Summer 2021 Reading List

The English Department looks forward to summer as a time for new adventures, especially in reading. We hope that this list will fill you with the joy of summer reading!

All students will write about these books in August. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our English Department Chair, Ms. Sheri Goldstein, at sgoldstein@icja.org 

Freshman

• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Sophomores

• The Rent Collector by Camron Wright

Juniors & Seniors

*Juniors & Seniors (if NOT enrolled in AP) please pick one of the following books:

      Mysteries:

• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
• The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
• Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
• Any book by Stephen King, Tony Hillerman, George Simenon

      Science Fiction:

• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Andromeda Strain by Michael Creighton
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
• Foundation by Isaac Asimov
• The Gateway to Woman’s Country by Sheri Tepper
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• Jurassic Park by Michael Creighton
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card
• The Stand by Stephen King
• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
• The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy

      Historical Fiction:

• All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
• The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
• Centennial by James Michener
• Exodus by Leon Uris
• I, Claudius by Robert Graves
• Mila 18 by Leon Uris
• Mutiny on the Bounty by Nordoff and Hall
• The Once and Future King by T.H. White
• Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
• The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
• Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
• The Queen’s Fool by Phillipa Gregory

      Non-Fiction:

• All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
• Alone by Richard Byrd
• Cosmos by Carl Sagan
• The diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
• This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolfe
• House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• Oh, Jerusalem by Larry Collins
• Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy
• The Right Stuff by Tome Wolfe
• Savage Inequalities by Jonathon Kozol
• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
• Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
• The Devil and the White City by Erik Larson
• A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James S. Shapiro
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
• The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
• Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
• Tuesdays with Morry by Mitch Albom
• Working by Studs Terkel
• Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman

      Animal Themes

• All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
• All things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot
• Born Free by Joyce Adamson
• The Call of the Wild by Jack London
• Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• The Yearling by Margorie Kinnan Rawlings

      Young Adult Favorites

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
• The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
• Any John Green Text

      Judaic Texts

• As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg
• One People, Two Worlds by Hirsch and Reinman

      Challenging Texts with Mature Themes

• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• The Kite Runner by Khaleed Hosseini
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
• The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
• The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
• Yellow Raft on Blue Water by Michael Dorris
• The Glass Castle by Janette Walls
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• The Truth about Forever by Sarah Dressen
• Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

     Authors Worth Reading

• Faulkner, William
• Steinbeck, John
• Ortiz Cofer, Judith
• Woolf, Virginia
• Tolstoy, Leo
• Chabon, Michael
• Austen, Jane
• McDermott, Alice