At Belmont Hill we value highly the reading our students do outside of class. With that in mind, our summer reading policy asks all boys to read a total of four books over the summer. Each form has required commonly read selections that are listed below. We also have one book, Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, which will be read by all students and faculty. Given the length of our school wide read, all boys in Forms I and II can omit chapters 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14. The remaining elective books for all students can be selected from the enclosed Supplemental Summer Reading list. In addition, students can email our English Department Chair David Leonardis ([email protected]) or me ([email protected]), to have an unlisted book approved. The required commonly read books are, respectively:

All students and faculty: Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson

I: Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip, Jordan Sonnenblink; The MisFits, James Howe II: New Boy, Julian Houston III: The Real All Americans, Sally Jenkins IV: The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini; All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque V: The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien; In the Heart of the Sea Nathaniel Philbrick VI: The Road to Character David Brooks

Just to complicate matters, many of our AP courses require summer reading. Each of these required titles will be counted towards the students’ total of four. Given the length of Fall of Giants this work will count as two titles. Required titles follow:

AP European History (History 4): Fall of Giants, Ken Follet AP Environmental Science: Empire of the Beetle, Andrew Nikiforuk AP French Language: Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupéry AP Spanish Language: Devolver al remitente by Julia Álvarez

While we will continue to require certain checks on reading in September (usually a report or quiz in the first week or so of school), we do hope these selections will help foster a love of reading in all of our students. Families are required to purchase these titles independently.

Sincerely,

Michael Grant Dean of Studies [email protected] The Emperor of Ocean Park, Stephen L. Carter Supplemental SummerEmpire Reading Falls, Richard List Russo June 2016

Fiction English Creek, Ivan Doig* Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton* A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole Fade, Robert Cormier* A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury* A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving* Fall on Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho Fallen Angels, Walter D. Myers Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner* A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway* Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid Flatland, Edward Abbot And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje The First Man in Rome, Colleen McCollough Fools Crow, Another World, Pat Barker The Foundation, Isaac Asimov* Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne Fountainhead, Ayn Rand Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis Frankenstein, Mary Shelley Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie Friday Night Lights, H. G. Bissinger The Barrytown Trilogy, Roddy Doyle Garden in the Dunes, The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver Gold Coast, Elmore Leonard Bel Canto, Ann Patchett The Big Rock Candy Mountain, William Stegner* Heir to the Glimmering World, Cynthis Ozick Black Cherry Blues, James Lee Burke Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams Brave New World, Aldous Huxley The House on Mango Street,

Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut* Interview With the Vampire, Anne Rice Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn, Paul Watkins I, Claudius, Robert Graves Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko I Know This Much is True, Wally Lamb The Chamber, John Grisham* I Was Amelia Earhart, Jane Mendelsohn Charm School, Nelson DeMille The Illusion, Tony Kushner The Chosen, Chaim Potok* Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri The Cider House Rules, John Irving* Interview With the Vampire, Anne Rice Cities of the Plain, Cormac McCarthy* Ironweed, Claudius the God, Robert Graves Clear and Present Danger, Tom Clancy* Jonathan Argyll, Ian Pears* Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier Jeeves to the Rescue, P.G. Wodehouse* The Color of Water, James MacBride The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan* Congo, Michael Crichton* Killer Angels, Michael Shaara The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschild Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis De Bernieres Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini The Crystal Cave, Mary Stewart The Land, Mildred D. Taylor Diaspora, Greg Egan The Last Shot, Darcy Frey Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee The Last Time I Saw Mother, Arlene J. Chai Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood, The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett Fatima Mernissi Lord of the Rings, J. R. Tolkien A Dry White Season, Andre Brink Dune, Frank Herbert* A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt East is East, T. Coraghessan Boyle The Moon and Sixpence, W. Somerset Maugham Education of Little Tree, Forrest Carter My Antonia, Willa Cather* Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

New Boy, Julian Houston Non Fiction Northern Lights, Tim O’Brien All Over but the Shoutin’, Rick Bragg October Sky, Homer Hickom Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir, Frank McCourt The Odessa File, Frederick Forsyth Animals In Translation, Temple Grandin Offshore, Penelope Fitzgerald April 1865: The Month That Saved America, Jay Winik One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy Alexander Solzhenitsyn* Autobiography of , Malcolm X One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia : Martin Luther King, Jr., and The Marquez* Southern Christian Leaderhsip Conference, David One River, Wade Davis Garrow Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen Blink, Malcolm Gladwell The Ox-Bow Incident, Clark [ed. Wallace Stegner] The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Seierstad Palace Walk, Naguib Mahfouz Breaks of the Game, Pastures of Heaven, John Steinbeck A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking Playmates, Robert B. Parker* Colored People, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Peace Like a River, Leif Enger Common Ground, J. Anthony Lukas Possession, A. S. Byatt Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Reckless, Craig Lucas Destruction of Hilter’s Germany, 1941-1945, Michael Ringwold, Larry Niven R. Beschloss A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Roots, Alex Haley Neighborhood, David Simon, Edward Burns Rule of the Bone, Dispatches, Schroedinger’s Cat, Robert Wilson Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama Secrets of the Tsil Café, Thomas Fox Averill Emperor’s Last Stand, Julia Blackburn Shadowdivers, Robert Kurson The Endurance, Caroline Alexander Ship Fever, Andrea Barrett The Face of Battle, John Keegan The Shipping News, Annie Proulx Field Days, Roger Swain The Sixteen Pleasures, Robert Hellenga Grant, William McFeely Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson Grant, Jean Edward Smith Snow In August, Pete Hamill The Great War and Modern History, Paul Fussell Sofia Petrovna, Lydia Chukovskaya Hyperspace, Michio Kaku Song of Solomon, * In Pharaoh’s Army: Memoirs of the Lost War, Tobias Sophie’s Choice, William Styron Wolff Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer Technology, Neil Postman Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston It’s Not About the Bike, Lance Armstrong, Sally Jenkins The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien John Adams, David McCullough* The Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. LeGuin John Paul Jones, Evan Thomas This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald* King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschild Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis The Last Shot, Darcy Frey Trinity, Leon Uris* Medal of Honor, Allen Mikaelian, Mike Wallace The Wailing Wind, Tony Hillerman* Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder War and Peace, Leon Tolstoy Watership Down, Richard Adams The Naturalist, E. O. Wilson Where Angels Fear to Tread, E. M. Forster* Night, Elie Wiesel* Where the Heart Is, Billie Letts Path Between The Seas: The Creation of the Panama Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls* Canal, 1870-1914, David McCullough* Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte The Path to Power––The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Xanth series, Piers Anthony A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Michael Dorris*

*Or any other book by this particular author

Volume 1, Robert A. Caro [or Vols. 2 and 3: Means of Ascent; Master of the Senate] The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard* The Rice Room, Ben Fong-Torres The Rise of , Edmund Morris River Town, Peter Hessler The Road from Coorain, Jill Conway

A Sense of Where You Are, John McPhee* Summer of ‘49, David Halberstam* Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman

Tao of Pooh, Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris Transformed Cell, Stephen Rosenberg Truman, David McCullough* Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck*

Unbroken Laura Hillebrand Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West, Stephen E. Ambrose

A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson Wait ‘Til Next Year, Doris Kearns Goodwin* War as I Knew It, General George S. Patton

A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle Young Men and Fire, Norman Maclean