Required Summer Reading

Magnet Schools

Advanced Placement (Honors)

Directions: You MUST read at least three books from the list

below. Three of your three chosen books must come

from a different category: fiction, non-fiction, or

drama.

Fiction

Invisible Man—Ralph Ellison

First published in 1952, Invisible Man was immediately hailed as a masterpiece and won the National Book Award for its author. Written in the style of a novel of education, the book chronicles the sometimes absurd adventures of a young black man whose successful search for identity ends with the realization that he is invisible to the white world. Structurally complex and densely symbolic, Invisible Man deals with themes of individuality, identity, history, and responsibility.

Catch-22—Joseph Heller

This twentieth century tragicomedy based on the author’s experiences during World War II combines humor and horror while satirizing World War II and all other wars as the absurd offspring of ego, profit, bureaucracy, and death. Epic in scope and loosely structured, Catch-22 alternates between comic idiocy and a gruesome realism.

A Confederacy of Dunces—John Kennedy Toole

An overweight, under-worked, overeducated, and self-described genius wrecks a French Quarter balcony, initiates a race riot, and gallantly sells Lucky Dogs before he escapes from New Orleans in his search for true love. Readers searching for comic relief from darker, tragic literature will appreciate this Pulitzer Prize winner’s main character, Ignatius Riley. This novel’s minor characters are especially memorable and will almost certainly remind you of someone you know all too well.

Heart of Darkness—Joseph Conrad

Conrad’s novel challenges the reader, who will be simultaneously perplexed and intrigued by this novella’s characters, symbols, and disturbing themes. Heart of Darkness focuses on Marlowe’s journey up Africa’s Congo River in search of Kurtz, an idealistic ivory merchant. Cut off from “civilized” society, Kurtz has gone mad. As Marlowe travels deeper into Africa and closer to Kurtz, the action becomes increasingly violent, surreal, and even nightmarish. The reader enters a reality where the confusing yields to the inane or the absurd and finally to the unspeakably horrible.

Candide—Voltaire

Voltaire’s Candide, a hilarious French satire written during the eighteenth century is the irreverent history of a well-meaning young hero who wants only to marry the woman he loves. But before Candide can achieve this goal, circumstances force him to travel the world, experiencing one horror after another: Yet the reader cannot stop laughing—yes, laughing.

Things Fall Apart—Chinua Achebe

Haynes Academy students will do this as a class novel and cannot do it for Summer Reading

Things They Carried—Tim O’Brien

This collection of short stories depicts the men of Alpha Companyand the character Tim O'Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.

Drama:

A Streetcar Named Desire—Tennessee Williams

Williams’ play deals with the clash between lower and gentile class structures in the Old South. Two sisters, who have been separated by time and place, come to grips with the harsh realities

of life amid the background of the steamy city of New Orleans. Lies, exaggeration, violence, and love each unfold in Williams’ gripping play.

Non-fiction:

Citizen Hughes by Michael Drosnin

Howard Hughes is a legendary as a playboy and pilot—but he is notorious for what he became: the ultimate mystery man. Whitaker reveals the true story of the real Howard Hughes, using nearly ten thousand never-before-published documents, more than three thousand in Hughes’ own handwriting. Citizen Hughes is for more than a biography, or even an unwilling autobiography. It is a startling expose’ of the secret history of our times.

The Mapmaker’s Wife by Robert Whitaker

In this true 1735 tale of love, murder, and survival in the Amazon, a beautiful Peruvian noblewoman and a scientist on a quest to measure the earth’s circumference and reveal the mysteries of South America. Victims of a tangled web of international politics, enduring a twenty-year separation, the couple reunites, thus fulfilling their destinie

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster

Thomas Foster opens up a new world of literature, drawing from some of the world's greatest classics to explore what literature is, what it means to us, and how we can understand it. It's a fun and entertaining introduction for students and book lovers alike. Foster's light-witty style makes for easy reading.

The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

This book focuses on success and the hard work, social context and cultural background that explains why some people excel and others don’t.