English Summer Reading 2007
PLEASE NOTE: As with previous years, summer reading for the English Department is optional. The list below represents a "teachers' favorites" list of books, similar to what you see at the video store when the clerks have a shelf to display their favorite movies. It is meant to pique your interest; you do not have to read the books selected by your 2007-08 English teacher, or those selected by any teacher, for that matter. In fact, you do not have to read anything at all this summer for English, although we hope that you don't select that option. Regardless of what you read, you may complete one or more of the writing options for extra credit to be turned in the first day of class in the fall.
Below, you will find some of the English Department's favorite books, as selected by each teacher in the department. Perhaps a book's description sounds intriguing, or maybe you liked all of the books you read for a certain teacher and trust her or his judgment. Either way, we would love it if you selected one of the books from this list and read it over the summer as part of your suggested summer reading.
MS. JUDITH CHRISTIAN
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
What would you do if you were blamed for killing your neighbor's dog? The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, a first novel by British author Mark Haddon, is told from the point of view of an autistic 15-year old boy. (For the autistic person, most stimuli register equal impact, and because these pieces of information cannot usually be processed effectively, life becomes a very confusing mess of constantly competing signals.)
This is a mystery novel. The book opens with a neighbor's pet poodle dead in the front yard; Wellington was stabbed with a pitchfork. Christopher is determined to solve the crime, using his favorite novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, as his inspiration. He fancies himself a 21st century Sherlock Holmes.
As he attempts to solve the mystery, Christopher encounters some very difficult situations in his own life. He faces his challenges bravely and learns a great deal about himself and the world in which he lives.
The Human Stain by Phillip Roth
This novel is set in the US during the time of the impeachment hearings of President Clinton (1998). The main character, Coleman Silk, is a long-time teacher of Classics at a small New England college. As the book opens, Silk is accused of racism by several of his students. Is he guilty? You'll have to read to discover the secrets of Coleman Silk. The truth is complicated and incredible.
This book is the third in a trilogy of novels attacking the small-mindedness that exists in American society. Phillip Roth won the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for this novel; it was also a New York Times "Editors' Choice" for one of the best books of 2000.
MS. SUSAN COOK
Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman
A haunting portrait of lives arriving at different destinies, this is Wideman's seminal memoir about two brothers - one an award-winning novelist, the other a fugitive wanted for robbery and murder. Wideman recalls the capture of his younger brother, details the subsequent trials that resulted in the sentence of life in prison, and provides vivid views of the American prison system. A gripping, unsettling account, Brothers and Keepers weighs the bonds of blood, tenderness and guilt that connect Wideman to his brother and measures the distance that lies between them.
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
What is revolutionary Western literature doing in revolutionary Iran? Perhaps author Susan Sontag says it best: "I was enthralled and moved by Azar Nafisi's account of how she defied, and helped others defy radical Islam's war about women. Her memoir contains important and properly complex reflections about the ravages of theocracy, about thoughtfulness, and about the ordeals of freedom - as well as a stirring account of the pleasures and deepening of consciousness that result from an encounter with great literature and an inspired teacher." Nafisi ends up becoming a heroine of the Islamic Republic as she gathers eight women in a secret book club in her home to read the forbidden fiction of the West.
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis
Moneyball is a quest for the secret to success in baseball. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-budget Oakland A's, visionary general manager Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball theorists. They are all in search of new baseball knowledge - insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money.
MR. JOSEPH COYLE
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Herbert Selby
The first novel to articulate the rage and pain of life in "the other America", Last Exit to Brooklyn is a classic of postwar American writing. Selby's searing portrait of the powerless, the homeless, the dispossessed, is as fiercely and frighteningly apposite today as when it was first published twenty-five years ago. This book is recommended for upperclassmen only.
Ten Men Dead by David Beresford
In 1981 ten men starved themselves to death inside the walls of Long Kesh prison in Belfast. While a stunned world watched and distraught family members kept bedside vigils, one "soldier" after another slowly went to his death in an attempt to make Mararget Thatcher's government recognize them as political prisoners rather than common criminals.
Drawing extensively on secret IRA documents and letters from the prisoners smuggled out at the time, David Beresford tells the gripping story of these strikers and their devotion to the cause. An intensely human story, Ten Men Dead offers a searing portrait of strife-torn Ireland, of the IRA, and the passions - on both sides - that Republicanism arouses.
MR. JOSEPH GRIFFIN
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
This is a story of a boy, Antonio, and his dreams. It is also the story of La Grande, Ultima, the curandera. She is an old woman who has a special power derived from the herbs of the earth and a special knowledge of life. Ultima enters Antonio's life while the boy is quite young. It is she who realizes the value of his dreams, however beautiful or frightening. It is she who provides him with the strength to cope with the interminable conflict between the divisions within the human spirit. Through his relationship with Ultima, Antonio receives the power to grow, to dream, to survive in a world of good and evil, faith and superstition, life and death.
Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt
His name was Black Elk, warrior and medicine man of the Oglala Sioux. From the Battle of Little Big Horn, which he witnessed as a boy of 13, to the last terrible massacre of the Indians at Wounded Knee, Black Elk lived the life of the Plains Indian and saw the death of his people.
In this book, he tells, as no man can ever tell it again, his vision of the meaning of life on the planet as it was for the Indian of the western plains, and as it might be for all men.
The great story of the Sioux is ended, and the sacred hoop of life is broken, but in this book the spirit of Black Elk's people lives on.
MR. JAMES O'BRIEN
In recommending summer reading, one never knows where to start. In that case, it is probably wise to start at the beginning or with some seminal works of great importance that everyone presumes the decently educated person has read or has some familiarity with. I would recommend that you consider reading all or some part of one or more of the milestone books in Western civilization, perhaps…
Cervantes' Don Quixote. Written in two volumes and extending for close to a thousand pages in some editions, the book would be a challenge to finish, but it is worth a visit, and the modern reader may start at the beginning and read quite a bit before getting bored or worn out. At this point, he/she will have discovered the background for some of the famous images of Spain's original odd couple, the concept of tilting at windmills, and the goal of the "impossible dream."
Dante's Divine Comedy. A defining work of the Middle Ages, the Comedy is packed with historical allusions and references which will not be obvious to anyone who does not have an edition that contains elaborate notes. However, even without notes this epic poem is very readable and interesting at a basic narrative level. If the reader only reads one book of Dante's three parts, he/she will have a sample of work that stunned and engaged its audience then and still entertains readers today, centuries later.
Or read some of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, or if real ambitious, Milton's Paradise Lost. These are big books of varying degrees of difficulty, but they are rewarding experiences for students who want to see what inspired the significant authors of our culture.
MR. CHRISTIAN PATRAGNONI
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
This classic mystery novel has all of the common players - gritty private investigators, two-timing confidantes, slippery criminals, manipulative businessmen, and innocent patsies. Set amidst the sprawling Los Angeles landscape, this novel, along with others, sparked one of the most creative movements in American cinema - Film Noir.
Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
Part detective story, part social commentary, this novel revolves around a case of switched identities. Set in the South before the Civil War, the story entwines a discussion of race in America within the framework of a mystery novel. Confronted with the case, Pudd'nhead Wilson ultimately reveals more than he imagines.
MR. CHRISTIAN RUPERTUS
Tunnel Vision by Keith Lowe
Andy is your average twenty-something Londoner, with one exception: He is obsessed with the Underground, London's massive subway system. Needless to say his fiancée doesn't get it, especially when he disappears on the day before their scheduled trip on the Eurostar to Paris for their wedding. Little does she know that her Andy has made a friendly wager with one of his subway-philiac buddies. In order to obtain his ticket for the Eurostar and join his fiancée en route to their nuptials, he must ride the entire loop of Underground trains in one 24-hour period, an odyssey for the 21st century. This story is a wild, witty examination of obsession and one man's pursuit of his passion.
Fools Crow by James Welch
Take William Wallace out of medieval Scotland and drop him into the Blackfeet tribe of northwest Montana in the 1870's, and you've got Fools Crow. This young warrior and medicine man has his very existence threatened when the Napikwans, his tribe's term for the white men, arrive to exterminate him and his brethren in the name of "manifest destiny." To take a stand against the legions of the numerically superior United States Army, Fools Crow must summon up all of the physical skills and spiritual powers at his disposal, calling on both his fellow warriors and his long-deceased ancestors to prevent annihilation.
MR. ANDREW WHELAN
To the White Sea by James Dickey
His bomber hit by anti-aircraft fire, an American gunner must parachute into Tokyo days before the great firebomb raid on that city. This book contains many instances of poetic and philosophical language alongside a blood-and-guts action story wherein the hero commits a large number of murders, both necessary and gratuitous. The main focus here is how to escape and how to become invisible in a nation where you are the outsider. Dickey's solution is highly imaginative and entertaining.
Being There by Jerzy Kozinski
A modern classic, Being There is one of the most popular and significant works from a writer of international stature. It is the story of Chauncey Gardiner - Chance, an enigmatic but distinguished man who emerges from nowhere to become an heir to the throne of a Wall Street tycoon, a presidential policy adviser, and a media icon. Truly "a man without qualities", Chance's straightforward responses to popular concerns are heralded as visionary. But though everyone is quoting him, no one is really sure what he's saying. And filling in the blanks in his background proves impossible. Being There is a brilliantly satiric look at the unreality of American media culture that is, if anything, more trenchant now than ever.