Looking for something different to read...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not being inspired by any specific book currently, I thought I'd get more acquainted with what kids are reading in school these days. So I thought I'd try something from my high schooler's list of choices for an independent reading project. The few I've read were a very long time ago. Any thoughts or recommendations from this selection?

The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Blindness (Jose Saramago)
Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
The House of Spirits (Isabel Allende)
The Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
Macbeth (William Shakespeare)
Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett)
Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard)
JB (Archibald Macleish, drama)
Bel Canto (Ann Patchett)
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
Grendel (John Gardner)
The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey)
Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)
On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
The Plague (Albert Camus)
A Doll’s House (Henrik Ibsen)
Go Set a Watchman (Harper Lee)
The Awakening (Kate Chopin, )
The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
Anthem (Ayn Rand)

Where does your kid go to school? Serious question. Mine is in MCPS and the reading choices don't include any of these classics. The only thing he read in high school that I had any familiarity with was Fahrenheit 451.

Of your list, I liked:

Scarlet Letter
The Plague
A Doll's House
The Heart of Darkness
100 Years of Solitude

I preferred Song of Solomon from Toni Morrison over her Bluest Eye. And we read Song of Solomon in conjunction with Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, which was a fantastic duo to compare and contrast.

Thanks.
Wakefield in Arlington. This is from an AP Eng Lit class.