Recommended Summer Reading List
To encourage the habit and joy of reading, the Jesuit High School English Department has compiled the following Suggestions for Summer Reading. In general, these are books that the English Department is normally not able to assign during the school year but, nonetheless, are worth reading.
These books are “suggested” reading; students’ summer reading will not be tested during the year. Although the list is divided according to grade levels, there is no need to adhere strictly to these divisions.
8th Grade English |
English I |
Aesop’s Fables The Black Arrow – Stevenson To Break the Silence: 13 Short Stories for Young Readers – Barrett Captains Courageous – Kipling The Devil’s Children – Dickinson Fantastic Voyage – Asimov The Penguin Complete Father Brown – Chesterton The Ghost Belonged to Me – Peck The Grey King – Cooper The Halloween Tree – Bradbury The Haunting of Hill House – Jackson Heartsease – Dickinson The Hero and the Crown – McKinley The Incredible Journey – Burnford Kim – Kipling When Knighthood Was In Flower – Major Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come – Fox Otto of the Silver Hand / Men of Iron – Pyle The Red Pony – Steinbeck Scruffy – Gallico The Secret Garden – Burnett Snow Geese – Gallico The Swiss Family Robinson – Wyss War of the Worlds – Wells The Weathermonger – Dickinson Wind in the Willows – Grahame The Yearling – Rawlings |
The Andromeda Strain – Crichton Ben Hur – Wallace Blinded by the Light – Brancato The Chronicles of Amber – Zelazny Close Enough to Touch – Peck Fail Safe – Burdick & Wheeler Lincoln: A Photo Biography – Freedman Men Against the Sea – Nordhoff & Hall Never Cry Wolf – Mowat Neverwhere – Gaiman Pitcairn’s Island – Nordhoff & Hall Sixteen: Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults – Gallo The Time Machine – Wells Up the Down Staircase – Kaufman The Virginian – Wister |
English II |
English III |
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights – Steinbeck The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman – Gaines Confessions of a Teenage Baboon – Zindel The Count of Monte Cristo – Dumas The Crystal Cave – Stewart Cyrano de Bergerac – Rostand Diary of Ann Frank – Cadrain (ed.) The Good Earth – Buck The Hollow Hills – Stewart If I Love You, Am I Trapped Forever – Kerr I Sing the Body Electric – Bradbury The Heart of the Valley – Hinton Kidnapped – Stevenson The Last Enchantment – Stewart Marathon Man – Goldman The Mill on the Floss – Eliot Nine Tomorrows – Asimov Player Piano – Vonnegut Rebecca – Du Maurier Robinson Crusoe – Defoe Tomorrow’s Children – Asimov Travels with Charlie – Steinbeck We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Jackson The Wicked Day – Stewart |
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – Twain All the King’s Men – Warren All the Pretty Horses — McCarthy Babbit – Lewis The Caine Mutiny – Wouk The Confessions of Nat Turner – Styron And I Shall Sleep Down Where the Moon is Small – Llewellyn The Fixer – Malamud For Whom the Bell Tolls – Hemingway Franny and Zooey – Salinger The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck Going after Cacciato – O’Brien Green, Green My Valley Now – Llewellyn The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – McCullers House of the Seven Gables – Hawthorne In Cold Blood – Capote Johnny Got His Gun – Trumbo Lake Woebegone Days – Keillor The Moviegoer – Percy Nicholas and Alexandra – Massie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Kesey Red Sky at Morning – Bradford Seven Story Mountain – Merton Winesburg, Ohio – Anderson |
English IV & V |
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The Amazing Adventures of Brave New World – Huxley Brideshead Revisited – Waugh The Brothers Karamazov – Dostoevsky Candide – Voltaire Crime and Punishment – Dostoevsky David Copperfield – Dickens Dispatches – Herr Dr. Faustus – Marlow Ethan Frome – Wharton Ghosts – Ibsen The Historian – Kostova Leave it to Psmith – Wodehouse Little Dorrit – Dickens Moby Dick – Melville APassage to India – Forster The Rector of Justin – Auchincloss Right from the Beginning – Buchanan River of Gods — McDonald The Sea Gull – Chekhov Shardik – Adams The Sound and the Fury – Faulkner Steppenwolf – Hesse Trinity – Uris Vanity Fair – Thackeray |