Summer reading list...

Earlier this week a student of mine asked me for a few suggestions for summer reading. She was currently reading The Scarlet Letter and wanted to know which "classic" she should read next. IT was actually quite fun to put together a list of books that have stayed with me. Some of them I want to now go back and reread.

I started with a regular sized post-it note. Three post-its later I realized that was illogical and switched to a large, lined note card. When it became apparent that wasn't going to work, I typed the whole mess up. Since posting about this on Instagram (because that's how I roll...) I've had several people ask for a copy. SO, what follows is what I gave to my student. And I'm proud to say that yesterday she came to class, fresh from the library, toting a copy of Anna Karenina under her arm.

I'd love to get suggestions from ya'll of books to add or that I may have forgotten to list.

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So, I may have gone a little overboard, but I started writing titles and I would think of another title, then another and another... It was sort of a domino effect. Not all of these titles are “classics” in the sense that they’re really old, but they’re classics in the sense that they’re good books.

Classics – European

*Anything by Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion are my favorites)
*Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
*Villette – Charlotte Bronte
*Wives and Daughters – Elizabeth Gaskell
*The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
*The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
*The Importance of Being Earnest – play – Oscar Wilde
*Lord of the Flies – William Golding
*The Scarlet Pimpernel – Baroness Orczy
Pygmalion (play) – George Bernard Shaw (the movie My Fair Lady is based on the play)
*Night – Elie Wiesel
*The Four Feathers – A.E.W. Mason
*Anna Karenina  - Leo Tolstoy (Russian – Russian authors can be hard, but good story)
*The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
*Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

Classics –  American

* My Antonia – Willa Cather
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass- Frederick Douglass
*Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
*Short Stories of Edgar Allen Poe
*The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Narrative of Sojourner Truth – Sojourner Truth (memoir)
*To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
*Animal Farm – George Orwell
*The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
*East of Eden – John Steinbeck
*Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou (African American Literature)
*Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston (African American Literature)
*A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison (African American Literature)
The Things They Carried  - Tim O’Brien (contemporary)

* Books I have already read. The others are on my list to read. Many of these books have film (sometimes multiple) adaptions. Many of these may also be available for free download or from Barnes and Noble classics series for $3-$5 apiece. The county library will definitely have most, if not all of these titles.