What book should I read for my junior summer reading book?

[Artemis_Kat]

I am taking AP English 11 next year and for the class we have to read The Great Gatsby, The Glass Menegerie, and The Scarlett Letter. For school, we also have to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (which is an AMAZING book) and then one book of our choice. But I am having a hard time find a really good AND intellectual book.

Some of my past favorite books have been:

Pere Goriot

Lord of the Flies

Therese Raquin

To Kill a Mockingbird

Rosshalde

Of Mice and Men

Frankenstein

Animal Farm

etc.

So, any suggestions of good books I could read?

Thank you!

[Arestelle]

Sounds like you like books with some social commentary interwined.. Have you read any Sherman Alexie? I read his Reservation Blues for 11th grade honors English; it was engaging, but definitely not a light/happy read. It touches on issues facing Native Americans on reservations in the late 20th century.

If you haven't already read them, I'd also recommend Huxley's Brave New World and Martel's Life of Pi. The latter is a great read the whole way through, but gets really interesting at the end.

Cheers

ed.: Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is also really good, and in a similar vein to Brave New World.

[kivvie]

As an AP Lang teacher, I would actually recommend you look at some non-fiction, or some socially driven fiction.

Huck Finn

Narrative of a Slave --Frerick Douglass

The Jungle

An American Tragedy

We the Living -- Ayn Rand is actually a very good read for this type of class that looks at rhetoric

The House of Bondage

Cannery Row

Babbitt

Their Eyes Were Watching God

The Crying of Lot 49

The Joy-Luck Club

The Handmaid's Tale

Walden

Moby Dick

The Age of Innocence

The Education of Henry Adams

The Naked and the Dead

Light in August

Invisible Man (shows up a lot on the Eng Lit exam)

I tried to give you some works that you can look at using rhetoric and argumentation -- the lenses you will use in AP Lang -- and texts that work well as evidence on lots of different types of AP questions.

Let me know what you decide to read and how you liked it -- even if you don't pick something I recommended! I love to know how students react to books.

[Desert_Brat]

This isn't in ebook format that I know of, but "The Butterfly Revolution" was a story that I very much enjoyed. It's similar to "Lord of the Flies."

[Jael_Notsri]

I'm a big fan of A Separate Peace by John Knowles was one of my favorite AP English reads.  We read it at approximately the same time as we read the Lord of the Flies.  It felt like it had the microcosm like Lord of the Flies, but it was an easier read, and the story had a lot more depth when you weren't thinking about the symbolism and analogies.  So, if you weren't thinking too hard, it was an enjoyable read, and if you were really thinking and thinking about the time in which the book was written and literary symbolism, it was an Awesome story.  I recommend it all the time!

[chesspain]

I would second the recommendation for Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

Other suggestions I would make are:

Main Street (by Sinclair Lewis)

Babbit (also by Sinclair Lewis)

1984

Slaughterhouse Five

All Quiet on the Western Front

The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud)