICS
Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale (explores the connections between politics, reproduction, and gender in the future)
Burgess: A Clockwork Orange
Capote: In Cold Blood
Greene: The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The End of the Affair
Heller: Catch 22 (if you like M.A.S.H. you might like this one)
Kantor: Andersonville (notorious Civil War prison)
Kerouac: On the Road, The Dharma Bums
Kesey: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Sometimes a Great Notion
Knowles: A Separate Peace
Mitchell: Gone with the Wind
Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49 (satire about worldwide conspiracy)
Read: Alive (survival of soccer team that crashed in Andes)
Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Trumbo: Johnny Got his Gun
Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle
Wouk: The Caine Mutiny
BIOGRAPHY / AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Anderson: Jack and Jackie (current bio of the Kennedys)
Camus: The First Man (early days in Algeria and Paris)
David & Davis: Hammer of the Gods (Led Zeppelin Biography)
Feynman: You Must be Joking, Mr. Feynman
Frank: Diary of a Young Girl (new edition, added material)
Franklin: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Graham: Dove (teenager sails around the world)
Gunther: Death be Not Proud (story of his teenage son’s illness)
Hays: My Old Man and the Sea (dad & son sail around world)
Herriott: All Creatures Great and Small Series (rural veterinarian)
Hopkins/Singerman:No One Gets Out of Here Alive (Biography of The Doors)
Kaysen: Girl Interrupted (teenager who describes her year in an institution)
King: On Writing (Stephen King’s memoirs after a near-death car accident)
Kirkland: Dancing on My Grave (ballerina)
Lawrence: Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Lunda: Eric (a young man’s illness)
McCourt: Angela's Ashes (English teacher's memoir of growing up in Ireland), ‘Tis (the sequel)
Nisenson: Ascension (biog. of John Coltrane)
Norman: Shout! A History of the Beatles
Piccolo: A Short Season (movie was "Brian’s Song")
Plath: The Bell Jar (story of a young girl who wins a wiritng contest and gets to move to New York City)
Roberts: The Man Who Listened to Horses
TenBoom: The Hiding Place (Dutch woman who hid Jews during W.W.II)
Terkel: Working (people talking about their jobs)
Valens: Other Side of the Mountain (female skier)
White: Catch the Fire (bio of Bob Marley)
Winchester: The Professor and the Madman (the making of the Oxford English Dictionary)
HISTORICAL/ POLITICAL
Alperovitz: Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb
Ambrose: Citizen Soldiers (invasion of Normandy etc.), D-Day (same topic)
Bishop: The Day Lincoln was Shot
Bugliosi: Outrage (reflections on OJ trial)
Burdick & Lederer: The Ugly American (Satirical critique of U.S. policy in South-East Asia during the ‘60s.)
Cable: The Case of the Slave Ship Amistad
Caputo: Rumor of War (Vietnam War novel)
Fallaci: Interviews with History (feisty female journalist interviews famous leaders)
Fuller: The Day we Bombed Utah (radiation accident)
Harr: A Civil Action (a town sues an industrial polluter)
Herr: Dispatches (Vietnam)
Kovic: Born on the Fourth of July (U.S.Vietnam War vet’s memoir)
Lifton & Mitchell: Hiroshima in America
McCullough: Truman (new biog.)
Moorehead: Lost and Found (archeology- discovery of Troy)
O'Brien: Going After Cacciato, The Things They Carried (both Vietnam stories)
Pipher: Reviving Ophelia (psychology, being young & female in the 90s and dealing with expectations of perfection)
Scheer: Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death (essays by L.A. Times journalist)
Shaara: Killer Angels (about the Civil War)
Shilts: And the Band Played On (history of AIDS in America)
Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Shute: On the Beach (aftermath of nuclear war)
Takaki: Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Bomb
Tolstikov: Gold of Troy (archeology- discovery of Troy)
Woodward & Bernstein: All the Presidents' Men (the reporters who broke the Watergate scandal)
Humor/ Light
Abbey: The Monkey Wrench Gang
Adams: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series
Allen: Side Effects
Toole: Confederacy of Dunces
Wibberly: The Mouse that Roared
MYSTERIES & HORROR/ WESTERNS
Bierce: Ghost & Horror Stories
Christie: Ten Little Indians/ And Then There Were None (same book), Murder on the Orient Express
Clancy: Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, Patriots Game, Raise the Titanic
Clark: A Cry in the Night, While My Pretty One Sleeps
Cook: Shock, Year of the Intern, Sphinx
Follet: The Hammer of Eden, Eye of the Needle, Night Over Water, Pillars of Earth
Forsyth: The Odessa File (spys, intrigue, etc.)
