College Bound Reading List

American Literature                  

Agee, James—A Death in the Family

Story of loss and heartbreak felt when a young father dies.

Anderson, Sherwood—Winesburg, Ohio

A collection of short stories lays bare the life of a small town in the Midwest.

Baldwin, James—Go Tell It on the Mountain

Semi‑autobiographical novel about a 14‑year‑old black youth's religious conversion.

Bellow, Saul—Seize the Day

A son grapples with his love and hate for an unworthy father.

Bradbury, Ray—Fahrenheit 451

Reading is a crime and firemen burn books in this futuristic society.

Cather, Willa—My Antonia

Immigrant pioneers strive to adapt to the Nebraska prairies.

Chopin Kate—The Awakening

The story of a New Orleans woman who abandons her husband and children to search for love and self‑understanding.

Comier, Robert—The Chocolate War

Jerry Renault challenges the power structure of his school when he refuses to sell chocolates for the annual fund‑raiser.

Crane, Stephen—The Red Badge of Courage

During the Civil War, Henry Fleming joins the army full of romantic visions of battle that are shattered by combat.

Dreiser, Theodore—An American Tragedy

Story of a poor boy whose ambition for wealth and social prestige leads him to commit murder.

Dorris, Michael—A Yellow Raft in Blue Water

Three generations of Native American women recount their searches for identity and love.

Ellison, Ralph—Invisible Man

A black man's search for himself as an individual and as a member of his race and his society.

Faulkner, William—As I Lay Dying

The Bundren family takes the ripening corpse of Addie, wife and mother, on a gruesomely comic journey.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott—The Great Gatsby

A young man corrupts himself and the American Dream to regain a lost love.

Guthrie, A. B.—The Big Sky

An adventure story set in the l9th century American wilderness.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel—The Scarlet Letter

An adulterous Puritan woman keeps secret the identity of the father of her illegitimate child.

Heller, Joseph—Catch‑22

A broad comedy about a WWII bombardier based in Italy and his efforts to avoid bombing missions

Hemingway, Ernest—A Farewell to Arms

During World War I, an American lieutenant runs away with the woman who nurses him back to health.

Hurston, Zora Neale—Their Eyes Were Watching God

Janie repudiates many roles in her quest for self‑fulfillment.

Kesey, Ken—One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

A novel about a power struggle between the head nurse and one of the male patients in a mental          E

institution.

Lee, Harper—To Kill a Mockingbird

At great peril to himself and his children, lawyer Atticus Finch defends an African‑American man accused of raping a white woman in a small Alabama town.

Lewis, Sinclair—Main Street

A young doctor's wife tries to change the ugliness, dullness and ignorance, which prevail in Gopher Prairie, Minn.

London, Jack—Call of the Wild

Buck is a loyal pet dog until cruel men make him a pawn in their search for Klondike gold.

McCullers, Carson—The Member of the Wedding

A young southern girl is determined to be the third party on a honeymoon, despite all the advice

against it from friends and family.

Melville, Herman—Moby‑Dick

A complex novel about a mad sea captain's pursuit of the White Whale.

Morrison, Toni—Sula

The lifelong friendship of two women becomes strained when one causes the other's husband to

abandon her.

O'Connor, Flannery—A Good Man is Hard to Find

Social awareness, the grotesque, and the need for faith characterize these stories of the contemporary.

Parks, Gordon—The Learning Tree

A fictional study of a black family in a small Kansas town in the 1920s.

Plath, Sylvia—The Bell Jar

The heartbreaking story of a talented young woman's decent into madness.

Poe, Edgar Allan—Great Tales and Poems

Poe is considered the father of detective stories and a master of supernatural tales.

Potok, Chaim—The Chosen

Friendship between two Jewish boys, one Hasidic and the other Orthodox, begins at a baseball game and flourishes despite their different backgrounds and beliefs.

Salinger, J.D.—The Catcher in the Rye

A prep school dropout rejects the phoniness he sees all about him.

Sinclair, Upton—The Jungle

The deplorable conditions of the Chicago stockyards are exposed in this turn‑of‑the‑century novel.

