Summer Reading Lists 2011

Reading remains one of life’s great pleasures and an important means of broadening our horizons of knowledge and experience. This list includes books of diverse cultural perspectives for readers with varying interests and abilities. Enjoy your reading discoveries. All students must read FOUR books, some of which are specified for particular classes and grades. Other choices are left to you, but you should be ready to discuss your reading early in the fall. Bring the required reading book(s) with you when you return. If you cannot obtain a book from your local bookstore or online, please call the Deerfield Academy Bookstore at (413) 774-1513 to arrange a shipment.

NOTE: e-Readers MAY be utilized for your OPTIONAL books – however – a paper copy of your REQUIRED book will be needed for class.

Download reading lists as PDFs: English I and II, English III, English IV

Required Books

• ENGLISH I: Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle
• ENGLISH II: Martin, Valerie. Mary Reilly; Stevenson, Robert Louis. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• ENGLISH III: Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• American Studies: Bradley, David. The Chaneysville Incident
• ENGLISH IV: Determined by your scheduled elective.
• Desire and the Marketplace: Golden, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha
• Fifty/Fifty: Yates, Richard. Revolutionary Road
• Future Shock: Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451
• Honors Literature: Sophocles. The Oedipus Cycle (Fitts and Fitzgerald, ed.)
• New York Novels: McCann, Colum. Let the Great World Spin
• Reading Insanity: Am I Crazy?: Bohjalian, Chris. Double Bind
• The Jazz Age and the Lost Generation: Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front
• The Shape of What Returns: Barker, Pat. Regeneration
• Walking Shadows: Bryson, Bill. Shakespeare: The World as Stage
• Creative Writing Workshop: Wolff, Tobias. The Night in Question
• Creative Nonfiction: Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood

