SUMMER READING

ST ALBANS UPPER SCHOOL

In the Upper School at St. Albans some years ago summer reading was required. For many years all boys were expected to read the same books from a small list for each form. That system had the virtue of imposing upon an entire class a common background; English classes could then draw upon that background during the school year. On the other hand, the system had defects; a list small enough for an English syllabus excluded worthy books, and the clever student could evade the annoyance of assigned reading with ease.

We no longer require summer reading for all students; instead, we appeal to good sense when we suggest that a summer spent without good reading is a summer partly wasted. Summers out of school provide leisure time to read that later years too often deny. Too much genius and beauty reside in the literature of this age and of past ages to be left unread and unemployed.

Any lover of books scanning any short reading list will be astonished at the breadth of its omissions and the eccentricity of its selections. To defend the list that follows, we can only state our principles of inclusion and ask pardon for sins of omission and commission. Our principles are these: The books must stand a good chance of surviving an encounter with the tastes of today's students; the list must offer enough variety to serve the broad-minded and the eclectic; and finally, the books must have generally recognized merit.

While we rejoice in their relevance, we do not seek to propagate the classics during the summer, trusting to winters and to time. We do not use summer reading to provide background for forthcoming courses or to transmit the common cultural heritage, the vital texts of which are seldom agreed upon.

These books are set forth in the hope that students will find them stimulating and enjoyable, that students will through even casual reading, draw closer to a sense of place, of time, of history, of balance, closer to the life of the imagination. We require no set number. "The more the better" seems a sound enough principle.

Forms III, IV, and Older:

Agee, James. A Death in the Family. The bitter-sweet tale of a family coping with the untimely death of a husband and father.

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. An autobiography of a young girl −black, poor, and gifted −growing up in segregated America.

*Baker, Russell. Growing Up. Chronicles the writer's beginnings in the Great Depression, his family life and early career as a journalist.

Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. The personal story of James Baldwin’s growing up in Harlem and an examination of race relations in America.

Beagle, Peter. A Fine and Private Place. A sweet fantasy about life and love after death.

*Capuzzo, Michael. Close to Shore: a True Story of Terror in an Age of Innocence. Recreates the summer of 1916 when a rogue great white shark attacked swimmers along the New Jersey shore, triggering mass hysteria and launching the most extensive shark hunt in history.

Christie, Agatha. And Then There Were None. The story of 10 strangers, each lured to Indian Island by a mysterious host. Once his guests have arrived, the host accuses each person of murder. Unable to leave the island, the guests begin to share their darkest secrets −until they begin to die.

Conrad, Joseph. Victory. Written in an atypically lucid style, a terrific adventure story set in the Dutch East Indies. Evil eventually invades an idyll.

Dixon, Steven. Garbage. Kafka and pulp fiction meet in the story of a small-time bar owner threatened by mobsters −or is he?

Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. A medieval murder mystery that follows the conventions of detective fiction; the story raises contemporary moral and intellectual questions and gives a provocative look at a historical period.

Feinstein, John. A Civil War. A top sports journalist vividly recounts one year (1995) of the Army-Navy football rivalry.

*Frank, Anne. Anne Frank; The Diary of a Young Girl. An account of a young girl and her family hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II.

Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying. An award-winning coming-of-age story set in the segregated South.

Greene, Graham. The Human Factor. A well-designed spy/espionage novel set in England during the height of the Cold War.

*Gunther, John. Death Be Not Proud. A father's powerful story of his son's courageous battle against cancer.

*Halberstam, David. The Teammates. Famed journalist and baseball aficionado recounts the lives and friendship of four ballplayers from the legendary Boston Red Sox teams of the 1940s: Ted Williams, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky and Bobby Doerr.

Harris, Robert. Pompeii. Young Marcus Attilius Primus, an upstanding Roman engineer, rushes to repair an aqueduct in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, which, in A.D. 79, is getting ready to blow its top.

*Hillenbrand, Laura. Seabiscuit: An American Legend. He didn’t look like much. With his smallish stature, knobby knees, and slightly crooked forelegs, he looked more like a cow pony than a thoroughbred. But looks aren’t everything. The author tells the story of the horse with “heart” that became a cultural icon.

*Herrigel, Eugen. Zen in the Art of Archery. A Western philosopher studies archery in Japan as a way of seeking Zen enlightenment.

*Hersey, John. Hiroshima. Eyewitness accounts of Hiroshima's destruction by the atomic bomb.

Johnson, Charles. Middle Passage. A classic sea saga about a newly freed slave who attempts to escape his Louisiana debts by stowing away on the first available ship.

*Junger, Sebastian. The Perfect Storm. A true account of a terrible storm in 1991, which wrecked a commercial fishing boat and killed its crew.