Steinbeck, John—The Grapes of Wrath

The desperate plight of tenant farmers from Oklahoma during the Depression.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher—Uncle Tom's Cabin

The classic tale that awakened a nation about the slavery system.

Twain, Mark—The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huck and Jim, a runaway slave, travel down the Mississippi in search of freedom.

Vonnegut, Kurt—Slaughterhouse‑Five

Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist from Ilium, New York, shuttles between World War II Dresden and a luxurious zoo on the planet Tralfamadore.

Uris, Leon—Mila 18

The story of a group of courageous Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust.

Walker, Alice—The Color Purple

A young woman sees herself as property until another woman teaches her to value herself.

Warren, Robert Penn—All the King’s Men

A politician falls for the corrupting influences of power.

Wells, H G.—The Time Machine

A scientist invents a machine that transports him into the future.

Welty, Eudora—Delta Wedding        

An insightful and humorous look at a wedding Southern style.

Wharton, Edith—House of Mirth

Lily Bart commits a sin of innocence and alienates herself from New York’s society.

Wolfe, Thomas—Look Homeward Angel

A novel depicting the coming of age of Eugene Gant and his passion to experience life.

Wright, Richard—Native Son

Bigger Thomas, a young man from the Chicago slums, lashes out against a hostile society by committing two murders.

World Literature

Beowulf

A tale of heroism upon which the foundation of English literature is based.

Achebe, Chinua—Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo, a proud village leader, is driven to murder and suicide by European changes to his traditional Ibo society.

Austen, Jane—Pride and Prejudice

Love and marriage among the English country gentry of Austen's day.

Balzac, Honore de—Pere Goriot

A father is reduced to poverty after giving money to his daughters.

Bronte, Charlotte—Jane Eyre

An intelligent and passionate governess falls in love with a strange, moody man tormented by dark secrets.

Bronte, Emily—Wuthering Heights

One of the masterpieces of English romanticism, this is a novel of Heathcliff and Catherine, love and revenge.

Camus, Albert‑‑The Stranger

A man who is virtually unknown to both himself and others commits a pointless murder for which he has no explanation.

Carroll, Lewis—Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

A fantasy in which Alice follows the White Rabbit to a dream world.

Cervantes, Miguel de—Don Quixote

An eccentric old gentleman sets out as a knight "tilting at windmills" to right the wrongs of the world.

Chaucer, Geoffrey—Canterbury Tales

A band of pilgrims encounter adventures on their way to the shrine of Thomas A. Becket.

Conrad, Joseph—Heart of Darkness

The novel's narrator journeys into the Congo where he discovers the extent to which greed can corrupt a good man.

Dante Alighieri—The Divine Comedy

Virgil guides Dante through the torment of hell in Dante's search for paradise.

Defoe, Daniel—Robinson Crusoe

The adventures of a man who spends 24 years on an isolated island.

Dickens, Charles—Great Expectations

The moving story of the rise, fall, and rise again of a humbly‑born young orphan.

Dostoevski, Feodor—Crime and Punishment

A psychological novel about a poor student who murders an old woman pawnbroker and her sister.

Dumas, Alexandre—The Three Musketeers

One of the greatest adventure stories ever written.

Eliot, George—The Mill on the Floss

Maggie is miserable because her brother disapproves of her choices of romances.

Esquivel, Laura—Like Water for Chocolate

As the youngest of three daughters in a turn‑of‑the‑century Mexican family, Tita may not marry but must remain at home to care for her mother.

Flaubert, Gustave—Madame Bovary

In her extramarital affairs, a bored young wife seeks unsuccessfully to find the emotional experience she craves.

Forster, E.M.—A Passage to India

A young English woman in British‑ruled India accuses an Indian doctor of sexual assault.

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel—One Hundred Years of Solitude

A technique called magical realism is used in this portrait of seven generations in the lives of the Buendia family.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von—Faust

Faust, a German alchemist, makes a wager with the devil.

Gogol, Nikolai—The Overcoat

Russian tales of good and evil.

