THE ALTAMONT SCHOOL

GRADE 12 READING LIST

THE ALTAMONT SCHOOL ENGLISH DEPARTMENT READING POLICY

The Altamont School English Department requires every Altamont student to read during

the summer months five books, including the required books, from this summer reading

list. Students may not substitute other titles by the same author for summer reading.

English classes will always start the year with a discussion of what we have read over the

summer, so do not worry if you do not completely understand the reading. Just read the

book and bring questions to class when we talk about the book at the beginning of the

school year. Make notes if that helps you. English teachers will quiz students during the

first week, and in most classes students will write papers on their summer reading.

During the school year, every Altamont student is required to read at least 400 pages per

month.

Rereading books for English credit is a violation of the Honor Code, excepting required

titles for each class.

Students may NOT use Spark Notes, the Internet, or any type of condensed source for

reference or analysis for summer reading or books read during the school year. Using

reading aids in place of reading the text is a violation of the Honor Code. Just read the

book.

Please enjoy some good books.

I. Required:

Cervantes, Miguel de Don Quixote-Vol.1, unabridged (approx.500 pages)

II. Choose any four works (At least three must be fiction) from the following list:

Some East Asian writers are alphabetized differently in libraries and book stores. Check both

names. For example Dai Sijie may be under D or S. Latin American writers sometimes have a

double last name and may be found under the first or second of the last names, such as Garcia

Marquez.

Fiction

Abe. Kobo The Woman in the Dunes, The Box Man

Achebe, C. Things Fall Apart

Aeschylus Oresteia

Agee, J. A Death in the Family

Akutagawa, R. Rashomon and Other Stories

Allende, I. Of Love and Shadows

Aristophanes Lysistrata

Austen, J. Pride and Prejudice, Emma,

Sense and Sensibility

Balzac, H. Pere Goriot

Banville, J. The Sea

Bao Ninh The Sorrow of War

Barnes, J The Sense of an Ending

Beckett, S. Waiting for Godot

Bellow, S. Henderson the Rain King

Boccaccio The Decameron

Borges, J. L. Ficciones

Brecht, B. Mother Courage and Her Children

Bronte, C. Jane Eyre

Bronte, E. Wuthering Heights

Brown, L. Father and Son

Bunyan, J. The Pilgrim's Progress

Calvino, I. The Baron in the Trees

Camus, A. The Stranger, The Plague

Catton, Eleanor The Luminaries

Chekov, A. The Cherry Orchard

Chevalier, T. Girl with a Pearl Earring

Chopin, K. The Awakening

Cisneros, Sandra Caramelo.

Coetzee, J. M. Waiting for the Barbarians

Collins, W. The Woman in White, The Moonstone

Dai Sijie Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Dante Divine Comedy

Defoe, D Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders

Delillo White Noise, Libra

Desai, A. Clear Light of Day

Desai, K. The Inheritance of Loss

Dickens David Copperfield, Bleak House

Dostoevsky, F. The Brothers Karamazov,

Crime and Punishment

Dreiser , T. Sister Carrie

Dumas, A. The Three Musketeers

Eco, U. The Name of the Rose

Eliot, G. The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch

Ellison, R. Invisible Man

Endo, S. Silence

Euripides Medea

Faulkner, W. The Hamlet; As I Lay Dying; Light in August;

Absalom, Absalom; Go Down, Moses

Fielding, H. Tom Jones

Forster, E.M. Passage to India, Room with a View

Franklin, Tom Hell at the Breech

Fuentes, C. The Old Gringo

Gaines, E. A Gathering of Old Men

Gao Xingjian Soul Mountain

García, Cristina Dreaming in Cuban

Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gardner, J. Grendel

Gautreaux, T. The Clearing

Gay, W. Provinces of Night

Gibbons, K. On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon

Gide, A. The Immoralist

Goethe The Sorrows of Werther, Faust

Gogol, N. Dead Souls

Goldsmith The Vicar of Wakefield

Gordimer Burger's Daughter

Grass, G. The Tin Drum, The Rat

Greene, G. The Power and the Glory Guanzhong, Luo Three Kingdoms (Moss Roberts trans)

Hardy Jude the Obscure, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Hawthorne House of the Seven Gables

Hellman, L. The Little Foxes

Hemingway The Sun Also Rises

Hosseini, K. The Kite Runner

Hugo, V. Les Miserables

Hurston, Z. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Huxley , A. Brave New World

Ibsen, H. A Doll’s House

Irving, J. A Prayer for Owen Meany

Irving, W. Sketch Book

Ishiguro, Kazuo Remains of the Day; A Pale View of the Hills

Jin, Ha Waiting; War Trash; The Bridegroom

Joyce, James Dubliners

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Kafka, F. The Trial, Metamorphosis

Kawabata, Yasunari Snow Country

Kazantzakis Zorba the Greek

Kim, Richard Lost Names

Kincaid, Jamaica A Small Place

Kundera, M. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Lagerkvist, P. The Dwarf, Barabbas