Killing, John Oliver. Youngblood. Chronicles the lives of an African-American family and their friends in Crossroads, Georgia, from the turn of the century to the Great Depression.

*Kingston, Maxine Hong. China Men. Patriarchal forebearers and succeeding generations journey from homelands to the Gold Mountain, examining the relationship between China and the United States, as well as between men and women.

*Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. An account of growing up Chinese-American in California.

*Krakauer, John. Into Thin Air. A suspenseful first-person account of the 1996 ascent of Mt. Everest that left 10 dead.

*Leavy, Jane. Sandy Koufax, A Lefty’s Legacy. Part biography and part cultural history, this book recounts the legendary career of baseball’s Sandy Koufax. It also contains interviews with Koufax’s friends, teammates, and opponents which reveal the great depth of Koufax’s humanity.

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. Classic coming-of-age novel.

Llewellyn, Richard. How Green Was My Valley. Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever. As a huge slag heap has crept menacingly upon his childhood home, he remembers when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened the valley.

*Maas, Peter. The Terrible Hours. Chronicles the true story of 33 American sailors trapped aboard a sunken submarine, just prior to World War II, and the man who attempted their rescue, Navy officer Charles “Swede” Momsen.

*Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. A modern classic that traces the struggle for identity, as told to Alex Haley.

*Maraniss, David. When Pride Still Mattered. An in-depth, highly readable biography of football Hall-of-Fame coach Vince Lombardi, for whom the Super Bowl Trophy is named.

Martin, Valerie. Mary Reilly. The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, told by a young housemaid in Dr. Jekyll's house; terrific companion piece to the original.

*Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandria. An unforgettable account of the extraordinary imperial dynasty of Tsar Nicholas II, his doomed empire, and a revolution that would change the world forever.

*McPhee, John. Levels of the Game. A great non-fiction writer profiles tennis players Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, whose backgrounds, styles, and personalities embody very different levels of play and understanding.

Miller, Walter. A Canticle for Lebowitz. Many would argue that this post-Armageddon novel is the best science fiction work of the twentieth century.

Moore, Lori. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital. A middle-aged woman reflects on the summer of her 15th year.

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. A young man strikes out alone, drawn away from his home in the South by the promise of buried gold, adventure, and the truth of his own family's buried heritage.

Muldoon, Bill. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. A gifted autistic child sets out to discover who killed his neighbor’s dog. A sensitive novel about a boy’s painful confrontation with his family and the outside world.

Paton, Alan. Cry, the Beloved -Country. A lyrical novel, which explores the complications and intricacies of race and personal relations in apartheid-era South Africa.

*Preston, Richard. The Hot Zone. The nation's capital threatened by a potentially catastrophic biological accident.

Robinson, Lew. Officer Friendly and Other Stories. Short stories set in fictional Point Allison, Maine. Quirky, funny, engaging.

Rosengarten, Theodore. All God's Dangers, the Life of Nate Shaw. A heroic African-American sharecropper's tale of his eighty-eight-year saga of surviving all God's dangers −from the wrath of nature to the wrath of prejudice.

*Saltzman, Mark. Iron and Silk. An American college grad journeys to mainland China to teach English and learn martial arts.

Saltzman, Mark. Lying Awake. In this sharply focused, brief narrative, a middle-aged, cloistered nun experiences mystical visions that may or may not be the result of epileptic seizures. A quiet, understated, beautiful novel.

Shaara, Michael. The Killer Angels. A Civil War narrative that focuses on the turning point of the war −Gettysburg.

Taylor, Robert Lewis. The Travels of Jamie McPheeters. A tale full of humor and adventure, narrated by a fourteen-year-old boy crossing the United States with his father in a wagon train during the Gold Rush.

Theroux, Paul. The Mosquito Coast. Dark and often funny adventure story narrated by the fifteen-year-old son of a counter-culture father who takes his family to live in the jungle of an unnamed Central American country.

Tolkein, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. Any part of the classic fantasy series deserves a read.

Weisel, Elie. The Accident or Dawn. Two gripping novellas about the Holocaust.

White, T.H. The Once and Future King. A wonderful retelling of the King Arthur legend by a writer whose awareness of the totalitarian threat posed by Hitler adds dimension to a story of how idealistic heroes are eventually brought to grief by evil (four volumes, best read separately).

Wolff, Tobias. Old School. The narrator and protagonist of this 1960s novel is a scholarship student at a New England prep school that invites literary stars to the campus. Seniors write pieces to be “judged” by the guest; the winner enjoys a private meeting with the literary luminary. Having missed out on an audience with Robert Frost and Ayn Rand, the novel’s protagonist is determined to meet with Ernest Hemingway.

Wright, Richard. Native Son. The fierce story of Bigger Thomas, in the privileged white world of Chicago, and the brutal murder of a white woman.