Freshmen and Sophomores

• Abbott, Edwin. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. A classic novel that explores the perception of dimensions. (Recommended for Geometry)
• Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Clashing against old-world restraints and tempting new freedoms, four sisters from Santo Domingo lead new lives in the U.S.
• Bainbridge, Beryl. The Birthday Boys. Travel across Antarctica on the doomed Robert Falcon Scott expedition in 1912. Determine if the explorers were heroes or fools.
• Barrows, Annie and Shaffer, Mary Ann. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Living under Nazi rule on Guernsey, the islanders find comfort in books, letters, and friends.
• Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone. A former boy soldier escapes the horrors of the war in Sierra Leone.
• Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. Imagine a world without books—or the joy they can create.
• Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Young Jane survives hardships at a grim Yorkshire boarding school and makes an independent life as a governess to Mr. Rochester’s ward. Then, problems arise.
• Brown, Claude. Manchild in the Promised Land. Harlem’s vibrancy and racism’s viciousness serve as a backdrop for a young man’s struggle to rise from a life of petty crime to an educated freedom.
• Courtenay, Bryce. The Power of One. A lonely British boy in South Africa learns important lessons about race and courage in following his own heart and two friends, one black and one white.
• Dallas, Sandra. Tallgrass. A girl on a Colorado farm confronts the truth about a murder and the injustice of the Japanese internment camps in World War II.
• Davies, Peter Ho. The Welsh Girl. A P.O.W. camp for Germans placed in Wales creates tensions in the community and upheaval in the life of 17-year-old Esther.
• Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. A Mexican girl learns the secrets of her mother’s kitchen and heart in this favorite of the magic realism genre.
• Flanagan, Richard. Wanting. An aboriginal orphan in Tasmania, an Arctic explorer, and Charles Dickens all want something more from life.
• Flannery, Sarah. In Code: A Mathematical Journey. Flannery, at the age of 16, discovers an innovative encryption system 22 times faster than the best available at the time.
• Frazier, Ian. Great Plains. Learn the local color, lore, and landscape of the Dakotas.
• Fugard, Lisa. Skinner’s Drift. Eva van Rensburg returns to post-apartheid South Africa and learns her family’s history in the racial struggles.
• Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying. Two black men, a condemned criminal and a reluctant teacher, share lessons about dignity in this moving story set in Louisiana.
• Gould, Stephen Jay. The Panda’s Thumb. A science writer explains the oddities of evolution.
• Grann, David. The Lost City of Z. A modern-day journalist follows the tracks of an explorer of the Amazon and solves the mystery of a legendary ancient city.
• Guest, Judith. Ordinary People. Before the Oscar-winning movie came this portrait of the dissolution of an all-too-typical middle-class family in the face of a beloved boy’s accidental drowning.
• Guterson, David. Snow Falling on Cedars. A murder mystery wraps around a larger story of lost identities because of World War II and the internment of Japanese-Americans.
• Halberstam, David. Firehouse. Follow thirteen firefighters into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
• Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. Two childhood friends lose and find one another in Afghanistan, a country blasted into chaos by war and the Taliban.
• Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Can Bernard Marx find love and stay true in an engineered Utopia?
• Irving, John. A Prayer for Owen Meaney. Can the only son of a New Hampshire granite worker be God’s instrument? Little Owen finds answers in his peculiar way.
• Jenkins, Sally. The Real All Americans. Discover how college football came of age with Jim Thorpe at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
• Johnson, Steven. The Ghost Map. Cholera ravages London and a minister and doctor track the disease’s origin and path to limit the deadly effects.
• Jones, Lloyd. Mister Pip. In the middle of a civil war, residents of an island in the South Pacific find an ally in the imagination of Charles Dickens and his great character Pip.
• Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. McMurphy and Big Nurse square off in a mental institution where freedom and authority collide.
• Kidder, Tracy. Strength in What Remains. Marvel at Deo’s escape from genocide in Burundi and his return to his country to found a health clinic. (Deo‟s younger brothers attended Deerfield.)
• Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal Dreams. In the Southwest, a young woman finds love and new meaning in her life by embracing dreams, Native American myths, and her past.
• Knowles, John. A Separate Peace. Enjoy the beloved tale of boarding school friendship.
• Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Interpreter of Maladies. Make your way into American life with the immigrants who struggle to balance their old and new lives.
• Lansing, Alfred. Endurance. After being shipwrecked in Antarctica and drifting 2,000 miles on ice floes for many months, Ernest Shackleton then sails more than 700 miles in a lifeboat to bring rescuers.
• Mason, Zachary. The Lost Books of the Odyssey. Imagine the epic anew through these inventive stories.
• McPhee, John. The Headmaster. Examine how Frank Boyden led a “school to greatness.”
• Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. An idealist fights (and waits) in the Spanish Civil War.
• Otsuka, Julie. When the Emperor Was Divine. Follow the Japanese-American experience in the WWII internment camps through the eyes of each member of one uprooted family.
• Robinson, Lewis. Officer Friendly. Enjoy a former Deerfield teacher’s stories set in Maine.
• Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Through the mind and voice of the legendary Holden Caulfield, we join a modern-day odyssey as the expelled preppie navigates through a lonely weekend in Manhattan.
• Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. Narrated by a murder victim looking down from heaven, a family’s story in the wake of the crime unfolds in loving detail.
• Sobel, Dava. Longitude. Marvel at the ingenuity and idiocy in this tale of the race to invent the chronometer that allowed mariners to sail with more certainty about destinations.
• Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Trace the stories of four immigrant families with histories and hopes in both China and San Francisco.
• Tóibín, Colm. Brooklyn. Can a young Irish woman leave her roots and find new life in Brooklyn in the 1950s?
• Tremain, Rose. The Road Home. An immigrant from Eastern Europe loses and recovers himself in England.
• Trumbo, Dalton. Johnny Got His Gun. Howard Zinn called this the best anti-war novel ever penned.
• Winterson, Jeannette. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. A British girl growing up in a Pentecostal family discovers she is a lesbian, to the horror of her family and church, who set out to “rescue” her.
• Wolff, Tobias. Old School. The famous writers visiting a boarding school are not the only ones creating imagined lives and identities. Teachers and students seem to be practicing the same craft.