Lahiri, J. The Namesake; Interpreter of Maladies

Lawrence, D.H. Sons and Lovers

Lermontov, M. A Hero of Our Time

Lewis, S. Babbit

Li, Yiyun A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

London, J. The Sea Wolf

Lowry, M. Under the Volcano

Lu Xun The Complete Stories of Lu Xun

Ma Jian The Noodle Maker

Mahfouz, N. The Thief and the Dogs, Palace Walk

Mailer, N. An American Dream

Malamud The Fixer

Mann, T. The Magic Mountain, Death in Venice

Mantel, Hilary Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies

Marlowe, C. Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta

Matsuo Basho The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Maugham. S. The Razor’s Edge; The Moon and Sixpence

McCarthy, C. All the Pretty Horses, The Road, Blood Meridian

McCullers, C. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

McEwen, I. Atonement; Saturday

Mishima, Y. Spring Snow; Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Mo Yan Red Sorghum; Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out

More, T. Utopia

Morrison, T. Beloved

Murakami, H. Kafka on the Shore; Norwegian Wood

Murasaki Shikibu The Tale of Genji (may read abridged edition)

Murray, A. Train Whistle Guitar

Nabokov, V. Pale Fire, Invitation to a Beheading

Naipaul, V. S. The Bend in the River

O’Brien, T. The Things They Carried

O’Connor, F. Wise Blood; Stories

Oe, K. A Personal Matter

Pamuk, O. Snow

Pasternak, B. Dr. Zhivago

Patchett, A. Bel Canto

Percy, W. The Moviegoer; The Second Coming

Pirandello, L. Six Characters in Search of an Author

Proust, M. Swann’s Way

Pynchon, T. The Crying of Lot 49, Mason and Dixon

Rabelais, F. Gargantua

Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea

Richardson, S. Pamela

Robinson, M. Gilead

Roth, P American Pastoral; The Human Stain

Rousseau, Emile

Roy, A. The God of Small Things

Rushdie, S Midnight's Children

Saramago, J. Blindness

Sartre, J. P. No Exit

Scott, W. Ivanhoe

Shakespeare The Tempest; Henry IV parts I and II; King Lear

Shaw, G. B. Man and Superman; Pygmalion

Shelley, M. Frankenstein

Singer, Isaac B. Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories

Smiley, J A Thousand Acres

Solzhenitsyn, A. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Sophocles Oedipus Rex

Soseki, Natsume Kokoro

Soyinka, Wole Dance of the Forests, Plays

Sterne, L. Tristram Shandy

Stone, I. The Agony and the Ecstasy; Lust for Life

Su Tong Raise the Red Lantern

Tanizaki, J Seven Japanese Tales

Taylor, Peter Summons to Memphis

Thackeray, Wm. Vanity Fair

Tolstoy, L. Anna Karenina; War and Peace

Toole, J. K. A Confederacy of Dunces

Twain, M. Innocents Abroad

Updike, J. Rabbit, Run

Uris, L. Exodus, Trinity

Voltaire Candide

Vreeland, S. Girl in Hyacinth Blue

Walker, A. The Color Purple

Walpole, H. The Castle of Otranto

Welty, E. The Optimist’s Daughter; Delta Wedding

Wilde, O. The Picture of Dorian Gray

Wolfe,T. Look Homeward, Angel

Woolf, V. To the Lighthouse. Mrs. Dalloway

Wright, R. Native Son

Wu Cheng’en Monkey (abridged from Journey to the West)

Yu Hua To Live; Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

Zhang, Ailing Stories (Love in a Fallen City)

Non-Fiction

Agee Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy

Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson

Cahill, T. How the Irish Saved Civilization

Campbell, Joseph The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Confucius The Analects

Cooke, M. The Chronicle of Jazz

Didion, J The White Album, Slouching Toward Bethlehem

Dunham, William Journey Through Genius

Durant The Story of Philosophy

Fara, Patricia Newton: The Making of Genius

Frye, Northrop Anatomy of Criticism

Gleick, James Isaac Newton

Guralnick, P Sweet Soul Music

Ledbetter, Lillie and L. Scott Isom Grace and Grit

Livy Ab Urbe Condita

Lomax, Alan The Land Where the Blues Began

Machiavelli The Prince

Malcolm X & Haley Autobiography of Malcolm X

McWhorter, D Carry Me Home

Morris, Willie North Toward Home

Nafisi, Azar Reading Lolita in Tehran, Republic of Imagination

Plato, Republic, Symposium

Plutarch Parallel Lives (any two lives)

Shonagon, S The Pillow Book (McKinney translation)

Sinclair, U. The Jungle

Winchester, S. The Professor and the Madman

Wolfe, Tom The Painted Word, The Right Stuff

Woodward and Bernstein All the President’s Men

Work, John W, L.W. Jones and S.C. Adams Lost Delta Found