Hillerman: anything (Native American detective in southwest)
King: It, Pet Cemetery, The Tommyknockers, Carrie, Cujo, Christine, Misery
Koontz: Twilight Eyes, Watchers, False Memory, Seize the Night (Koontz resides in OC; you may recognize the setting)
L'Amour: Sackett series, Beyond the Great Snow Mountains
Ludlum: Hades Factor, Bourne Identity, Matarese Countdown, Scorpio Illusion
McCarthy: The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain
McMurtry: Lonesome Dove
Stoker: Dracula
SCIENCE FICTION/ FANTASY
Abbot: Flatland
Anthony: A Spell for Chameleon
Asimov: Foundation books
Barker: Weave World
Benford: (UCI professor) Timescape, Art of the Comet
Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451, Martian Chronicles
Card: Enders Game, Xenocide, Treasure Box
Clark: Songs from Distant Earth, 2001, 2010, 2063
Cook: Conia
Crichton: Andromeda Strain, Congo
Frank: Alas Babylon
Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land
Herbert: The Dune series
Kidder: Soul of a New Machine
LeGuin: Lathe of Heaven
Robinson: The Wild Shore, Blue Mars
Stewart: Earth Abides (supposed to be VERY good...)
Tolkien: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
White: The Once and Future King, The Book of Merlin (Arthurian Legend with a side of anti-fascism)
SCIENCE, MATH, & ENVIRONMENTAL
Aczel: Fermat's Last Theorem (amazing story of a math problem)
Eisely: Immense Journey, Darwin’s Century
Hawking: A Brief History of Time
Masson: When Elephants Weep (emotional lives of animals)
Mowat: A Whale for the Killing, Never Cry Wolf
Schacter: Searching for Memory (about human brain & memory)
Thomas: Lives of a Cell, Late Night Thoughts While Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
SPORTS/ OUTDOORS
Aaron/ Wheeler: If I Were a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story
Bissinger: Friday Night Lights (football)
Boswell: How Life Imitates the World Series
Boukreev: The Climb
Bouton: Ball Four (baseball)
Hemingway: Death in the Afternoon (bullfighting)
Jabbar: Giant Steps (Kareem’s autobiography)
Junger: The Perfect Storm (fishing boat tragedy in Atlantic Ocean)
Kahn: Boys of Summer (baseball)
Kinsella: Shoeless Joe
Krakauer: Into Thin Air (recent fatal Everest expedition), Into the Wild (young man's tragic wilderness experience)
Malamud: The Natural (baseball), A New Life
Moceanu: Dominique Moceanu, An American Champion (gymnast)
Plimpton: Open Net (hockey), Paper Lion (football), Homerun
Salassi: On the Ropes (wrestling)
Sayre: I Am Third (pro football, "Brian’s Song" based on this story)
Voight: The Runner (track)
ETHNIC
African-American
Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Heart of a Woman
Baldwin: Go Tell it on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Another Country
Childress: A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich, Rainbow Jordon
Griffin: Black Like Me
Haley: Autobiography of Malcolm X, Roots
Morrison: Song of Solomon, Beloved, Paradise, Tar Baby, The Bluest Eye, Sula
Reed: Mumbo Jumbo ("satirical, racy, and uproarious commentary on our society")
Walker: The Color Purple, Meridian
Wright: Native Son, Black Boy
Hispanic/Latino
Allende: House of the Spirits (Chilean)
Alvarez: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent, In the Time of the Butterflies
Cisneros: Woman Hollering Creek, House on Mango Street
Esquivel: Like Water for Chocolate
Fuentes: The Old Gringo
Garcia: Dreaming in Cuban, The Aguero Sisters
Marquez: 100 Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in His Labyrinth
Rodriquez: Hunger of Memory (Chicano male deals with two cultures)
Saramago: Blindness (Nobel Prize-winning author)
Thornton: Imagining Argentina
Asian
Butler: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (short stories about Vietnamese characters)
Golden: Memoirs of a Geisha
Guterson: Snow Falling on Cedars (deals partially with Japanese internment)
Hayslip: Heaven and Earth (a Vietnamese woman’s story)
Hwang, Sun-won: The Book of Masks (South Korean explores the theme of artificial division)
Jen: Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land
Kang: Home Was the Land of the Morning Calm
Karlin: The Other Side of Heaven (postwar fiction about Vietnam)
Kingston: The Woman Warrior (Chinese generational story)
Lee: China Boy (story of growing up in 1950s San Francisco)
Levine: In Search of Sugihara (the Japanese "Schindler" who saved Jews)
Liu: The Accidental Asia, Notes of a Native Speaker
Mah: The Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (rumor has it that this author now lives in H.B.)