Forms V, VI, and Older:

*Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays With Morrie. A poignant chronicle of a college professor's lengthy struggle with his terminal illness, narrated by his former student.

*Allende, Isabel. Paula. The story of the death of the author's daughter, told in an unsentimental and transforming fashion.

Benet, Stephen Vincent. The Devil and Daniel Webster. Marvelous American legend of folk hero Daniel Webster and his contest with the devil. Makes New Hampshire more famous than do the primaries.

Bissinger, H.G. Friday Night Lights. A non-fiction account of high-school football in pigskin-crazed Texas, the book examines class, race, and gender.

Boulle, Pierre. The Bridge Over River Kwai. Superb characterizations and themes in the clash between a perfectionist British colonel and the Japanese commandant of a World War II prisoner-of-war camp.

*Buford, Bill. Among the Thugs. The author spends one year with the rabid fans of England’s Manchester United football team – a year of fierce loyalties, fanaticism, and mob violence. Excellent cultural history, but not for the faint of heart.

Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. A fanciful collection: After his return, Marco Polo is invited by Kublai Khan to describe the cities Polo has visited; in the exchange, each discovers a way of creating "something perfect out of chaos."

Chappell, Fred. I Am One of You Forever. The coming-of-age story of a young boy who creates and populates a vivid imaginative world in western North Carolina.

Chesnutt, Charles. The Colonel's Dream. A novel critically exploring the convict lease system in the South of the early twentieth century.

Chesnutt, Charles. The Conjure Woman. A story about the terrible anti-Negro riot that occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1901.

Clemens, Samuel (Mark Twain). Huckleberry Finn. A marvelous collection of humor, narrative, theme, and characterizations as Huck and Jim, the escaped slave, travel down the river with or without the rogues and fools of the period; a novel to be read and reread at different ages.

Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Agent. Humor and irony make for an enjoyable narrative about incompetent anarchists in Victorian England.

Conroy, Pat. Lords of Discipline. An exploration of friendship and masculinity in the South.

Davies, Robertson. Fifth Business. A funny, well-crafted bildungsroman by Canada's most prominent contemporary novelist.

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? A dark, post-apocalyptic novel exploring the questions of consciousness and what it is to be human. The basis for the 1980s film Blade Runner.

Doctorow, E. L. Ragtime. A vandalized automobile is the catalyst for a fictional account of early twentieth-century America and one man's insistence on social justice.

Duncan, David. The Brothers K. A big, entertaining novel about baseball, religious faith, and the conflicts that challenge the four Chance brothers.

*Ellis, Joseph J. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. Illuminating story of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic.

Eady, Cornelius. Brutal Imagination (poetry). Consists of two cycles of poems, each confronting the black man in the white imagination. The first cycle is narrated by the black kidnapper invented by Susan Smith to cover up the killing of her two sons. The second cycle focuses on the black family and the barriers of color, class, and caste that tear it apart.

Endo, Shusaku. Silence. An intense historical novel about a Jesuit's missionary efforts in seventeenth-century Japan.

*Epstein, Joseph. A Line out for a Walk: Familiar Essays. Witty and memorable observations from the best informal essayist in America today.

Exley, Frederick. A Fan's Notes. Hilarious and moving novel about a man's acceptance that he is a fan, not a star.

Fast, Howard. April Morning. The morning and the day of the Battle of Lexington and the effect on a boy of his encounter with war and death.

*Fatsis, Stefan. Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble. The subtitle says it all.

Gaines, Ernest. A Gathering of Old Men. Perhaps the author's finest book, a work that gives voice to a group of old Southern black men and their response to racially motivated violence.

Greene, Graham. A Burnt-Out Case. Superb study of a successful architect who, his interest in life has burned out, spiritually recovers himself in an African leprosy mission.

Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. The most famous hard-boiled detective novel. Also a must-see movie.

Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. World War II classic that wickedly satirizes military life, war, government policies, and a wide range of human follies.

Hemingway, Ernest. In Our Time. Terse, hard short stories whose style revolutionized American literature.

Hersey, John. A Single Pebble. Sensitive story of the education of a young engineer who comes to understand the values of Chinese life on his trip up the Yangtse River.

Hoban, Russell. Riddley Walker. Set in a dark, treacherous future, this novel, described by its author as "difficult, dangerous and harrowing," is also experimental, ambitious, and memorable, one of the great novels of the post-WWII period.

Hunt, Irene. Across Five Aprils. A Civil War story about the relationship between brothers and those fighting on opposing sides.

Jones, Edward P. Lost in the City. A collection of 14 stories of African-American life in Washington, D.C. “Newsday” describes this collection as “Chekhovian.” It is a work that affirms both blacks’ and whites’ humanity.