Golding, William—Lord of the Flies

English schoolboys marooned on an uninhabited island test the values of civilization when they attempt to set up a society of their own.

Hardy, Thomas—Tess of the D'Urbervilles

The happiness of Tess and her husband is destroyed when she confesses that she bore a child as the result of a forced sexual relationship with her employer's son.

Hesse, Hermann—Siddhartha      

Emerging from a kaleidoscope of experiences and pleasures, a young Brahmin ascends to a state of peace and mystic holiness.

Homer—The Iliad

Timeless epic poem that recreates the heroism of both men and gods during the Trojan War.

Homer—The Odyssey

The adventures of Odysseus as he returns from the Trojan War.

Hugo, Victor—The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Timeless romance that tell the story of the beautiful gypsy, Esmerelda and Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer for the famous Paris cathedral.

Huxley, Aldous—Brave New World

A bitter satire of the future, in which advances in science and social changes control the world.

James, Henry—Portrait of a Lady

Young American Isabel Archer charms European society, but falls prey to the machinations of a calculating older woman.

Joyce, James—A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A novel about a young man growing up in Ireland and rebelling against family, country, and religion.

Kafka, Franz—The Trial

A man is tried for a crime he knows nothing about, yet for which he feels guilt.

Lawrence, D.H.—Sons and Lovers

An autobiographical novel about a youth torn between a dominant working‑class father and a possessive, genteel mother.

Maugham, W. Somerset—Of Human Bondage

Philip Carey, a handicapped orphan, is brought up by a clergyman but sheds his religious faith and begins to study art in Paris.

Orwell, George—Animal Farm

Animals turn the tables on their masters.

Pasternak, Boris—Doctor Zhivago

An epic novel of Russia before and after the Bolshevik revolution.

Paton, Alan—Cry the Beloved Country

A country Zulu pastor searches for his sick sister in Johannesburg, and discovers that she has become a prostitute and his son a murderer.

Remarque, Erich Maria—All Quiet on the Western Front

A young German soldier in World War I experiences pounding shellfire, hunger, sickness, and death.

Scott, Sir Walter—Ivanhoe

Tale of Ivanhoe, the disinherited knight, Lady Rowena, Richard the Lion‑Hearted, and Robin Hood al the time of the Crusades.

Shelley, Mary W.—Frankenstein

A gothic tale of terror in which Frankenstein creates a monster from corpses.

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksander—One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

A man endures one more day in a Siberian prison camp and finds joy in survival.

Swift, Jonathan—Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver encounters dwarfs and giants and has other strange adventures when his ship is wrecked in distant lands.

Tan, Amy—The Joy Luck Club

After her mother's death, a young Chinese‑American woman learns of her mother's tragic early life in China.

Thackeray, William—Vanity Fair

The English classic about a social climber in Victorian London.

Tolstoy, Leo—Anna Karenina

Anna forsakes her husband for the dashing Count Vronsky and brief happiness.

Turgenev, Ivan—Fathers and Sons

A young graduate returns homes accompanied by a strange friend "who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith."

Voltaire, Francois—Candide

Satirical masterpiece that deals with suffering, evil, and the resilience of human nature.

Weisel, Elie—Night

A searing account of the Holocaust as experienced by a 15‑year‑old boy.

Biography/History

Angelou, Maya—I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

An African‑American writer traces her corning of age.

Ashe, Arthur and Arnold Rampersad—Days of Grace

Biography of a highly respected tennis star and citizen of the world who dies of AIDS.

Baker, Russell—Growing Up

A columnist with a sense of humor takes a gentle look at his childhood in Baltimore during the Depression.

Brown, Dee—Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

A narrative of the white man's conquest of the American land as the Indian victims experienced it.

Crow Dog, Mary and Richard Erdoes—Lakota Woman

Mary Crow Dog stands with 2,000 other Native Americans at the site of the Wounded Knee massacre, demonstrating for Native American rights.

Curie, Eve—Madame Curie

In sharing personal papers and her own memories, a daughter pays tribute to her mother, a scientific genius.

