Book List

[ixcrisxi]

Here is a list of books listed as Honors/AP at my high school. The highlighted ones, I've already read or are in the process of reading.

Absalom, Absalom!
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Age of Innocence
Agnes of God
A Lesson Before Dying
Alias Grace
All The King's Men
All My Sons
All The Pretty Horses
America is in the Heart
American Tragedy
Andersonville
Anna Karenina
Another Country
Antigone
Antony and Cleopatra
April Morning
Apprentenceship of Duddy Kravitz, The
A Separate Peace (John Knowles)
As I Lay Dying
As You Like It
Awakening
Bear, The
Beloved
Benito Cereno
Billy Budd
Birthday Party
Black Like Me
Bleak House
Bless Me, Ultima
Bluest Eye, The
Brave New World
Brighton Rock
Brothers Karamazov
Buffalo Hunters, The (a.k.a. Tie My Bones To Her Back)
Candide
Caretaker
Catch-22
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat's Eye
Centaur
Centennial (Andrews)
Ceremony
Cherry Orchard
Cimarron
Civil Disobedience
Cold Mountain
Color of Water, The
Color Purple
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Crime and Punishment
Cry, the Beloved Country
Daisy Miller
David Copperfield
Dead, The
Death of a Salesman
Death of Ivan Ilyich
Deerslayer, The (James F. Cooper)
Delta wedding
Desire Under the Elms
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Diviners, The
Doctor Faustus
Doll's House
Dollmaker
Don Qioxote
Drums Along the Mohawk
Dust Tracks on a Road
Emma
Enemy of the People
Equus
Ethan Frome
Eumenides, The
Fall
Farewell To Arms
Fathers and Sons
Federalist
Fifth Business
Frankenstein
Gathering of Old Men
Ghosts
Glass Menagerie
Gone With The Wind
Go Tell It On The Mountain
Good Soldier
Grapes of Wrath
Great Expectations
Great Gatsby, The
Gulliver's Travels (Johnathan Swift)
Hairy Ape
Hamlet (William Shakespeare)
Hard Times
Haunted Mesa, The
Heart of Darkness
Hedda Gabler
Henry IV
Homecoming
House Made of Dawn
House on Mango Street, The
House of the Seven Gables
In The Lake of the Woods
Invisible Man, The (H.G Wells)
J.B.
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontė)
Jasmine
Joe Turner's Come and Gone
Johnny Tremain
Joseph Andrews
Joy Luck Club
Jude the Obscure
Julius Caesar (William Shakespeare)
Jungle
Killer Angels
King Lear
Last of the Mohicans, The (James F. Cooper)
Letters from an American Farmer
Libbie (Mrs. George A. Custer)
Light in August
Light in the Forest, The
Little Foxes
Little House on the Prarie (Laura Ingalls Wilder)
Long Day's Journey into Night
Lord Jim
Love Medicine
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Lucky (Alice Sebold)
Lysistrata
Macbeth (William Shakespeare)
Madam Bovary
Main Street
Major Barbara
Man and Superman
Mansfield Park
Mayor of Casterbridge
Medea
Member of Venice
Merchant of Venice
Metamorphosis
Middlemarch
Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare)
Mill on the Floss
Misanthrope
Miss Lonelyhearts
Moll Flanders
Monkey Bridge
Mother Courage
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Warren's Profession
Much Ado About Nothing (William Shakespeare)
Murder in the Cathedral
My Antonia (Willa Cather)
My Home Is Over Jordan
My Last Duchess
Native Son
Native Speaker
Nineteen Eighty-Four
No-No Boy
No Exit
Notes from the Underground
Obasan
Oedipus Rex
One Hundred Years
O Pioneers! (Willa Cather)
Optimist's Daughter
Oresteia
Othello
Our Town
Owl Called My Name, The
Pamela
Paradise Lost
Passage to India
Persuasion
Phedre
Piano Lesson, The
Pnin
Portrait of a Lady
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Power and Glory, The
Praisesong for the Widow
Price of the Child, The
Pride and Prejudice
Proud and the Free, The
Pushing The Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears
Pygmalion
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Raisin in the Sun
Rape of the Lock
Red Badge of Courage, The
Redburn
Remains of the Day, The
Richard III
Roanoke: A Novel od the Lost Colony
Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead
Saint Joan
Sandbox
Scarlet Letter, The (Nathanial Hawthorne)
Shipping News
Sister Carrie
Slaughterhouse Five
Slave Dancer, The
Snow Falling on Cedars
Song of Solomon
Sons and Lovers
Sound of the Fury
Stone Angel, The
Stranger
Streams of Silver (R.A. Salvatore)
Streetcar Named Desire
Sula
Sun Also Rises
Tale of Two Cities
Tartuffe
Tempest
Tess of the D'Urbenvilles
Their Eyes were Watching God
Things Fall Apart
To the Lighthouse
Tom Jones
Trial
Trifles
Tristam Shandy
Turn of the Screw
Twelfth Night
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Victory
Volpone
Waiting for Godot
Washington Square
Waste Land
Watch on the Rhine
Watch That Ends the Night
Way of the World
Where The Broken Heart Still Beats
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Wide Sargasso Sea
Wild Duck
Winter's Tale
Winter in the Blood
Wise Blood
Witch of Blackbird Pond, The
Woman Warrior
Wuthering Heights (Charlotte Brontė)
Zoo Story
Zoot Suit

