Outside+Reading+List


 * ENGLISH 9: ORAL COMMUNICATION**

Letters About Literature //(You will complete this in connection to your Outside Reading)// ~ []

=OUTSIDE READING LIST=

//Lord of the Flies// Golding The classic tale of a group of English school boys who are left stranded on an unpopulated island, and who must confront not only the defects of their society but the defects of their own natures.

//Where the Red Fern Grows// Rawls A boy living in the Ozark Mountains acquires two beloved coon hounds, and together the three of them experience danger, adventure, love, and sorrow.

//Jurassic Park// Crichton An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Creatures once extinct now roam Jurassic Park, soon-to-be opened as a theme park. Unfortunately, something goes wrong and science proves a dangerous toy.

//Congo// Crichton The legendary ruins of the Lost City of Zinj have seen an eight-person field exhibition die. After startling discoveries, a new expedition is sent back into the Congo--its mission, to descend into a world where the only way back out may be through the grisliest death.

//Emma// Austin A timeless coming-of-age story follows the adventures of the self-assured and accomplished Emma, a twenty-one-year-old girl of privilege who believes she is immune to romance and has several chaotic and often humorous experiences.

//Oliver Twis//t Dickens This is the story of an orphan raised in a workhouse, who runs away to London only to be captured by thieves from whom he eventually escapes. This novel is a morality tale and a detective story rolled into one and presents some of Dickens's darkest characters: Bill Sikes, the murderer; Fagin, the master thief; and the leering Artful Dodger.

//A Time to Kill// Grisham A Southern town is shocked when a 10-year-old black girl is raped by two white men--until the girl's father takes the law into his own hands.

//The Firm// Grisham Mitch McDeere, a Harvard Law graduate, becomes suspicious of his Memphis tax firm when mysterious deaths, obsessive office security, and the Chicago Mob figure into its operations.

//Catch 22// Heller Joseph Heller's classic WWII black comedy follows American bomber pilot Yossarian on his harrowing quest for the final mission that will free him from his military obligation.

//Twilight Saga, Books 1-4// Meyer The novels revolve around a pair of lovers who are supremely star-crossed, Bella and Edward. Because Edward is a vampire, their relationship is difficult and complex.

//A Wrinkle in Time// L'Engle Meg Murray, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. She claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a "tesseract," which, if you didn't know, is a wrinkle in time.

//The Green Mile// King In a chilling novel by the author of Carrie and The Stand, a new prisoner at Cold Mountain Penitentiary presents an unusual dilemma for jaded prison guard Paul Edgecombe.

//The Shining// King Terrible events occur at an isolated hotel in the off season, when a small boy with psychic powers struggles to hold his own against the forces of evil that are driving his father insane.

//Hot Zone// Preston A deadly virus from Africa suddenly appears in the suburbs of the capital, killing 90 percent of its victims and remaining unaffected by modern medicine. Fantasy? Not according to Preston, who uses this scenario to consider the potentials for the outbreak of 'hot' viruses. A terrifying, true account.

//The Mists of Avalon// Bradley The legends of King Arthur come to life in the extraordinary stories of the women in his life--including his half-sister Morgaine, a high-priestess of the religion of the Mother Goddess, and his beautiful wife Gwynhefar who is torn between her duty and her love for Lancelot.

//Outsiders// Hinton Ponyboy is fourteen, tough and confused, yet sensitive behind his bold front. Since his parents' death, his loyalties have been to his brothers and his gang, the rough, swinging, long-haired boys from the wrong side of the tracks. When his best friend, Johnny, kills a member of a rival gang, a nightmare of violence begins and swiftly envelops Ponyboy in a turbulent chain of events.

//The Perfect Storm// Junger A vivid account of a history-making storm that hit the New England coast in October 1991 and the lives it changed, The Perfect Storm weaves together the history of the fishing industry, the science of storms, and personal accounts.

//Wuthering Heights// Bronte, E. Bronte reveals an uncanny understanding of the terrible truths about men and women, in a convincing, unsentimental account of passionate love.

Watership Down Adams Chronicles the adventures of a group of rabbits searching for a safe place to establish a new warren where they can live in peace.

//The Joy Luck Club// Tan In 1949, four Chinese women--drawn together by the shadow of their past--begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club--and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades.

//The Postman// Brin He was a survivor--a wanderer who traded tales for food and shelter in the dark and savage aftermath of a devastating war. Fate touches him one chill winter's day when he borrows the jacket of a long dead postal worker to protect himself from the cold. The old, worn uniform //still has power as a symbol of hope, and with it he begins to weave his greatest tale--of a nation on the road to recovery.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone// (and other books in the series) Rowling What did Harry Potter know about magic? He was stuck with the decidedly un-magical Dursleys, who hated him. He slept in a closet and ate their leftovers. But an owl messenger changes all that, with an invitation to attend the Hogwarts School for Wizards and Witches, where it turns out Harry is already famous.