Delany, Sara and A. Elizabeth with Amy Hill Hearth—Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years

Two daughters of former slaves tell their stories of fighting racial and gender prejudice during the 20th century.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo—Selected Essays

A collection of essays by one of America’s foremost writers.

Epstein, Norrie—Friendly Shakespeare: A Thoroughly Painless Guide to the Best of the Bard

Gain a perspective on Shakespeare's works through these sidelights, interpretations, anecdotes, and historical insights.

Frank, Anne—The Diary of a Young Girl

The story of a Jewish family forced by encroaching Nazis to live in hiding.

Franklin, Benjamin—The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Considered one of the most interesting autobiographies in English.

Haley, Alex—Roots

Traces Haley's search for the history of his family, from Africa through the era of slavery to the 20th century.

Hersey, John—Hiroshima

Six Hiroshima survivors reflect on the aftermath of the first atomic bomb.

Karlsen, Carol—The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England

The status of women in colonial society affects the Salem witch accusations.

Keller, Helen—The Story of My Life

The story of Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf, and her relationship with her devoted teacher, Anne Sullivan.

Kennedy, John F.—Profiles in Courage

A series of profiles of Americans who took courageous stands in public life.

King, Martin Luther, Jr.—A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.

King's most important writings are gathered together in one source.

Kovic, Ron—Born on the Fourth of July

Paralyzed in the Vietnam War, 21‑year‑old Ron Kovic received little support from his country and its government.

Machievelli, Niccolo—The Prince

A treatise giving the absolute ruler practical advice on ways to maintain a strong central government.

Malcolm X, with Alex Haley—The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Traces the transformation of a controversial Black Muslim figure from street hustler to religious and national leader.

Marx, Karl—The Communist Manifesto

Expresses Marx's belief in the inevitability of conflict between social classes and calls on the workers of the world to unite and revolt.

McPherson, James—Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

From the Mexican War to Appomattox, aspects of the Civil War are examined.

Mills, Kay—This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper's daughter, uses her considerable courage and singing talent to become a leader in the civil rights movement.

Plato—The Republic

Plato creates an ideal society where justice is equated with health and happiness in the state and the individual.

Thoreau, Henry David—Walden

In the mid‑19th century, Thoreau spends 26 months alone in the woods to "front the essential facts of life."

Tocqueville, Alexis de—Democracy in America

This classic in political literature examines American society from the viewpoint of a leading French magistrate who visited the U.S. in 1831.

Tuchman, Barbara—A Distant Mirror. The Calamitous Fourteenth Century

Tuchman uses the example of a single feudal lord to trace the history of the 14th century.

Williams, Juan—Eyes on he Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954-65

From Brown vs. the Board of Education to the Voting Rights Act, Williams outlines the social and political gains of African‑Americans.

Science

Attenborough, David—The Living Planet: A Portrait of the Earth

Various habitats expand the vision of Planet Earth.

Carson, Rachel—Silent Spring

Carson's original clarion call to environmental action sets the stage for saving our planet.

Darwin, Charles—The Origin of Species

The classic exposition of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Hawking, Stephen—A Brief History of Time From the Big Bang, to Black Holes

Cosmology becomes understandable as the author discusses the origin, evolution, and fate of our universe.

Leopold, Aldo—A Sand County Almanac:  And Sketches Here and There

Leopold shares his present and future visions of a natural world.

Social Science

Bumiller, Elizabeth—May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons

A sensitive revelation of the lives of women in India.

Campbell, Joseph—The Power of Myth

Explores themes and symbols from world religions and their relevance to humankind's spiritual journey today.

Hamilton, Edith—Mythology

Gods and heroes, their clashes and adventures, come alive in this splendid retelling of the Greek, Roman and Norse myths.

Kotlowitz, Alex—There Are No Children Here:  The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in Urban America

Lafayette and Pharaoh Rivers and their family struggle to survive in one of Chicago's worst housing projects.

Kozol, Jonathan—Savage Inequalities-Children in America

Kozol's indictment of the public school system advocates equalizing per pupil public school expenditures.

