Tasked with picking 10 books to be read in local high school

"Catcher in the Rye" by J D Salinger. It's an interesting story; plus, his writing style is great. Never a wasted word. Might be too easy for an honors class, though.

"Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy is pretty good. Old, but universally appealing.

FInally, "The House of Mirth" and "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton.

Ivremember reading the outsiders in highschool, it was awesome

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

The Stranger- Camus

Angle of Repose- Stegner

Islands in the Stream- Hemingway

If I were back in HS I would have rather read books that were entertaining (given that they are well written) rather than 'important' books. I think we would be better off piquing kids' interest in books and have them read more later on as well.

Infinite jest in high school classroom? Fascinating idea, but reality would spoil that quickly.

Grapes of wrath

Tropic of cancer

Blood meridian

Anything that will piss parents off is a good choice.

Not a novel, but as a course primer, I suggest both the first and second versions of Jack London's short story To Build A Fire.

Also, a short novel,

The Stone-mason Of Saint Point: A Village Tale

by Alphonse de Lamartine (1859).

This is the book recommended by a lady poet mentor to naturalist John Muir when he was searching for direction in his life. It's the book he read just before he went to explore and find Yosemite Valley.

A 2011 Xerox reproduction printing is available on amazon.com.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond (or anything else by him)

The Prince by Machiavelli,

Thus Spake Zarathustra by Fredrich Nietzsche

28 posts and nobody has said Ayn Rand. Sad

Anything by Orwell

I hear Huck Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird are great choices.

Uh uh wrote:

28 posts and nobody has said Ayn Rand. Sad

He said HS seniors, not 7th graders.

Catcher in the Rye is 9th grade material. So many recommendations here that only prove how poorly read Americans are, or that HS seniors of today are way behind those of 20 years ago.

I did like the lit prof's list. Need to add A Confederacy of Dunces to the last list.

In WV, you could simply have them read Faulkner all year, or all their lives for that matter. It probably wont sink in anyway.

If it is an AP course are there not recommendations made by the folks giving the exam?

Are you seriously suggesting Delilo for a class of HS kids at a school where barely anyone attends college and the teacher needs help from a Geology PhD to select literature?!?! That's funny. Maybe they should also try to tackle Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I am sure they would be able to follow right along with the themes and would get a lot out of it. Hahaha - too funny.

*Delillo

In all seriousness, suggest books that won't go over these kids' heads. If the conditions are as you described, this school system is not good and the students are not prepared for what most AP/Honors students are prepared for. Try to get the teacher to choose books with deep, meaningful themes that can also be enjoyed on a surface level. That way, the 1 or 2 kids who can actually handle real literature will flourish while the others can still enjoy a good book and maybe develop a taste for reading. With that said, here are a few easy, obvious suggestions:

Brave New World

Lord of the Flies

TKAM

Catch-22

There are so many great books in both our national literature and far beyond it. I would favor the survey format with an AP high school class; kids that age will probably benefit more from breadth than solely focusing on depth. Whether the theme is American lit (my preference because of where I live), something more local (as others have suggested), or something else

else, it's good to show students a swath of that literature and to contextualize it for them with some well-chosen additional readings, history, anecdotes, film, youtube clips, whatever.

A few other fiction texts appropriate to your student group that come to mind are Last of the Mohicans(early America), Flannery O'Connor's collected stories and Call It Sleep (mid 20th century), The Sellout, The Gangster We Are All Looking For and The Things They Carried (contemporary immigrant experience, inner-city America, war).

Those who recommended All the Pretty Horses (McCarthy's less challenging work) and All the King's Men are on to something, too.

Yeah, I was serious on White Noise. Have you read it? It is very accessible as a story, and you can dig into it as much or as little as you want. I found it far more accessible to students than Catch 22, and for the most part the students found it more enjoyable.

usedtoteachcollegeenglish wrote:

Yeah, I was serious on White Noise. Have you read it? It is very accessible as a story, and you can dig into it as much or as little as you want. I found it far more accessible to students than Catch 22, and for the most part the students found it more enjoyable.

White Noise is one of my all-time favorites, I am just not sure that a bunch of (most likely) under-read HS kids would appreciate it. The plot is so slow-moving through the beginning. Of course, this is because Delillo is beautifully each of his characters but, again, I am not convinced under-read HSers would appreciate the pacing.

You are probably right about Catch-22 though. I am skimming through some of it again right now and the stuff that makes me laugh so much probably wouldn't be very funny or enjoyable for most.

ForRealThough wrote:

usedtoteachcollegeenglish wrote:

Yeah, I was serious on White Noise. Have you read it? It is very accessible as a story, and you can dig into it as much or as little as you want. I found it far more accessible to students than Catch 22, and for the most part the students found it more enjoyable.

White Noise is one of my all-time favorites, I am just not sure that a bunch of (most likely) under-read HS kids would appreciate it. The plot is so slow-moving through the beginning. Of course, this is because Delillo is beautifully each of his characters but, again, I am not convinced under-read HSers would appreciate the pacing.

You are probably right about Catch-22 though. I am skimming through some of it again right now and the stuff that makes me laugh so much probably wouldn't be very funny or enjoyable for most.

*beautifully crafting each of his characters.

Also - I do think Orwell is a good suggestion as pointed out by others. Easy to enjoy on a surface level, but also much deeper themes at work.

House of leaves by Mark danielewski

ForRealThough wrote:

usedtoteachcollegeenglish wrote:

Yeah, I was serious on White Noise. Have you read it? It is very accessible as a story, and you can dig into it as much or as little as you want. I found it far more accessible to students than Catch 22, and for the most part the students found it more enjoyable.

White Noise is one of my all-time favorites, I am just not sure that a bunch of (most likely) under-read HS kids would appreciate it. The plot is so slow-moving through the beginning. Of course, this is because Delillo is beautifully each of his characters but, again, I am not convinced under-read HSers would appreciate the pacing.

You are probably right about Catch-22 though. I am skimming through some of it again right now and the stuff that makes me laugh so much probably wouldn't be very funny or enjoyable for most.

Good points. I forgot how slow the plot feels. I first encountered it as a 19 year old in college, and to me at the time, it was pretty exciting.

I was also looking for a book to add on the list that includes some time spent at a college. Kids that might think about going to college could get some enjoyment out of that. White Noise isn't quite a campus novel, but it has some of that.