Summer Vacation Reading List 2005

The Importance Of Reading

The ability to read widely, intelligently, and swiftly is an enormous asset of a high school and college student. His chance of acceptance at a university and his success there are considerably enhanced if he does more than the minimum amount of reading. His vocabulary, spelling, comprehension, general knowledge, and overall sensitivity are likely to improve; in short, he will probably become a more mature and more interesting human being.

Instructions To Students

Read three books from the following lists. To broaden the subject areas of a student's reading, choose one book from each of Section A, B, and C. (Please note that Section A allows a choice of a title from either world or Canadian literature.) Please note that all titles in bold print are also available as movies. If you choose one of these works, your assignment will be to compare the film and print versions. It is assumed that all students will have completed the reading of their three choices prior to the first day of class; at that time the format and requirements for both oral and written reports will be explained. Do not procrastinate it is quite likely that you will be writing in class essays on our second or third class back to school.

Section A - Classics Of World Literature

Edward Albee *Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
Aristophanes Lysistrata.
Jane Austen Sense And Sensibility.
Max Beerbohm Zuleika Dobson.
Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights.
Charles Dickens Hard Times.
Feodor Dostoevsky Notes From The Underground.
Euripides The Bacchae.
Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary.
E. M. Forster A Passage To India.
Oliver Goldsmith The Vicar of Wakefield.
Thomas Hardy Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
Virgil The Aeneid
Victor Hugo The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Henrik Ibsen *A Doll's House; Hedda Gabler.
James Joyce Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man.
Franz Kafka The Castle; Metamorphosis and Other Stories.
D. H. Lawrence Sons And Lovers.
Sinclair Lewis Main Street.
Machiavelli The Prince.
Herman Melville Moby Dick.
Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain
George Meredith Ordeal of Richard Feverel.
Toni Morrison Beloved.
Eugene O'Neill A Long Day's Journey Into Night.
George Bernard Shaw Man And Superman; Heartbreak House.
Ignaziio Silone Bread and Wine.
Upton Sinclair The Jungle.
Tobias Smollett Roderick Random.
Sophocles Antigone
William Thackeray Vanity Fair.
Leo Tolstoi Anna Karenina.
Edith Wharton Ethan Frome
Richard Wright Native Son

 

Section A - Classics Of Canadian Lit

Margaret Atwood Cat's Eye; The Robber Bride
Morley Callaghan They Shall Inherit The Earth
Wayson Choy The Jade Peony (set in Vancouver) .
Matt Cohen The Disinherited
Robertson Davies The Lyre Of Orpheus; Murther And Walking Spirits
Timothy Findley Famous Last Words; Headhunter; The Piano Man’s Daughter
Jack Hodgins Spit Delaney's Island
Margaret Laurence The Stone Angel
Hugh McLennan Two Solitudes; Each Man's Son
Anne Michaels Fugitive Pieces
Alice Munro The Progress Of Love
Michael Ondaatje In The Skin of the Lion
Nino Ricci The Lives of the Saints
Mordecai Richler St. Urbain's Horseman; Barney’s Version
Sinclair Ross As For Me And My House
Gabriel Roy The Tin Flute
Ruby Wiebe A Discovery of Strangers

Section B - Non-Fiction Choices

Pierre Berton Vimy; Arctic Grail
Bruce Chatwin Songlines.(or any other)
Paul Davies Other Worlds. (or any other Davies)
Jared Diamond Guns, Germs, and Steel
Florence Donner Shabono
Tim Flannery Throwim Way Leg (New Guinea)
Richard Friedman Who Wrote The Bible?
Thomas Friedman From Beirut To Jerusalem
Nicholas Gage Eleni (Greece in WW II)
Susan Griffin A Chorus of Stones
Stephen Jay Gould The Flamingo's Smile;(or another)
Germaine Greer The Female Eunuch
Max Hastings Overlord the Normandy Invasions
Ernest Hillen The Way of a Boy (WW2 POW in Indonesia )
Small Mercies (his arrival in Canada)
E. D. Hirsch Jr. Cultural Literacy
Robert Klitgaard Tropical Gangsters (3rd World aid)
Jon Krakauer Into the Wild (not Into Thin Air)
Kenneth Leighton Oar and Sail (BC Odyssey)
John McPhee Basin And Range. (or any other)
Mark Mathebane Kaffir Boy (S. Africa)
Jan Morris Journeys. (or any other Morris)
Sherwin Nuland How We Live (Medicine)
Thomas Pakenham The Scramble For Africa
Robert Pirsig Lila
John Ralston Saul Voltaire's Bastard
William L. Shirer Berlin Diary. (the rise of Hitler)
Lois Wingerson Mapping Our Genes

Section C - Other Fiction Choices

Beryl Bainbridge Master Georgie (Crimean War)
Pat Barker Regeneration
Saul Bellow Henderson, The Rain King
William Boyd Brazzaville Beach
John Braine Room At The Top
Raymond Chandler Farewell, My Lovely
Tom Clancy The Cardinal of the Ktemlin; Executive Orders
Martin Cruz Smith Red Square
Don DeLillo Libra. (Kennedy assassination)
Umberto Eco The Name Of The Rose
John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman
Dick Francis Comeback
William Gibson Count Zero (SF)
William Golding Free Fall; Paper Men
David Grand Louse
Gunter Grass The Tin Drum
Graham Greene The Human Factor
Dashiell Hammett The Thin Man
Robert Harris Fatherland; Archangel (alternate history)
Larry Heinemann Paco's Story (Vietnam)
Joseph Heller Catch 22
John Hersey The Wall
Ernest Hemingway For Whom The Bell Tolls
Herman Hesse Narziss and Goldmund
Benjamin Hoff The Tao of Pooh (in depth)
John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany
Christopher Isherwood Goodbye To Berlin
Jack Kerouac On The Road
Stephen King The Girl Who loved Tom Gordon; The Dark Tower
Arthur Koestler Darkness At Noon
John Le Carre A Murder Of Quality; The Secret Pilgrim
Ursula K. Le Guin The Left Hand of Darkness (SF)
Robert Ludlum The Parsival Mosaic; The Road to Gandolfo
Norman MacLean Young Men and Fire
Ian McEwan  Amsterdam; Atonement
Herman Melville Omoo; Billy Budd
Boris Pasternak Dr. Zhivago
Ann Patchett Bel Canto
Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar
Henry Porter Spy’s Life
Tom Robbins Skinny Legs And All
Kim Stanley Robinson Antarctica (SF)
Salman Rushdie Haroun And The Sea Of Stories; Midnight's Children
B. F. Skinner Walden Two
Solzhenitsyn One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich
Robert Stone Damascus Gate
John Updike The Centaur; Gertrude and Claudius
Vernon Vinge A Fire Upon The Deep (SF)
Kurt Vonnegut Player Piano; Breakfast Of Champions
Kate Wilhelm Death Qualified
Thornton Wilder Heaven's My Destination.

 

Mr. Hillis 's Grade 12 Class must read the following three books:
Daniel Francis National Dreams: Myth, Memory and Canadian History
Guy Vanderhaeghe The Englishman's Boy
John Krakauer Into Thin Air