Terkel, Studs—Race. How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession

This kaleidoscope covers the full range of America’s views on racial issues.

Drama

Beckett, Samuel—Waiting for Godot

Powerful, symbolic portrayal of the human condition.

Brecht, Bertolt—Mother Courage and Her Children

A product of the Nazi era, Mother Courage is a feminine "Everyman" in a play on the futility of war.

Chekhov, Anton—The Cherry Orchard

The orchard evokes different meanings for the impoverished aristocrat and the merchant who buys it.

Ibsen, Henrik—A Doll's House

A woman leaves her family to pursue personal freedom.

Marlowe, Christopher—Doctor Faustus

First dramatization of the medieval legend of a man who sold his soul to the devil.

Miller, Arthur—Death of a Salesman

The tragedy of a typical American who, at age 63, is faced with what he cannot face: defeat and disillusionment.

O'Neill, Eugene—Long Day's Journey Into Night

A tragedy set in 1912 in the summer home of an isolated, theatrical family.

Sartre, Jean Paul—No Exit

A modern morality play in which three persons are condemned to hell because of crimes against humanity.

Shakespeare, William—Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, others

Shaw, Bernard—Man and Superman, Saint Joan, Pygmalion, others.

Sophocles—Oedipus Rex

Classical tragedy of Oedipus, who unwittingly killed his father, married his mother and brought the plague to Thebes.

Wilde, Oscar—The Importance of Being Ernest

Comedy exposing quirks and foibles of Victorian society.

Wilder, Thornton—Our Town

The dead of a New Hampshire village of the early 1900s appreciate life more than the living.

Williams, Tennessee—A Streetcar Named Desire

Blanche Dubois' fantasies of refinement and grandeur are brutally destroyed by her brother‑in‑law.

Wilson, August—The Piano Lesson

Drama set in 1936 Pittsburgh chronicles black experience in America.

Poetry

Angelou, Maya—And Still I Rise

Poems reflecting themes from her autobiography.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett—Sonnets from the Portuguese

Among the world’s most lyrical and beautiful love poetry.

Burns, Robert—Complete Poetical Works

Poems of power and poignancy from Scotland’s national bard.

Cummings, E.E.—Complete Poems 1904‑1962

This inclusive anthology encompasses all of the poet's works published to date.  Cummings’ imagery is unsurpassed.

Dickinson, Emily—The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

A chronological arrangement of all known Dickinson poems and fragments.

Donne, John—The Complete Poetry of John Donne

Poems distinguished by wit, profundity of thought, passion and subtlety.

Eliot, T.S.—The Waste Land

A poem of despair by one of the most important modern poets in English.

Frost, Robert—The Poetry of Robert Frost

Collected works reflecting both flashing insight and practical wisdom.

Ginsberg, Allen—Howl and Other Poems

Works from the leading poet of the so‑called "beat generation."

Hughes, Langston—Selected Poems

Poems selected by Hughes shortly before his death in 1967, representing work from his entire career.

Keats, John—Compete Poems

Among the greatest odes in English, written by a genius that died young.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth—The Poetical Works of Longfellow

Including "The Song of Hiawatha" and "The Courtship of Miles Standish," Longfellow chronicles life in early America.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent—Collected Poems

Collection includes “Renascence,” a poem of self-discovery.

Sandburg, Carl—Complete Poems

Sandburg celebrates industrial and agricultural America and the common people.

Thomas, Dylan—Poems of Dylan Thomas

Dylan is known for the quality of his imagery and how he deals with the raw emotions of modern living.

Whitman, Walt—Leaves of Grass

A departure from conventional poetry of the time, Leaves of Grass shocked 1855 America.

Williams, William Carlos—Selected Poems

Williams' poetry is firmly rooted in the commonplace details of American life.

Wordsworth, William—Poems

Poetry revealing the extraordinary beauty and significance of simple things.

Yeats, William Butler—The Poems

Leading poet of the Irish Renaissance.

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Last update: 9/24/07

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