//The Eight// Nevile When two young women in France of 1790 discover the Montglane Chess Service in Montglane Abbey, they recognize its mystic ability to provide anyone playing it with unlimited power and desperately scatter its pieces around the world. But in 1972, computer expert Catherine "Cat" Velis is hired to recover the chess pieces--and is caught up in a nefarious, globe-spanning conspiracy.

//Anne of Green Gables// Montgomery Anne, an 11-year-old orphan, has arrived at Prince Edward Island only to discover that the Cuthberts want to adopt a boy, not a feisty red-haired girl. But Anne, who simply must have more scope for her imagination and a real home, wins them over.

//Alive// Read True story about how a group of people who survived an airplane crash in the Andes had to resort to cannibalism in order to stay alive.

//Of Mice and Men// Steinbeck Tragic tale of a mentally challenged man and the friend who loves and tries to protect him.

//Bless the Beasts and the Children// Swarthout The neglected attendees of the Box Canyon Boys Camp find their lives turned around by Cotton, who, in a hot-wired pickup, challenges them to join efforts to save a herd of buffalo and rediscover themselves in the process.

//This Boy's Life: A Memoir// Wolff Award-winning fiction author Tobias Wolff recounts his own growing up in the 1950s, creating a story that has captured the hearts and minds of thousands of readers across the country. Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move.

//Catcher in the Rye// Salinger Holden, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there.

//Fahrenheit 451// Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 is a classic novel set in the future when books forbidden by a totalitarian regime are burned. The hero, a book burner, suddenly discovers that books are flesh and blood ideas that cry out silently when put to the torch.

//Cat's Cradle// Vonnegut Filled with humor and unforgettable characters, this apocalyptic story tells of Earth's ultimate end, and presents a vision of the future that is both darkly fantastic and funny, as Vonnegut weaves a satirical commentary on modern man and his madness.

//The Horse Whisperer// Evans Annie Graves desperately travels across a continent with her injured daughter to see Tom Booker, the one man who can calm wild horses with his voice and heal broken spirits with his touch, to help her daughter, the girl's savage horse, and her own wounded heart.

//The Doomsday Boo//k Willis Stranded in the fourteenth century--a time of superstition and fear--time traveler Kivrin becomes an unlikely angel of hope during history's darkest hour and awaits rescue by her comrades.

//Memoirs of a Geisha// Golden Golden takes the reader behind the rice-paper screens of the geisha house to a vanished floating world of beauty and cruelty, from a poor fishing village in 1929 to the decadence of 1940s Kyoto, through the chaos of World War II to the towers of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where the gray-eyed geisha Sayuri unfolds the remarkable story of her life.

//Gone with the Wind// Mitchell A monumental classic considered by many to be not only the greatest love story ever written, but also the greatest Civil War saga.

//Snow Falling on Cedars// Guterson On San Piedro, an island of rugged, spectacular beauty in Puget Sound, a Japanese-American fisherman stands trial for murder. The novel is a beautifully crafted courtroom drama, love story, and war novel, illuminating the psychology of a community, the ambiguities of justice, the racism that persists even between neighbors, and the necessity of individual moral action despite the indifference of nature and circumstance.

//Jane Eyre// Bronte In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall, a country estate owned by the mysteriously remote Mr. Rochester.

//Boone’s Lick// McMurtry Mary Margaret Cecil packs up her four children, including 15-year old Shay, and travels from their home in Boone’s Lick, Missouri, to find her estranged husband who has gone to the Western Frontier to find his fortune.

//Seventh Son// Card The author of Ender's Game creates an alternative American frontier powered by folk magic where Native Americans remain powerful and a very special child is born.

//Incarnation of Immortality Series, Books 1-7// Anthony These books are basically light fantasy, but they also address very serious issues. The fictional world for the story is Earth. But this is an Earth where magic holds equal sway over life as does science. If you are ill, you can seek the aid of a competent physician or the assistance of a magician with a good reputation. If you want to travel from Chicago to New York, you can choose between an airline or a good magic flying carpet. The series also features interwoven tales and character-histories.

//His Dark Materials Series, Books1-3// Pullman In an epic trilogy, Philip Pullman unlocks the door to a world parallel to our own, but with a mysterious slant all its own. Dæmons and winged creatures live side by side with humans, and a mysterious entity called Dust just might have the power to unite the universes--if it isn't destroyed first. Here, the three paperback titles in Pullman's heroic fantasy series are united in one dazzling boxed set. Join Lyra, Pantalaimon, Will, and the rest as they embark on the most breathtaking, heartbreaking adventures of their lives. The fate of the universe is in their hands.

