VACATION READING and RESEARCH TEXTS

The following list of novels, plays, short stories and narrative poems is a typical selection of works studied in English Literature classes at Concord High School. This selection is limited to works originally composed in English - principally by authors from Great Britain, the United States, South Africa, India or other Commonwealth countries - foreign language writers do not appear here.

To help you select something of interest, the list takes a thematic rather than a periodized approach to literature - this will also assist students writing comparative papers for AP classes. You may well disagree with the way texts have been categorized here, or find something more relevant to your purpose listed under a different theme … that's fine! Just be sure to consult your teachers about the appropriateness of whatever you select to read.

* Items marked with an asterisk are non-fiction suitable for AP English LANGUAGE.

Bold face indicates works for 9th grade and / or incoming freshmen.

WAR
1. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
2. Regeneration - Pat Barker
3. The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien *
4. Henry V - William Shakespeare
5. All My Sons - Arthur Miller
6. The Quiet American - Graham Greene

PSYCHOLOGY / MADNESS
7. Persuasion - Jane Austen
8. Washington Square - Henry James
9. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
10. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
11. A Separate Peace - John Knowles
12. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

EDUCATION / CHILDHOOD
13. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
14. The History Boys - Alan Bennett
15. Hard Times - Charles Dickens
16. Silas Marner - George Eliot
17. Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee *
18. Baby with the Bathwater - Christopher Durang
19. Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller
20. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

SATIRE / SOCIAL COMMENTARY
21. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
22. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
23. The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
24. Volpone - Ben Jonson
25. The Warden - Anthony Trollope
26. Howard's End - E. M. Forster
27. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbon
28. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. Merry Wives of Windsor - William Shakespeare
30. Melancholy Play - Sarah Ruhl
31. Talking Heads - Alan Bennett

(POST-) COLONIALISM
32. The Mystic Masseur - V. S. Naipaul
33. A Passage to India - E. M. Forster
34. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
35. The Tempest - William Shakespeare
36. Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
37. The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi
38. Dreaming in Cuban - Cristina Garcia
39. The Life and Times of Michael K - J.M. Coetzee
40. The Heat and the Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

FEMINISM
41. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
42. Daisy Miller - Henry James
43. The Hours - Michael Cunningham
44. Pygmalion - G. B. Shaw
45. The Awakening - Kate Chopin
46. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf *
47. The Taming of the Shrew - William Shakespeare
48. The White Devil - John Webster
49. Emma - Jane Austen
50. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
51. Mrs. Warren's Profession - G. B. Shaw

THE BILDUNGSROMAN
52. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
53. Bless Me, Ultima - Rudolfo Anaya
54. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
55. Sula - Toni Morrison
56. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou *

CALIFORNIA
57. The Golden Gate - Vikram Seth
58. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
59. The Day of the Locust - Nathaniel West
60. Days of Obligation - Richard Rodriguez *

HISTORICAL FICTION
61. The Crucible - Arthur Miller
62. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
63. Skin of Our Teeth - Thornton Wilder
64. The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
65. Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier
66. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
67. Saint Joan - G. B. Shaw
68. Amadeus - Peter Shaffer
69. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
70. Julius Caesar - William Shakespeare
71. Richard III - William Shakespeare

SCIENCE FICTION / VISIONS OF FUTURE
72. Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
73. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
74. The Time Machine - H. G. Wells
75. 1984 - George Orwell
76. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

GOTHIC FICTION
77. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
78. Wessex Tales - Thomas Hardy
79. Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
80. Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Alan Poe

FRAME NARRATIVES
81. Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
82. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
83. Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder

NATURE
84. Silent Spring - Rachel Carson *
85. Walden - Henry David Thoreau *
86. Travels with Charley - John Steinbeck *
87. The Song of Hiawatha - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
88. My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell *

SOME QUALITY 'LIGHT' READING
(These texts are enjoyable rather than great literary achievements - take them to the beach!)

89. The Lady in the Lake - Raymond Chandler
90. The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy
91. Right ho, Jeeves! - P. G. Wodehouse
92. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
93. Auntie Mame - Patrick Dennis
94. Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin
95. Dead Lagoon - Michael Dibdin
96. Italian Neighbors - Tim Parks *
97. Serve It Forth - M. F. K. Fisher *
98. Brick Lane - Monica Ali
99. Amsterdam - Ian McEwan
100. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

A WORD ABOUT SOME SIGNIFICANT OMISSIONS
This list does not pretend to be comprehensive.

First, the list does NOT include any English literature that predates Shakespeare. This is because reading Old / Middle English is no longer possible without special knowledge of pronunciation and a translation of obsolete vocabulary. Essentially, it is akin to reading a foreign language.

Second, lyric poetry has also been omitted because it would be unwieldy to recommend single compositions. Rather, ask your teacher to recommend a particular poet or an anthology.

Third, faculty tastes have led to the elimination of several 'big names' that you may wish to investigate: Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, William Faulkner, Alan Ginsberg, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Atwood, Eugene O'Neill, Herman Melville fall into this category. This is sometimes due to the length of their novels, sometimes to their style … remember that literature is about enjoyment and people often disagree about what makes a 'good' writer!

Finally, two authors deserve a very special mention: William Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams. These are probably the greatest dramatists of British and American literature and it is difficult to select just a few of their works; in fact, their whole oeuvre is worth reading. They are adept at creating great characters, memorable phrases, emotional tension, symbolism, universal / spiritual truths, profound romance, the clash of different values, and the formation of individual identity … the entire gamut of human experience! Read anything by them!