[nausicaa]

Uugggh...

High school reading lists. To quote Kurtz: "The Horror! The horror!"

I rue the day I decided to read "The Sound and the Fury" . And it's only now that I'm fully able to understand the extent of my hubris for choosing "Finnegan's Wake" as the topic of my final English essay. (Reason: "The Dubliners" had embued me w/ a false sense of security and I thought, "Hey, Joyce ain't *that* bad - why's everyone so terrified?")

The onslaught of nonsensical words and broken syntax should have warned me, but I was young(er) then, and innocent in the ways of evil literary figureheads who strive for confusion - nay, obfuscation - in every sentence - nay, every word.

ixcrisxi - approx. 50% of the books in your reading list are adequate for high school students. 25% of the rest you'll be coerced into reading in university (if you decide to major in English literature, that is), and the remaining 25% will continue to gather dust in Chapters locations worldwide.

[ixcrisxi]

... I know, nausicaa. I've read the first chapter in most and made a confident decision to leave them be forever. And, I'm definitely not going for an English Major. I'm thinking more of a music-related field. I just posted the list so others could have some good reads. Though, mine and your taste is different (as is everyone's). So, maybe they'll pick up a book and like it, even if we don't.

We'll only be forced in The Crucible, Hamlet, Death of a Salesman, My Antonia, A Separate Peace, The Scarlet Letter, The Red Badge of Courage, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights.

[brenna]

I don't know. I enjoyed a lot of the books on that list. I really liked Their Eyes Were Watching God, Tess of the D'Urberveilles (except the ending was stupid) Oedipus Rex, Alias Grace- I guess you don't really need the exhaustive list of books I like. I agree with you on some of them though, I didn't enjoy As I lay Dying at all!!

[nausicaa]

I don't know. I enjoyed a lot of the books on that list. I really liked Their Eyes Were Watching God, Tess of the D'Urberveilles (except the ending was stupid) Oedipus Rex, Alias Grace- I guess you don't really need the exhaustive list of books I like. I agree with you on some of them though, I didn't enjoy As I lay Dying at all!!

Sure, but "Mother Courage"?! I'll give $1,000 (Monopoly dollars) to anyone who's heard of it, and $10,000 to anyone who can tell me its author! (No fair "googlining", y'know.)

And "Joy Luck Club", "Little House on the Prairie" don't even *belong* on the same list as Sophocles and Shakespeare. (the travesty, travesty...)

[brenna]

Dangit! I could use $11,000. Sadly, you're right. I haven't heard of it, and I don't know the author.

[Illustrious]

Hmm... I'm trying to remember what we read in AP English...

Pride and Prejudice
Twelfth Night
Slaughterhouse-Five
Oedipus Rex
Hamlet
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
As I Lay Dying
Heart of Darkness
Wuthering Heights
Beloved
The Things They Carried

All were entertaining enough, though the depth in which each book was analyzed got quite annoying... imo, it's better to read the book and let that which you've analyzed soak in, rather than have other analyses being thrust down your throat.

[nausicaa]

Dangit! I could use $11,000. Sadly, you're right. I haven't heard of it, and I don't know the author.

Awww...don't worry about it. I'm also poor. So many things need to be paid off - like rent, for example.

Poor Bertolt Brecht! He was pretty damn ugly when he was alive, and now that he's dead, people don't even remember him...

[unexplained]

The book list is great. I'll be more exposed to a variety of books.

"Joy Luck Club" is actually a good read but I agree that it is not on the same par with Shakespeare. Nevertheless, it is one of the best out there.

[ixcrisxi]

Well, I think the point of the list is variety. I mean, of course some of the other books aren't on the same level as Shakespeare but they are there nonetheless. Most, if not all, of the books are written by popular/classic authors from around the world (mainly the U.S. and Europe).

In Honors, we're required to read American authors. And in Brit. Lit. and AP English, we are required to read European works.