//The Eye of the Heron// LeGuin Luz leaves her City father to lead the People of Peace on a perilous quest to discover a world of hope within this world of chaos...a place they will call Heron.

//Farewell to Manzanar// Wakatsuki-Houston During World War II, a community called Manzanar was hastily created in the high mountain desert country of California. Its purpose was to house thousands of Japanese Americans who were ordered to leave their homes and businesses. For Jeanne Wakatsuki, a seven-year-old child, Manzanar became a way of life in which she struggled and adapted, observed and grew.

//Dune// Herbert On the desert planet Arakis, Paul Atreides, becomes the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib. He avenges the traitorous plot against his noble family--and brings to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

//Interview with a Vampire// Rice We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks—as he pours out the confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead.

//Anthem// Rand A classic tale of a future dark age of the great "We," in which individuals have no name, no independence, and no values, Anthem projects current social trends into the future.

//The Old Man and the Se//a Hemingway An old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, engages in a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.

//Sound of Waves// Mishima Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, a young fisherman is entranced at the sight of the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village.

//Obasan// Kogawa Based on the author's own experiences, this award-winning novel was the first to tell the story of the evacuation, relocation, and dispersal of Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry during the Second World War.

//Hiroshima// Hersey This is the story of six people who lived through the explosion of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima in 1945. New editions of this book contain an additional chapter in which the author, returning to Japan forty years later, tells us what has happened to each of these six survivors.

//Things Fall Apart// Achebe Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo (Ibo) community is banished for accidentally killing a clansman for seven years. A classic of modern African writing, this is the tale of what happens to tribal customs and old ways when white man comes.

//Light in the Forest// Richter Though reared as a Lenni Lenape Indian, fifteen-year-old True Son, once called John Camera Butler, returns to live with the people he has grown to hate, white men.

//Middle Son// Iida Spencer Fujii, the 'middle son,' has returned to the island of his birth to cope with his dying mother and finally to face the facts of his elder brother Taizo's childhood death.

//Little Too Much is Enough// Tyau As post-World War II Honolulu gradually changes from pineapple fields and beaches to suburban sprawl, Mahealani Suzanne Wong struggles to discover herself within her large and complicated Chinese Hawaiian family.

//Maus: A Survivor’s Tale// Spiegelman Using a comic book format with human characters depicted as animals, Spiegelman presents his father Vladek's account of his life as a Jew in Poland when he arrived in Auschwitz.

//The Chosen// Potok Two Jewish boys from Brooklyn, Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter, move from boyhood to manhood amidst the conflict between generations and religious traditions.

//The Promise// Potok In the sequel of The Chosen, young Reuven Malter is unsure of himself and his place in life. An unconventional scholar, he struggles for recognition from his teachers.

//Night// Wiesel Night is a terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family.

//A Ricepaper Airplane// Pak As Kim Sung Wha is dying, he unfolds a tale of life on the fringes of a Hawai'i sugar plantation in the 1920s. This laborer, patriot, revolutionary, and aviator envisions building an airplane to carry him back to his Korean homeland, to his wife and children.

//Nigger: An Autobiography// Gregory Dick Gregory climbs from poverty to celebrity status as a comedian and civil rights activist.

//The Invisible Man// Wells This highly imaginative tale focuses on the powers and bold ventures of a scientist, who, after discovering the means to make himself invisible, unleashes a bizarre streak of terror on the inhabitants of an English village.

//Black Like Me// Griffin He trudged southern streets searching for a place where he could eat or rest, looking vainly for a job other than menial labor, feeling the "hate stare." He was John Griffin, a white man who darkened the color of his skin and crossed the line into a country of hate, fear, and hopelessness--the country of the American Black man.

//A Separate Peace// Knowles Gene was a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas was a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happened between them at a New England boarding school one summer during the early years of World War II is the subject of A Separate Peace.

//Nisei Daughte//r Sone Nisei Daughter describes the loss of property, the personal insults, the barbed wire and armed guards, the dust storms, horrible food, unfinished barracks and barren land, and the efforts of the Japanese-Americans to maintain their ethics, family life, and belief in the United States.

//Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter// Hirsch Hurricane is a detailed, inspiring account of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter's 22-year effort to exonerate himself and regain his freedom after being wrongly convicted of a triple murder.

//Spindle’s End// McKinley Robin McKinley has a gift for the skillful retelling of folktales. In this novel, she has created a delightfully light, though never superficial, reimagining of Sleeping Beauty.

