Pomperaug High School Summer Reading List
This is list of recommended books from Pomperaug High School. Copies of the list are also available at the library.
| Grade 9 | |
| If you liked To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, then you might like: | |
| McCullers, Carson | |
| The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. 1940 | |
| The heroine is the strange young girl, Mick Kelly. The setting is a small Southern town, the cosmos universal and eternal. The characters are the damned, the voiceless, the rejected. Some fight their loneliness with violence and depravity, Some with sex or drink, and some -- like Mick -- with a quiet, intensely personal search for beauty. | |
| McCullers, Carson | |
| The Member of the Wedding. 1946 | |
| If you liked Night by Elie Wiesel, then you might like: | |
| Uris, Leon | |
| Mila 18. 1961 | |
| Wiesel, Elie | |
| Dawn. 2006 | |
| Frank, Anne | |
| The Diary of Anne Frank. 1952 | |
| If you liked The Contender by Robert Lipsyte, then you might like: | |
| Lipsyte, Robert | |
| The Brave. 1991 | |
| After leaving the Indian reservation for New York, Sonny Bear learns to control his rage in order to train for the boxing ring with Alfred Brooks, an ex-boxer who is now a policeman. This book is a sequel to The Contender. |
|
| Malamud, Bernard | |
| The Natural. 1952 | |
| Some books to consider: | |
| Anderson, Laurie Halse | |
| Speak. 1999 | |
| A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school. | |
| Smith, Betty | |
| A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. 1943 | |
| The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness. | |
| Some authors to consider: | |
| Horror | |
| Christopher Pike | |
| Chris Crutcher | |
| R. L. Stine | |
| Male | |
| Robert Cormier | |
| Gary Paulsen | |
| John Sandford | |
| Robert Lipsyte | |
| Walter Dean Myers | |
| Female | |
| Laurie Halse Anderson | |
| Deborah Tannen | |
| Sharon Creech | |
| Gail Carson Levine | |
| Cecily von Ziegesar | |
| Mystery | |
| James Patterson | |
| Mary Higgins Clark | |
| John Grisham | |
| Advice | |
| Melissa Bank | |
| Lauren Henderson | |
| Rachel Simmons | |
| Sci-Fi | |
| Ray Bradbury | |
| Frank Herbert | |
| Ursula Le Guin | |
| Grade 10 | |
| If you liked The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, then you might like: | |
| Alvarez, Julia | |
| How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. 1991 | |
| If you liked Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, then you might like: | |
| Steinbeck, John | |
| Of Mice and Men. 1963 | |
| Tells a story about the strange relationship of two migrant workers who are able to realize their dreams of an easy life until one of them succumbs to his weakness for soft, helpless creatures and strangles a farmer's wife. | |
| If you liked Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, then you might like: | |
| Orwell, George | |
| Animal Farm. 1946 | |
| A political satire in which animals take over running a farm but find their utopian state turning into a dictatorship. | |
| If you liked A Separate Peace by John Knowles, then you might like: | |
| Knowles, John | |
| A Stolen Past. 1983 | |
| (not available from the Southbury Library) | |
| If you liked The Human Comedy by William Saroyan, then you might like: | |
| Smith, Betty | |
| A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. 1943 | |
| The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness. | |
| Some books to consider: | |
| Coelho, Paul | |
| The Alchemist. 1993 | |
| Kidd, Sue Monk | |
| The Secret Life of Bees. 2001 | |
| Fourteen-year-old Lily and her companion, Rosaleen, an African-American woman who has cared from Lily since her mother's death ten years earlier, flee their home after Rosaleen is victimized by racist police officers, and find a safe haven in Tiburon, South Carolina at the home of three beekeeping sisters, May, June, and August. | |
| Some authors to consider: | |
| Horror | |
| Christopher Pike | |
| Chris Crutcher | |
| R. L. Stine | |
| Male | |
| Robert Cormier | |
| Gary Paulsen | |
| John Sandford | |
| Robert Lipsyte | |
| Walter Dean Myers | |
| Female | |
| Laurie Halse Anderson | |
| Deborah Tannen | |
| Sharon Creech | |
| Gail Carson Levine | |
| Cecily von Ziegesar | |
| Mystery | |
| James Patterson | |
| Mary Higgins Clark | |
| John Grisham | |
| Advice | |
| Melissa Bank | |
| Lauren Henderson | |
| Rachel Simmons | |
| Sci-Fi | |
| Ray Bradbury | |
| Frank Herbert | |
| Ursula Le Guin | |
| Grade 11 | |
| If you liked 1984 by George Orwell, then you might like: | |
| Huxley, Aldous | |
| Brave New World. 1932 | |
| Huxley's "Brave New World" is the story of a futuristic World State where all emotion, love, art, and human individuality have been replaced by social stability. An ominous warning to the world's population, this literary classic is a must-read. | |
| Orwell, George | |
| Animal Farm. 1946 | |
| A political satire in which animals take over running a farm but find their utopian state turning into a dictatorship. | |
| If you liked Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard, then you might like: | |
| Paton, Alan | |
| Cry, the Beloved Country. 1948 | |
| Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully told and profoundly compassionate story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s. | |
| If you liked Lord of the Flies by William Golding, then you might like: | |
| Nelson, O.T. | |
| The Girl Who Owned a City. 1975 | |
