Sunday, May 31, 2009

Reading List 2009--2010

3Rs (Reading, Writing, and Rhetoric)
100 Best-Loved Poems 0486285537
The Elements of Style (See note below)
Wizard of Oz Vocabulary Builder 9780972743907
To Kill A Mockingbird (any complete edition)
Till We Have Faces…..9780156904360
Macbeth (any complete edition)
Pygmalion 0486282228
Watership Down (any complete edition)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 0486266585
The Gift of the Magi 0486270610
The Yearling 9780743225250

Summer assignment: With your parents’ approval, and excluding the books on the above list, select and read a book that appeals to you . This must be a book which you have not previously read. Write a short essay (250--300 words) on whether you enjoyed the book, and why. Have your parents sign the essay, indicating that the book was new to you. Bring the book and the essay to the first class.

English History and Literature
The Kings and Queens of England (by Antonia Frasier) 9780520224605
Prentice-Hall Literature: The English Tradition 0136917003
Elements of Style (See note below)
Study Is Hard Work 156792025X
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo (by Tolkien) 0345277600
The Importance of Being Ernest 0486264785
Jane Eyre (any complete edition)
Heart of Darkness (any complete edition)
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (any complete edition)
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis (any complete edition)
Never Give In: The Extraordinary Character of Winston Churchill 1888952193 (Also available in out of print paperback)
Active History (the cost of this interactive website is $2.50 per student, payable at registration)

Summer assignment: Read John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps. This book is one of the earliest in the genre of spy and thriller novels. In your own words, write an essay (300--400 words), explaining the appeal of the novel‘s main character, Richard Hannay. In other words, what qualities in him might attract readers? Bring Buchan’s novel and the essay to the first class.

Advanced Placement English Literature
Literature (X.J. Kennedy) 0316488763
Princeton Review: Cracking the AP English Literature and Composition 9780375428890
Elements of Style (see note below)
The Power and the Glory 0142437301
Wuthering Heights 0393978893
House on Mango Street 0679734775
Pride and Prejudice 0393976041
The Great Gatsby 0743273567
The Sound and the Fury 0393964817
Wise Blood 0374530637
The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell (any complete edition)
World War One British Poets 0486295680

Summer assignment: With approval from your parents, select one of the recent novels from the list below and read it. Write an essay (400--500 words) on the importance of TWO of the following to the novel: plot, characterization, theme, imagery, symbolism, and voice (first person or third person). To select your novel, simply read the reviews on Amazon and pick a book that sounds appealing. Bring your selected novel and your paper to the first class.

The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
The Sun also Rises, Ernest Hemingway Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
On the Road, Jack Kerouac The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh Native Son, Richard Wright
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley My Antonia, Willa Cather
Possession, A.S. Byatt
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

AP European History
A History of Western Society Since 1300 7th edition 0618270744
Princeton Review: Cracking the AP European History Exam 9780375428913
A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman (any complete edition)
The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell (any complete edition)
Anatomy of a Revolution by Crane Brinton (any complete edition)
Two biographies of your choice, one from September list, one from January list (These lists will be handed out the first day of each semester).
Selected readings from online sources
Active History (The cost of this interactive website is $2.50 per student, payable at registration)

Summer assignment: You will need to read Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, an account of what she mildly calls “The Calamitous 14th Century.” This is history at its best. When you finish reading the book, you must write a 400--500 word essay examining one of the developments described by Tuchman and the impacts, positive and negative, of that development on late medieval society. Examples of these developments are changes in feudalism, the place of knighthood in society, effects of the plague, the Church‘s problems, the rebellion of the peasantry, the increasing power of cities and towns. When paraphrasing passages--the essay is too short for direct quotation--you should document your evidence from A Distant Mirror by citing the page number. Example: On becoming pope, Urban VI alienated many men of wealth and privilege, not only nobles but cardinals and bishops as well (330).

Latin I
Henle Latin I 0829410260
Henle Grammar 0892401121
(N.B. I have several new copies of Henle Latin I and Latin Grammar at my home. I will sell these for the same price as Amazon. If interested, please give me a call).
Review Text in Latin First Year 0877205515
No summer assignment for first-year Latin students

Latin II
Review Text in Latin Two Years 0877205558
(We’ll keep using the Henle Books as well).

Summer assignment: Memorize the vocabulary pages 217--224. Know the principal parts of the verbs. Note cards recommended.

Latin III
Review Text in Latin Three and Four Years 0877205582
Other texts supplied in class

Summer assignment: Memorize the vocabulary in Henle, pages 473--488. Know the principal parts of the verbs. Some of these are new words. I highly recommend using note cards.Latin IV

AP Latin--Virgil
The Aeneid Translated by Allen Mandelbaum
Virgil’s Aeneid 9780865165847
A Virgil Workbook 0865166145
AP Latin Virgil & Literature 0738602930

Summer assignment for AP Latin: Read Mandelbaum’s translation of The Aeneid. Memorize the word list that you will receive this week in the mail from me. There will be a test on the word list in class on our first day together. You must perform well on that test.

General notes:
You may purchase nearly all these books secondhand. Go to amazon.com, alibis.com, abe.com, or simply Google used books or used textbooks. You might also look at Mr. K’s, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, or Montford Books.

Books whose ISBN begin with 0486 are Dover Books. We will be annotating some of these, which means we will be writing in the book. These books are generally less than $3 apiece.

Any edition of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style will do. Many feel that the older editions are superior to the newer in their use of example and of gender-based language. You will need this book for your papers.

All students in AP European History or in English History and Literature: You will need to pay an additional $2.50 at registration to cover the costs of an interactive website you’ll be using. Your user name and password will be given to you at registration.

AP students: When the ISBN number is given, that is the book you must buy. AP English Lit. students: you must buy the books with the correct ISBN numbers. Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and The Sound and The Fury all contain essays at the end of the book that are necessary reading for the class. All AP in literature and history: you must have a copy of the Princeton Review Cracking the AP. These are the 2009 editions, but the 2010 come out too late for our usage. These editions differ little, if at all, from year to year.

All students: Summer assignments are due the first day of class. To begin the course, you must have completed the assignment for your class.