Mori: Shizuko’s Daughter
See: On Gold Mountain (bi-racial Chinese/Caucasian family history)
Tan, Amy: The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife
Thu Hng Dng: Novel Without a Name (North Vietnamese army officer’s story)
Waston: Farewell to Mazanar (Japanese internment camps)
Yoshimoto: Kitchen
Swain: River of Time (Journalist working in Vietnam and Cambodia)
Uchida: Picture Bride
Vietnam: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (anthology of Vietnamese writers)
Jewish
Appleman-Jurman: Alicia: My Story (Polish female survivor of WWII; spoke at FVHS)
Fast: The Immigrants
Fink: A Scrap of Time (short stories of pre-Holocaust Poland)
Frank: Diary of a Young Girl (new edition)
Kaplan: Scroll of Agony (about the Warsaw ghetto)
Keneally: Schindler’s List
Linenthal: Preserving Memory (problems trying to create the Holocaust Museum)
Potok: The Chosen (set in 1940s Brooklyn, the story of two Jewish friends from diverse backgrounds) The Promise
Singer: The Family of Moskat, The Magician of Lubin…
Uris: Mila 18 (deals with the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto)
Wiesel: Night
Native American
Alexie: Lone Ranger & Tanto Fistfight in Heaven (life on a Spokane area reservation), Reservation Blues
Berger: Little Big Man
Craven: I Heard the Owl Call My Name (young English missionary to Kwakiutl people in Canada)
DeLoria: Custer Died for Your Sins (contemporary Native American discusses U.S. Culture)
Erdich: Love Medicine, The Best Queen (contemporary female author)
Momaday: House Made of Dawn, Way to Rainy Mountain
Niehardt: Black Elk Speaks
Steiner: The New Indian
Indian
Mukherjee: Jasmine, The Middleman and Other Stories
Roy: The God of Small Things
Other
Filipovic: Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo
Gruwell: The Freedom Writers Diary (students from Wilson H.S. use writing to break through cultural barriers.)
CONTEMPORARY BOOKS
Anonymous: Go Ask Alice, Primary Colors
Albom: Tuesdays with Morrie
Andrews: Flowers in the Attic, Melody
Auel: Clan of the Cave Bear series
Bauby: The Diving Bell & the Butterfly (written by a stroke victim)
Beagle: The Last Unicorn
Berendt: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Binchy: Tara Road, Circle of Friends
Chevalier: Girl with a Pearl Earring
Clavell: Shogun
Cormier: The Chocolate War (a high school student battles with the ruling powers of his school)
Coupland: Generation X (the book that named Gen X), Shampoo Planet, Polaroids from the Dead (memoirs)
Cunningham: The Hours
Didion: The White Album
Ellis: Less than Zero
Fitch: White Oleander
Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Frazier: Cold Mountain (Civil War Novel)
Fulghum: Uh-Oh, All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Gaarder: Sophie’s World (Alice in Wonderland meets The History of Philosophy)
Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying
Grisham: Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Partner, Runaway Jury
Guest: Ordinary People (deals with teen suicide and family relationships)
Hornbacher: Wasted (story by an anorexic girl)
Irving: The World According to Garp, Watermethod Man, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules
Kingsolver: The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven
Lamb: She’s Come Undone
Letts: Where the Heart Is, The Honk and Holler Opening Soon
Lindsey: Falcon and the Snowman
McInerney: Bright Lights, Big City
McLean: A River Runs Through It, Young Men & Fire
Michener: Space, The World Is My Home
Nun: Tapping the Source (set in H.B.), Pomona Queen
Ondaatje: The English Patient
Parker: Laguan Heat, Little Saigon
Pelzer: A Child Called "It" series (deals with severe child abuse)
Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Raucher: Summer of ‘42
Rice: Merrick, Vampite Lestat series, Servant of the Bones
Skoyles: Generous Strangers, The Smoky Mountain Cage Bird Society (2 titles, same book of short stories by a Ms. W relative!)
Sparks: The Notebook, Message in a Bottle
Spiegelman: Maus 1, Maus 2 (Pulitzer Prize-winning story Holocaust done in cartoons)
Steele: Family Album, The Ring, Changes, Star
Tartt: The Secret Diaries
Turow: Personal Injuries, One L: The Turbulent Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School
Updike: Gertrude & Claudius (Hamlet prequel), The Witches of Eastwick
Wambaugh: The Onion Field, The Choirboys, The New Centurions (ex-LAPD novelist)
Waller: Bridges of Madison County
Wells: Little Altars Everywhere, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Wolfe: The Right Stuff, Bonfire of the Vanities
Special thanks to Ms. Winkle.