Jones, Edward P. The Known World. “A novel that weaves together the lives of freed and enslaved blacks, whites, Indians – and allows…a deeper understanding of the enduring multidimensional world created by the institution of slavery.” (Description taken from the dust cover)

Jones, Madison. A Cry of Absence. After a racially charged and particularly violent crime stuns a small Southern town, a mother and brother cope with the knowledge that they harbor one of the murderers.

Kerouac, Jack. On The Road. The most famous of the literary efforts left to posterity by the "beat generation."

Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon. A moving novel about a gentle, mentally challenged man who is given a superior intelligence for a short time before he lapses into his original state.

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. A love story, but much more than that, set in Prague in the days of the Cold War.

Malamud, Bernard. The Assistant. An aimless young man of Catholic upbringing confronts and learns from a poor Jewish grocer in this poignant tale of transgression and redemption.

Martin, Valeria. Property. Set during a slave rebellion in the Antebellum South, this novel is written in the voice of a woman slaveholder and is in the form of a dramatic monologue. The novel captures the main character’s longings and uncensored dreams, and the heart of moral blackness. (Martin is also the author of Mary Reilly.)

Maugham, Somerset. Of Human Bondage. About the growth of a young man who overcomes many problems, reevaluates his aims, and becomes a country doctor.

*McCourt, Frank. Angela's Ashes. Memoir of growing up poor in Limerick, Ireland; funny and heartbreaking, awful and inspiring.

McEwan, Ian. Atonement. In this brilliant novel set before and during WWII, a thirteen-year-old girl’s accusation is as psychologically devastating as the carnage inflicted on British soldiers retreating to Dunkirk. A remarkable book about guilt, pain, and fiction.

McMurtry, Larry. Lonesome Dove. Story of a late 19^th-century cattle drive from Texas to Montana −and much more. It is a drive that represents for everybody involved not only a daring, even a foolhardy, adventure but also an attempt to carve out of the last remaining wilderness a new life.

*McPhee, John. A Sense of Where You Are. A splendid account of Bill Bradley's final year at Princeton and his exploits on the basketball court and in the classroom.

Moore, Lori. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital. A middle-aged woman reflects on the summer of her 15th year.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. A searing tale about the ghost of a young black girl who is killed to protect her from the cruelty of slavery −a novel by America's most recent Nobel Prize winner.

Morrison, Toni. Sula. Two African-American women travel different paths in their search for self-identity.

*Murray, K. M. Elizabeth. Caught in the Web of Words. An absorbing biography of James Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. A semi-autobiographical novel that tells, through a variety of distinct voices, the story of a platoon in Vietnam.

*Parks, Gordon. Voices in the Mirror. Captivating autobiography of this Renaissance man, a photographer, playwright, musician, author, and Civil Rights leader.

Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer. This novel, against a background of New Orleans in Mardi Gras, follows the progress of a 29-year-old New Orleans stockbroker, addicted to movies, in his search for what is valuable in life, and the help he provides to a saddened, anxious young woman.

Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses. Set in modern London, a book that abounds in Joycean richness and magic realism.

*Sacks, Oliver. Awakenings. A heart-wrenching story about patients who recover from years of sleeping sickness.

Salinger, J. D. Nine Stories. Entertaining, well-written stories by a modern master.

*Sobel, Dava. Longitude. One man saves thousands of lives by solving naval navigation's "longitude problem."

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck's great novel, a chronicle of a family of displaced Oakies traveling from Oklahoma to California in the nineteen thirties. Also an Academy Award winning film.

Updike, John. Rabbit Run. Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom strives in vain to recapture his former basketball glory.

Updike, John. The Centaur. The story of a small-town Pennsylvania boy's relationship with his father, with parallels drawn from Greek myth.

Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. Slaughterhouse-Five. An unconventional anti-war novel using the experiences of an American soldier who survived the fire bombing of Dresden.

Warren, Robert Penn. All The King's Men. A masterpiece about politics, corruption, infidelity, and much more, set in Huey Long's Louisiana.

Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited. Waugh's lyrical chronicle of grace, redemption, and damnation within a decaying aristocracy in fractured, post-war England.

*Weisel, Elie. Night. A terrifying account of the death camp the author survived as a child.

Welty, Eudora. Delta Wedding. Covers the activities of a large Southern family on their Mississippi plantation, waiting for the wedding of one of their members −evocative of the mood and pace of Southern life.

Winchester, Simon. The Professor and the Madman. An imprisoned schizophrenic murderer becomes an indispensable contributor to James Murray’s first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. An intriguing biography and highly readable companion to K.M. Murray’s excellent Caught in a Web of Words.

*Wolf, Tom. The Right Stuff. A highly fictionalized and very entertaining account of Americas first astronauts.

Wolfe, Thomas. Look Homeward, Angel. An autobiographical novel about a young man whose capacity to love is smothered by family and environment.

* Non-Fiction

Summer 2004