Juniors

• Abu-Jaber, Diana. Crescent. An Iraqi-American chef discovers the ingredients for love and understanding of her Arab heritage as she cooks at Nadia’s Café in Los Angeles.
• Bradley, David. The Chaneysville Incident. An African-American historian learns about his father and himself in uncovering the mystery of a shocking incident. (Recommended for Honors U.S. History)
• Brooks, Geraldine. March. Mr. March, the absent father in Little Women, makes his way home to his family after his harrowing experiences in the Civil War.
• Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Brown chronicles the intertwined fates of Native Americans and the immigrants who “tamed the West.”
• Bryson, Bill. A Walk in the Woods. Travel the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail with a wonderful storyteller.
• Canin, Ethan. America. America Is the American Dream thriving in the late 20th century?
• Cole, K.C. The Universe and The Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty. Explore links between mathematics and a variety of social, political, and scientific issues. (Recommended for FST)
• Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. A naive boy heads to the Civil War to become a hero, but his courage falters in the face of overwhelming armies and an indifferent universe.
• Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. A creative Dominican teenager finds a way to express himself amidst the tensions in his life and family.
• Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time. The hardships of the Dust Bowl and Depression described here will be almost beyond imagination.
• Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Explore the limits and power of healing in this account about Hmong immigrants in California. (Recommended by Round Square committee)
• Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. Using the stream-of-consciousness technique, Faulkner weaves the story of Addie Burden’s death and slow burial through the eyes of her mourning family.
• Filkins, Dexter. The Forever War. Live the Iraq War through the eyes of a New York Times reporter.
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. We follow Amory Blaine through prep school, Princeton, love, and loss, and leave him peering into adulthood and trying to figure out what he believes.
• Ford, Richard. Independence Day. Over a July Fourth weekend, realtor Frank Bascombe discovers again how to live with failed expectations in the land of the American Dream.
• Frazier, Ian. On the Rez. Wander the Pine Ridge Reservation with Le War Lance.
• Gordon, Jaimy. Lord of Misrule. Experience the splendor, suspense, and sorrow of small-time horse racing.
• Greenway, Alice. White Ghost Girls. Two American sisters come of age in Hong Kong in 1967 as the Vietnam War escalates and tensions rise in China.
• Horwitz, Tony. A Voyage Long and Strange. Rediscover the stories of the first visitors in the New World.
• Kanter, Seth. Ordinary Wolves. In remote Northern Alaska, a white boy rejects modern life in search of the ways of the elders in an Inupiak village.
• Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. Gogol Ganguli, son of parents in a traditional arranged Indian marriage, tries to define himself in his new home and changing lifestyle in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• Lee, Chang Rae. Aloft. Even flying high in his small plane, a retired Long Island builder cannot escape the pull of his family’s bonds and problems.
• Maclean, Norman. A River Runs Through It and Collected Stories. Maclean tells the story of his family and fly-fishing, of bar fights and bait fishermen, of a Montana “with the dew still on it.”
• Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Follows the turbulent life of this famous man, from his rough youth through prison and conversion to Islam and into his leadership period.
• Mann, Charles. 1491. You may be surprised by the civilizations that thrived in the Americas before Columbus and European diseases arrived.
• McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses. Two young men take off for Mexico on their horses and grow up as they experience love, imprisonment, and other adventures.
• McPhee, John. Levels of the Game. Arthur Ashe struggles to overcome prejudice against black tennis players.
• Mengestu, Dinaw. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. An Ethiopian immigrant battles the despair in his new community in Washington, D.C.
• Meyers, Kent. The Work of Wolves. Three apparent misfits work to rescue three abused horses in South Dakota.
• Meyer, Phillip. American Rust. Two friends strive to escape decaying factory towns and broken dreams.
• Mezrich, Ben. Bringing Down the House. The inside story of six M.I.T. students who took Vegas for millions. An intriguing true story of how mathematics beat the system.
• Morrison, Toni. Sula. Two young black women, Sula and Nel, seek the freedom to be themselves in a society that limits their experiments in friendship and love.
• Mullaney, Craig The Unforgiving Minute. Neither a West Point education nor a Rhodes scholarship could truly prepare an Army lieutenant for the crucible of war.
• O’Brien, Tim. In the Lake of the Woods. The My Lai massacre and deception hang over this novel about a senate candidate’s desire to triumph over his past and present.
• Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea. If you don’t have time for Moby Dick, try this true account of whalers struggling to survive a 2,000-mile sail in small boats after the Essex, their Nantucket whaling ship, sank after being rammed by a whale.
• Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. After graduating from college, Esther Greenwood works in New York as an editor. As her life becomes more complex, her grasp on reality diminishes. A chilling look at depression and insanity, based heavily on Plath’s own life.
• Poe, Edgar Allan. Selected Stories. Poe penetrates his haunted and obsessed characters’ secrets.
• Potok, Chaim. My Name is Asher Lev. A Jewish artist struggles with the demands of faith and art.
• Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. Follow the Joad family from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California—the paradise that supposedly would end their problems.
• Strout, Elizabeth. Olive Kitteridge. These thirteen linked stories capture the life of Maine schoolteacher.
• Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. Journey through time in telegraphic, schizophrenic style with Billy Pilgrim, who can never escape the horrors of the Dresden firebombing.
• Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. With the help of her husband’s lover, the flamboyant blues-singing Shug Avery, Celie finds the courage to defy the oppressive restraints of race and sex and to delight in love.
• Watson. Bruce. Freedom Summer. White college students and black activists join together in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. (Watson is a former Wilson Fellow at Deerfield.)
• Watson, James. The Double Helix. Relive the race to discover the structure of DNA.
• Wiggins, Marianne. The Shadow Catcher. A writer journeys into the lives of two men—photographer Edward Curtis and her own elusive father.
• Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff. Travel into space with the seven Mercury astronauts.
• Wright, Richard. Native Son. Who or what is ultimately responsible for the gruesome murders Bigger Thomas commits?

