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PVRHSD SUMMER READING SELECTIONS - 2009
Autobiography
Title: Angela’s Ashes
Author: Frank McCourt
Autobiography
This novel is about the author's early years growing up in poverty in Limerick, Ireland and the strength of his mother in holding the family together amid personal tragedy and cultural prejudice.
Title: Liar’s Poker: Rising
Author: Michael Lewis
Autobiography
Title: Through the Wreckage On Wall Street
Finance/ Humor
This novel is a funny look at life on Wall Street as employees get their start in the financial world. In two short years, Lewis rises from trainee to bond salesman who could turn over millions of dollars' worth of doubtful bonds with just one call.
Title: Lucky
Author: Alice Sebold
Autobiography
The author describes the circumstances of her rape as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, the arrest and trial of her attacker, and her struggle to reclaim her shattered life.
Title: They Cage the Animals At Night
Author:
Jennings Michael Burch
Autobiography
Left by his incapacitated mother at a Catholic orphanage in Brooklyn, Burch describes his unhappy life as a foster child, experiences as a runaway, struggle for survival, growth of
self-reliance, and triumph over loneliness.
Biography
Title: John Adams
Author: David McCullough
Biography
Chronicles the life of America's second president, including his youth, his career as a Massachusetts farmer and lawyer, his marriage to Abigail, his rivalry with Thomas Jefferson, and his influence on the birth of the United States.
Title: Diane Arbus: A Biography
Author: Patricia Bosworth
Biography
A must-read for those who are interested in photography. This book explores the photographer’s life and career in photography set against a backdrop of life as a Jewish-American in New York City.
Title: Four Days of Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the
American Heartland
Author: Mark Kreidler
Biography
This work explores the trials and tribulations of two high school wrestlers in Iowa who seek the fourth consecutive state championship title for wrestling.
Title: Johnny U: The Life and Times of Johnny Unitas
Author: Tom Callahan
Biography
This biography of the life and times of Johnny Unitas explores not only the history of the football legend but of the nature of the sport itself.
Fantasy
Title: The Fellowship of the Ring
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
Fantasy
Frodo, the hobbit, and his companions set out to deliver the One Ring of Power to the dark land of Mordor in order to destroy the ring in the forge of its creation.
Fiction
Title: The Time Traveler's Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Fiction
This is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap.
Title: Jane Eyre
Author: Charlotte Bronte
Fiction
This novel takes place in early nineteenth-century England, as an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall, a country estate owned by the mysteriously remote Mr. Rochester.
Title: Wide Sargasso Sea
Author: Jean Rhys & Charlotte Bronte
Fiction
This novel was written recently, but is the prequel to Jane Eyre and explains the history of Mr. Rochester. This story takes place in the Caribbean islands and talks about how Mr. Rochester met his wife and what went on before he met Jane Eyre.
Title: People of the Book
Author: Geraldine Brooks
Fiction
Brooks has built upon her experience as a correspondent in Bosnia for the Wall Street Journal to construct a story around a book—small, rare and very old—and the people into whose hands it had fallen over five centuries. A great read for people who love history.
Title: The Five People You Meet In Heaven
Author: Mitch Albom
Fiction
This touching story describes the life of “Eddie” on his journey throughout heaven. He encounters 5 people whom he may and/or may not remember as he learns that everyone has an impact on one another no matter how brief or significant the encounter.
Title: Born Confused
Author: Tanuja Desai Hidier
Fiction
This is the story of an Indian teenager living in New Jersey. She is not Indian enough for her Indian friends, and she is not white enough for her white friends. Trapped between the Indian traditions of her parents and the trends of her peers, Dimple searches for herself, love, and her own culture.
Title:
My Sister’s Keeper
Author: Jodi Picoult
Fiction
Conceived to provide a bone marrow match for her leukemia-stricken sister, teenage Anna begins to question her moral obligations in light of countless medical procedures and decides to fight for the right to make decisions about her own body.
Title: The Da Vinci Code
Author: Dan Brown
Fiction
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu work to solve the murder of an elderly curator of the Louvre, a case which leads to clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci and a century-old secret society.
Title: Nineteen Minutes
Author: Jodi Picoult
Fiction
In Sterling, New Hampshire, 17-year-old high school student Peter Houghton has endured years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of classmates. One final incident of bullying sends Peter over the edge and leads him to commit an act of violence that forever changes the lives of Sterling's residents.
Title: The Secret Life of Bees
Author: Sue Monk Kidd
Fiction
Lilly, who feels guilty for her mother’s death, escapes her abusive father and takes shelter with a family of African-American women who keeps bees. Lily’s time with them becomes a quest to find out who her mother really was, and redefines what family and womanhood mean.
Title: The Name of the Rose
Author: Umberto Eco
Fiction
William of Baskerville, along with his apprentice, journey to an abbey where a murder has been committed. As the plot unfolds, several people mysteriously die. The protagonist explores a medieval library and comes face to face with the Inquisition.
Title:
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Author: Gregory Maguire
Fiction
The Wizard of Oz retold by the point of view of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West.
Title: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Author: John Boyne
Fiction
A Holocaust tale told from the perspective of a nine year old boy who moves within close proximity of a concentration camp and naively observes the horrors of the Holocaust as he befriends a boy inside the camp.
Title: Timeline
Author: Michael Crichton
Fiction
A group of historians travel to the Middle Ages to save a friend, who has traveled back in time, in order to save him. This book plays with notions of time travel, physics and history.
Title: The Corrections
Author: Jonathan Franzen
Fiction
The three Lambert children have grown up, fallen down and found triumph and heartbreak in their independent lives far from the Midwestern town of their childhood. When Alfred, the patriarch is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the children make one last trip home to celebrate Christmas.
Title: Life of Pi
Author: Yann Martel
Fiction
The protagonist, an Indian boy, survives 227 days stranded on a boat in the Pacific. While there, “Pi” explores issues of religion, spirituality and practicality.
Title:The Fifth Child
Author:Doris Lessing
Fiction
In The Fifth Child, the Lovatt family, once idyllic, unified and happy, struggle when the fifth child, who is an outcast and disliked by his brothers and sisters, disrupts the family dynamics.
Title: Icy Sparks
Author:
Gwyn Rubio
Fiction
This is the story of a woman growing up during the 1950s in a small Kentucky town where her uncontrollable outbursts make her an outcast and an object of fright and ridicule. Icy struggles to control her impulses, unaware that she is not to blame.
Title: La Trilogie Marseillaise:
Author: Marcel Pagnol
Fiction - play
Marius, Fanny, Cesar (French)
This French three-play saga is set against the backdrop of the Marseilles seaport in the early part of the 20th century. The stories of the hero, Marius, his paramour, Fanny, and his father, Cesar, complete the drama which explores daily life in Southern France.
Title: The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
Author: Kim Edwards
Fiction
A doctor, forced to deliver his own twins, makes a life-changing decision about the fate of one born with Down Syndrome that haunts him and his family.
Title: She’s Come Undone
Author:
Wally Lamb
Fiction
This deeply affecting and at times hilarious novel follows the protagonist, Dolores Price, from year four to forty. In this time span, we see the effect that television and imagination have on her family relationships. Dolores struggles with obesity, sexual ambiguity, self-delusion and madness, which are all a precursor for rebirth.
Title: The Road
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Fiction
In this post-apocalyptic novel, a father and son walk alone through a burned and desolate America. As the father and son journey toward the coast, they illustrate the need for tenacity and power of love in the face of hopelessness and destruction.
Title:
Atonement
Author: Ian McEwan
Fiction
A family saga begins as a result of the misperceptions of a thirteen-year-old girl. Set in England in an era between WW I and WWII, the novel examines issues of childhood memory, love and war.
Fiction - Epistolary
Title: We Need to Talk About Kevin
Author: Lionel Shriver
Fiction - Epistolary
This novel, told in the first person as a series of letters from Eva to her husband, concerns a fictional school massacre. It is written from the perspective of the killer's mother, Eva Khatchadourian, and documents her attempt to come to terms with her son Kevin and the murders he committed.
Fiction - Historical
Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Author:
Khaled Hosseini
Fiction - Historical
This is a beautiful tale of two women born into different generations who witness the destruction of their home and family in war-torn Kabul. Losses incurred over the course of thirty years test the limits of their strength and courage.
Title: The Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Author: Lisa See
Fiction – Historical
This is an unforgettable novel about two Chinese women whose friendship and love sustains them through their lives. Taking place in 19th century China when girls had their feet bound, they spend the rest of their lives in seclusion with only a single window from which to see their world.
Title: The Other Boleyn Girl
Author:Philippa Gregory
Fiction – Historical
The daughters of a ruthlessly ambitious family, Mary and Anne Boleyn are sent to the court of Henry VIII to attract the attention of the king. He first takes Mary as his mistress, and then Anne, as his wife.
Title: The Siege: A Novel
Helen Dunmore
Fiction - Historical
This is the story of the Nazi's siege of Leningrad in the winter of 1941, during WW II. The struggles of Anna Levin and her family are vividly portrayed; their emotional and physical pain is very hard to forget.
Title: The Devil in the White City
Author: Erik Larson
Fiction – Historical
This novel is set during the creation of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair where the wonders of the nineteenth century are displayed. A serial killer uses the fair to lure people to his nearby refurbished hotel which in reality is a house of death, torture, dissection and cremation.
Title: Water for Elephants
Author:
Sara Gruen
Fiction – Historical
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope.
Title: The Kite Runner
Author:
Khaled Hosseini
Fiction – Historical
This poignant novel traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.
Title: A Tale of Two Cities
Author:
Charles Dickens
Fiction – Historical
A Tale of Two Cities offers a swift, exciting story and an unforgettable rendering of the French Revolution, in a lethal, vengeful and exiguous Paris to a tranquil London.