//The Chronicles of Chrestomanci Series, Books 1-4// Wynne Jones Diana Wynne-Jones shatters the cliched image of wizards with Chrestomanci, a dapper Englishman who happens to be the nine-lived magician in charge of all the magic -- in all the parallel worlds. The books are funny, dramatic, well-characterized, well-written and well-plotted. The parallel worlds are well-thought out, such as Chrestomanci's world, where magic exists rather than science as we know it. As in many of her books, she shows unusual insights into the thought processes of both young and adolescent children. While readers may sometimes want to smack the lead characters, it's hard not to like the heroes and despise the villains.

//Chinese Cinderella// Mah Chinese Cinderella is the perfect title for Adeline Yen Mah's compelling autobiography in which, like the fairy-tale maiden, her childhood was ruled by a cruel stepmother. As the youngest of her five siblings, Adeline, known as Wu Mei to the member of her family, suffers the worst at the hands of her stepmother Niang. Despite her parent's heartbreaking neglect, she eventually becomes a doctor and realizes her dream of being a writer.

//I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings// Angelou In this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Marvelously told, with Angelou's "gift for language and observation," this "remarkable autobiography by an equally remarkable black woman from Arkansas captures, indelibly, a world of which most Americans are shamefully ignorant."

//Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood// Wells When Siddalee Walker, daughter of Vivi Abbott Walker, is interviewed in the New York Times about a play she's directed, her mother gets described as a "tap-dancing child abuser." Enraged, Vivi disowns Sidda. Sidda begs forgiveness and postpones her upcoming wedding. All looks bleak until the Ya-Yas step in and convince Vivi to send Sidda a scrapbook of their girlhood mementos, called "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood." As Sidda struggles to analyze her mother, she comes face to face with the tangled beauty of imperfect love, and the fact that forgiveness, more than understanding, is often what the heart longs for.

//All Creatures Great and Smal//l Herriot Take an unforgettable journey through the English countryside and into the homes of its inhabitants-- four-legged and otherwise-- with the world's best-loved animal doctor. Whether struggling mightily to position a calf for birthing or comforting a lonely old man whose beloved dog and only companion has died, Herriot's heartwarming and often hilarious stories of his first years as a country vet perfectly depict the wonderful relationship between man and animal-- and they intimately portray a man whose humor, compassion, and love of life are truly inspiring.

//The Da Vinci Code// Brown While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter. Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, to decipher the labyrinthine puzzle.

//The Lovely Bones// Sebold When we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. This was before milk carton photos and public service announcements, she tells us; back in 1973, when Susie mysteriously disappeared, people still believed these things didn't happen. Through the eyes of this winning young heroine, this story of seemingly unbearable tragedy is transformed into a suspenseful, touching, even funny novel about family, memory, love, heaven, and living.

//Sophie’s World// Gaarder Wanting to understand the most fundamental questions of the universe isn't the province of ivory-tower intellectuals alone, as this book's enormous popularity has demonstrated. A young girl, Sophie, becomes embroiled in a discussion of philosophy with a faceless correspondent. At the same time, she must unravel a mystery involving another young girl, Hilde, by using everything she's learning. The truth is far more complicated than she could ever have imagined.

//The Secret Life of Bees// Kidd This novel tells the tale of a 14-year-old white girl named Lily Owen who is raised by the elderly African American Rosaleen after the accidental death of Lily's mother. Following a racial brawl in 1960s Tiburon, SC, Lily and Rosaleen find shelter in a distant town with three black bee-keeping sisters. The sisters and their close-knit community of women live within the confines of racial and gender bondage and yet have an unmistakable strength and serenity associated with the worship of a black Madonna and the healing power of honey. In a series of unforgettable events, Lily discovers the truth about her mother's past and the certainty that "the hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."

//Year of Wonder// Brooks When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead a "year of wonders."

//The Clouds Above// Grieg The Clouds Above is a love story set during the Battle of Britain and a description of the battle itself. Drawing from his mother's diary chronicling her own experience during the Battle of Britain, Andrew Greig has written a novel that is as compelling a love story as it is a war story.

//Cold Sassy Tree// Burns This story is told by Willy Tweedy, a fourteen-year-old boy living in a small, turn-of-the-century Georgia town. Will's hero is his Grandpa Rucker, who runs the town's general store, carrying all the power and privilege thereof. When Grandpa Rucker suddenly marries his store's young milliner barely three weeks after his wife's death, the town is set on its ear. Will Tweedy matures as he watches his family's reaction and adjustment to the news. He is trapped in the awkward phase of rising to adult expectations - driving the first cars in town - while still orchestrating wild pranks and starting scandalous gossip through his childish bragging. He seeks the wisdom of his grandpa and has his eyes opened to southern "ways" under the tutelage of Grandpa's new Yankee wife, Miss Love. Still, Will "couldn't figure out...why in the heck she would marry the old man." But Miss Love's influence seems to be transforming Grandpa into a younger man, and the answer unfolds slowly and sweetly as Will Tweedy becomes the confidante and staunch defender of this unlikely couple.