Seniors

• Adiche, Chimamanda. Half of a Yelllow Sun. In post-colonial Nigeria, three children of different backgrounds experience the ravages of civil war and relief of union.
• Adiga, Aravind. White Tiger. Ride along with Indian taxi driver becoming a “social entrepreneur.”
• Alexie, Sherman. Indian Killer. An Indian serial killer seeking retribution for the white man’s crimes against his people also must come to terms with his own past.
• Baker, Nicholson. The Anthologist. Enjoy a writer’s humorous struggle to finish his introduction to an anthology of poems.
• Best, Joel. Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists. Resist the spin doctors. (Recommended for statisticians)
• Brooks, Geraldine. The People of the Book. Follow the fascinating tale of a book that preserves a cultural history under threats.
• Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. Alex, the teenager from Hell, having committed unspeakable mayhem in a bleak, futuristic England, is ‘programmed’ by the state to sin no more.
• Camus, Albert. The Plague. Still timely, this existential novel studies the human condition and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps through Algiers.
• Carter, Angela. Bloody Chamber. In refreshing new language and with a clearly modern point of view, Carter retells traditional fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood and Blackbeard the Pirate.
• Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace. This searing novel follows a white South African professor’s descent into disgrace in a country he seemingly no longer understands.
• Cole, K.C. The Universe and The Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty. Explore links between mathematics and a variety of social, political, and scientific issues. (Recommended for FST)
• Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker. A Haitian woman traveling to Florida from New York with her father learns the truth about his life and work in Haiti under the Duvalier dictatorship.
• Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker. Examine the intricacies of evolution.
• DeLillo, Don. White Noise. One day the Gladneys are living an ordinary suburban life and then a toxic cloud descends, awakening them to the dangers pulsing through the American atmosphere and culture.
• Egan, Jennifer. The Goon Squad. In a daring style, Egan explores how youthful rebels find or lose themselves as they reach middle age.
• Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. Nameless, yet real, Ellison’s African-American protagonist journeys from the rural South to Harlem, discovering himself and his invisibility.
• Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Explore the limits and power of healing in this account about Hmong immigrants in California. (Round Square)
• Finkel, David. The Good Soldiers. An embedded reporter recounts a heartbreaking year in the life of American battalion fighting in post-surge Iraq.
• Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Practioner of le mot juste, “the exact word,” Flaubert examines the hypocrisies and small-mindedness of the French bourgeoisie, its conformities and spatial limits.
• Forster, E.M. Room with a View. Follow British travelers as they move between repressive England and the more permissive Continent.
• Gaarder, Joestein. Sophie’s World. Chart the history of philosophy with a young woman and her mysterious mentor. (Recommended for Political Philosophy)
• Ishiguro, Kazuo. Remains of the Day. A beautifully realized chronicle of the decline of the British class system in the late twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of a loyal butler.
• Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” How can you resist?
• Khadra, Yasmina. The Sirens of Baghdad. Experience how terrorism often finds its origins in war.