Fiction - Young Adult
Title: Speak
Author:
Laurie Halse Anderson
Fiction – Young Adult
This dark novel is about a teenage girl who becomes a social outcast after calling the police at a summer party. She struggles to speak the truth about what happened that night and quickly becomes isolated, depressed, and forced to endure the beginning of high school with no friends and a terrible secret.
Title: Jellicoe Road
Author: Melina Marchetta
Fiction – Young Adult
This heart-warming novel follows the life of high school student Taylor Markham abandoned by her drug-addicted mother as she struggles with her identity and family history at a boarding school in Australia.
Title: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Author: Alexie Sherman
Fiction – Adult
Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
Memoir
Title: Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life
Author: Steve Martin
Memoir
This memoir of a popular comic’s life covers eighteen years of family life, entry into show business, and rise to stardom.
Title: Man’s Search for Meaning
Author:
Vicot Frankl
Memoir
A Holocaust survivor’s memoir which illustrates the power of human will and the freedom of choice.
Title: When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi
Author: David Maraniss
Memoir
A biography of Vince Lombardi and the story of the quintessential American family. This book explores his Italian immigrant background, his rise to fame, and his influence on his players, the game of football, and the country.
Title: October Sky
Author: Homer Hickam
Memoir
Homer Hickam, a scientist at NASA, recounts his childhood growing up in a West Virginia coal-mining town. In a place where young boys either find a way out via football or follow their fathers into the coal mines, Hickam dreams of launching rockets.
Non-Fiction
Title: Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream
Author: H. G. Bissinger
Non-Fiction
The bestselling story of life in the football-driven town of Odessa, Texas, explores how the town's passion for the team inspires--and sometimes shatters--the young men who wear the Panther uniform.
Title: Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports
Author: Mark Fainaru-Wada & Lance Williams
Non-fiction
This work is an account of the use of steroids in baseball and professional sports. This examines the impact of steroids on athletes and on the sport of baseball.
Title: A Short History of Nearly Everything
Author: Bill Bryson
Non-fiction
A book that explores a wide variety of scientific questions from how things work to how things began. An entertaining look at some of mankind’s unanswerable questions.
Title:
Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need Green Revolution and How it can Renew America
Author:
Thomas Friedman
Non-Fiction
This book explores why we need a green revolution in the United States and how it can revitalize our country.
Title: Reading Lolita in Tehran
Author: Azar Nafisi
Non-Fiction
This is a non-fiction story set at a university in Tehran, Iran. It is about a teacher who holds weekly secret book club meetings for some of her female students.
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Author: Stephen Hawking
Non-Fiction
This scientific work leads the reader on an exhilarating journey to distant galaxies, black holes, and alternate dimensions, and includes Professor Hawking's observations about the last decade's advances and developments.
Title: Freakonomics
Author: Stephen Dubner & Steven Levitt
Non-Fiction
These authors offer their views of how the economy really works, examining issues from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing. They offer a very different view on what drives the economy.
Title: Lies My History Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Author:
James Loewen
Non-Fiction
This text criticizes the way history is presented in current textbooks and suggests a fresh and more accurate approach to teaching American history.
Title: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Author:
Dee Brown
Non-fiction
This historical work illustrates the decline of the Plains Indians and their conflict with the colonists.
Title; Into the Wild
Author:
Jon Krakauer
Non-fiction
Into the Wild is constructed from interviews and writings left behind by Christopher McCandless, who decided to give up all his worldly possessions to live in Alaska and get closer to nature.
Title: Salt: A World History
Autor:
Mark Kurlansky
Non-fiction
An “extraordinary look at an ordinary substance,” this book explores salt’s influence on civilization and world history.
Title: Three Cups of Tea
Author:
Greg Mortenson
Non-fiction- Historical
The story of a man’s mission to build schools and promote peace in Pakistan.
Title: The Glass Castle
Author:
Jeanette Walls
Non-Fiction – Memoir
This novel explores the life of a child with an alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother. She discusses her family's nomadic upbringing.
Title: Happier
Author:
Tal Ben-Shahar
Non-fiction – Psychology
Written by the teacher of the most popular class at Harvard University, this book is designed to teach people how to become tougher, more resilient, more joyful, and more satisfied with life.
Satire
Title: Candide
Author:
Voltaire
Satire
Written in 18th century France, Candide is a fun and accessible read. This satire is a commentary on the soundness of optimism in a chaotic and often terrible world.
Title: Jennifer Government
Author:
Max Barry
Satire
A political satire of a futuristic America where everything is privatized, including the police and government. This could be characterized as a modern-day 1984.
Science Fiction
Title: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Author:
Douglas Adams
Science Fiction
This novel is rich in comedic detail and thought-provoking situations. Arthur Dent is grabbed from Earth moments before a cosmic construction team obliterates the planet in order to build a freeway.
Note: Book descriptions were taken from Novelist, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, publisher’s information and teachers’ s
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