| When a plague sweeps over the earth killing everyone except children under twelve, ten-year-old Lisa organizes a group to rebuild a new way of life. | |
| If you like Beowulf, then you might like: | |
| Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. | |
| Tolkien, J. R. R. | |
| The Hobbit. 1966 | |
| The adventures of the well-to-do hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, who lived happily in his comfortable home until a wandering wizard granted his wish. | |
| Tolkien, J. R. R. | |
| The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, & The Return of the King) | |
| In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins is faced with an immense task as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the One Ring of Sauron to his care. Frodo must make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the all-powerful Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose. | |
| If you liked Grendel by John Gardner, then you might like: | |
| Shelley, Mary | |
| Frankenstein. 1818 | |
| The world's most famous monster comes to life in this 1818 novel, a tale that combines Gothic romance and science fiction to tell of a young doctor's attempts to breath life into an artificial man. Despite the doctor's best intentions, the experiment goes horribly wrong. | |
| Some books to consider: | |
| Myers, Walter Dean | |
| Monster. 2004 | |
| While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken. | |
| Plath, Sylvia | |
| The Bell Jar. | |
| Some authors to consider: | |
| Horror | |
| Dean Koontz | |
| Stephen King | |
| Yann Martel | |
| Military | |
| Dale Brown | |
| Tom Clancy | |
| Michael Crichton | |
| Male | |
| Khaled Hosseini | |
| Female | |
| Nora Roberts | |
| Sue Monk Kidd | |
| Amy Tan | |
| Helen Fielding | |
| Barbara Kingsolver | |
| Mystery | |
| John Grisham | |
| Michael Connelly | |
| Advice | |
| Rachel Simmons | |
| Sci-Fi | |
| Isaac Asimov | |
| Philip K. Dick | |
| Robert Heinlein | |
| H.G. Wells | |
| Grade 12 | |
| If you liked The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, then you might like: | |
| Twain, Mark | |
| Pudd'nhead Wilson. | |
| Twain, Mark | |
| A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. | |
| If you liked The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, then you might like: | |
| Hawthorne, Nathaniel | |
| The House of Seven Gables. | |
| Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. | |
| Child, Lydia Maria | |
| Hobomok. | |
| (not available from the Southbury Library) | |
| If you liked The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, then you might like: | |
| Fitzgerald, F. Scott | |
| The Last Tycoon. | |
| West, Nathanael | |
| The Day of the Locust. | |
| If you liked Black Like Me, you might like: | |
| Silko, Leslie Marmon | |
| Ceremony. 1977 | |
| Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution. | |
| Baldwin, James | |
| Going to Meet the Man. | |
| Some books to consider: | |
| Martel, Yann | |
| The Life of Pi. 2001 | |
| This brilliant fabulist novel combines the delight of Kipling's "Just So Stories" with the metaphysical adventure of "Jonah and the Whale," as Pi, the son of a zookeeper, is marooned aboard a lifeboat with a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan, and a tiger. | |
| Vonnegut, Kurt | |
| Slaughterhouse-Five. | |
| Some authors to consider: | |
| Horror | |
| Dean Koontz | |
| Stephen King | |
| Military | |
| Dale Brown | |
| Tom Clancy | |
| Michael Crichton | |
| Male | |
| Khaled Hosseini | |
| Female | |
| Nora Roberts | |
| Sue Monk Kidd | |
| Amy Tan | |
| Helen Fielding | |
| Barbara Kingsolver | |
| Mystery | |
| John Grisham | |
| Michael Connelly | |
| Advice | |
| Rachel Simmons | |
| Sci-Fi | |
| Isaac Asimov | |
| Philip K. Dick | |
| Robert Heinlein | |
| H.G. Wells | |
| Advanced Placement Literature | |
| Bronte, Charlotte | |
| Jane Eyre. 1847 | |
| Charlotte Bronte created one of the most unforgettable heroines of all time. Not only is this the classic story of unforgettable love, but it is also the memorable tale of one woman's fight to claim her independence and respect in a society that seems to have no place for her. | |
| Campbell, Joseph | |
| The Power of Myth. 1988 | |
| Greene, Graham | |
| The End of the Affair. 1951 | |
| "This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair. And it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles -- a hate bred of a passion that ultimately lost out to God. Now, a year after Sarah's death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of that passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to lovehate. | |
| Marquez, Gabriel Garcia | |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude. 1995 | |
| One of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a dazzling and original achievement by the masterful Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction. | |
| Rhys, Jean | |
| Wide Sargasso Sea. 1966 | |
| Story of a young woman in the Caribbean whose family's past will be used against her by her cold-hearted and prideful husband, Rochester. | |
| Note: It is recommended to read this book after Jane Eyre. | |
| Advanced Placement Language and Composition | |
| Albom, Mitch | |
| Tuesdays with Morrie. 1997 | |
| Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago. | |
| Dillard, Annie | |
| An American Childhood. 1987 | |
| This title instantly captured the hearts of readers with its joyous, exhilarating memories of growing up in the 1950s. | |
| Steinbeck, John | |
| The Grapes of Wrath. | |
| Strunk, William | |
| The Elements of Style. | |