• Kidder, Tracy. Mountains Beyond Mountains. If you don’t believe a single person can make a difference, you have to meet Paul Farmer, a physician who “would cure the world.”
• Lahiri, Jhumpa. Unaccustomed Earth. Lahiri’s immigrants struggle with cultural values as they test love, familial bonds, and friendship.
• Lee, Chang-Rae. A Gesture Life. A culturally alienated businessman confronts his Japanese and Korean heritage by exploring his role as a Japanese Army officer during the Korean occupation in WWII.
• Levy, Andrea. Small Island. In the wake of World War II, Jamaicans immigrate to Great Britain only to find the empire for which they fought does not easily embrace newcomers.
• Lynch, Jim. Border Songs. Witness the challenges and delights of patrolling the American-Canadian border.
• McCann, Colum. Let the Great World Spin. Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the Twin Towers binds the lives of an unlikely set of New Yorkers.
• McDougall, Christopher. Born to Run. Discover the secrets of long-distance running from the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons
• McKibben, Bill. Eaarth. Read this account and then consider the nature of global climate change.
• McPhee, John. The Control of Nature. Can engineering overcome nature?
• Mitchell, David. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Will Dutch merchants learn the secrets of Japan’s closed world in 1799?
• Murakami, Haruki. A Wild Sheep Chase. A Holden Caulfield- like yuppie turns his back on Japanese culture and seeks the lost sheep that might provide the mythic keys to a meaningful life.
• O’Neill, Joseph. Netherland. A financier estranged from his family finds a Gatsby-like dreamer on the cricket fields of New York.
• Orringer, Julie. The Invisible Bridge. Immerse yourself in love story that travels from Budapest to Paris and then deep into the horror of labor camps in World War II.
• Patchett, Ann. Bel Canto Terrorists interrupt a posh party in an unnamed South American country, and captors and prisoners alike discover new allegiances and passions.
• Pessl, Marisha. Special Topics in Calamity Physics Pessl delves into the literary and social bonds between a charismatic teacher and a group of boarding students who aren’t eager to conform.
• Shamsie, Kamila Burnt Shadows The effects of the partition of India reverberate around the world and climax in the aftermath of 9/11.
• Shepard, Jim. Like You’d Understand, Anyway Encounter a dazzling array of stories and places.
• Smith, Zadie. On Beauty Race, class, and gender clash on a college campus where life’s complications—and beauty—ultimately emerge. A nice companion to E.M. Forster’s Howards End.
• Sofer, Dalia. The Septembers of the Shiraz Escape post-revolutionary Iran with the Sofer family in in this semi-autobiographical novel.
• Unsworth, Barry. Sacred Hunger The horrors and inhumanity of the slave trade come alive in this epic about an attempt by escaped slaves to form a new society.
• Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray Dorian, a fashionable young man, sells his soul for eternal youth, and finds decadence instead of delight.
• Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns Recounting the lives of three families, Wilkerson traces the great migration northward by African Americans through the middle of the 20th century.
• Winton, Tim. Dirt Music Rescued by a simple form of music, Georgie Jutland and Luther Fox lose and find each other along the remote coastline of Western Australia.
• Woolf, Virginia. To The Lighthouse Suppose the mind were time and time were water. If you can’t, take this book to a spot where you can hear the waves and read aloud.
• Verghese, Abraham. Cutting for Stone You’ll be swept into this riveting tale about two generations of Indian doctors working in Ethiopia through tumultuous times.