Recommended Summer Reading List for High School Students This list of recommended books is presented in no particular order (including alphabetical), and is hardly complete. These are title suggestions gathered from the members of the English Department of books they have read and enjoyed. The key to good summer reading is finding a story you like, and, hopefully that book is at or around your reading level. Enjoy!
FICTION: Families Good and Bad:
Fantasy/Adventure The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Once and Future King by T.H. White The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Bradley Life of Pi by Yann Martel Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice Ordinary
American Gods by Neil Gaiman People by Judith Guest Liar’s Club by
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice Mary Karr
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
Fall on Your Knees by Anne Marie McDonald Sci-Fi The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card by Joshua Braff
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Douglas Adams Neale Hurston
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell Romance
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Dystopian: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
1984 by George Orwell Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Pride and Prejudice/Sense and Sensibility/Emma by Jane Austen The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Growing Up and Coming of Age
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Middlesex by Jeffery Eugendies Graphic Novels: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving Maus by Art Spiegelman Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Geek Love by Katharine Dunn The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll
Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver Hoop Dreams by Ben Joravsky
Historical Fiction Mystery/Suspense
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich The Beach by Alex Garland Maria Remarque Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem The God of Small Things by Arundahti
Roy Les Miserable by Victor Hugo Great novels that don’t fit into any one category: Band of Brothers by Stephan Ambrose The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak Watership Down by Richard Adams In the Time of Butterflies Julia Alvarez Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Cabon One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Deus Lo Volt: Chronicle of the Crusades by Evan Connell High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
NON-FICTION:
Humor Biographies and Autobiographies
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller The Flame Trees of Thika by Elsepth Huxley:
Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle West with the Sun by Beryl Markham
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller Psychology The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Sacks
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Kesey The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Keysen
Sports Cleopatra by Stacey Schiff Out of Africa
The Natural by Bernard Malmud by Isak Dinsen
Marie Antoinette by Antonia Frasier The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox: Mending the Gap between Science and the Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie Humanities by Stephan Jay Gould
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Catapult by Jim Paul Out of Idaho by Jonathan Katz
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand Current Events:
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo Science: Into Thin Air by John Krakauer The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean
Jarhead by Anthony Swofford