Summer Reading Lists
La Salle Catholic College Preparatory
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Honors American Literature Mr. Stiff - Summer 2008 Reading List

Click here for Mr. Krantz's List

Please read one (1) choice from each author. This is an introduction to some of the authors you'll be stuying next year. Focus on setting, writing style, and theme. Check the books out of the library or buy them used if you can. Little or no expense is the best choice here. There is be a test over these selections, and we will be discussing each of thse pieces extensively the first few days of class. Each of you will be expected to contribute to that converstation.

Anyone who has not done all the reading will be in Honors American Literature only one week
~ Mr. Stiff

 
 Authors to Choose From:
Author
-
Titles
Nicholas D. Kristof and
Sheryl WuDunn
-
China Wakes
This book is a new choice and is in preparation for a novel by Pearl S. Buck set in China. China Wakes is non-fictin and is a series of views of China in the 1990s. Kristof and WuDunn are reporters who worked for The New York Times in China for nine years. Mr. Kristof is an Oregonian and attended high school in Yamhill-Carlton and was a student of mine for a brief time when he was a senior.
Ken Kesey
-
Last Go Round
This is a semi-factual novel of the first Round-Up in Pendleton, Oregon, in 1911, an almost mythic contest between a Nez Perce Indian named Jackson Sundown, a white Southerner named Johnny Spain, and a Black cowboy named George Fletcher.
John Steinbeck
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Cannery Row or Of Mice and Men
These are two of Steinbeck's more famous short novels, set in the time and place he wrote of most successfully, northern California in the 1920s and 1930s.
William Faulkner
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"Tomorrow" from Knight's Gambit or "Barn Burning"
These are two long short stories that will provide a good introduction to Faulkner's writing style, characters, and Mississippi setting, which he used in almost all of his short stories and novels. Knight's Gambit is a collection of six detective stories.
Ernest Hemingway
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"Soldier's Home" and "In Another Country" or "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber"
These short stories can be found in almost any collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway.