Falmouth High School
Grade 11
Summer Reading List 2017
Purpose: The Summer Reading Program encourages students to enjoy, think about, and evaluate what they read.
Reading/Writing Requirements: Summer reading is worth up to 10% of your first-quarter grade. Read the book closely and be
prepared to respond to a long composition prompt during the first week of school in September.
• CP 1 and CP 2 students choose one book from the list below.
• Honors students choose two books from the list below.
• AP students must read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and another book from this list (or the assigned
AP history book.) AP students will also receive a separate packet of supplemental readings and a summer assignment.
EXTRA CREDIT: You may earn extra credit by reading a second book from this list and keeping a journal using the summer reading
journal assignment. (The journal assignment is handed out in the spring and is also available on the FHS website.)
Alexie, Sherman: Flight
Do you like American history? Zits, the narrator, describes himself as a “time-traveling mass murderer.”
(Publisher’s Weekly) He takes on the persona of several characters from an FBI agent during the Civil Rights
movement to a Native American boy during the Battle of Little Bighorn. “Alexie seeks nothing less than an
understanding of why human beings hate.” (Grove-Atlantic via fallsapart.com [Sherman Alexie’s website])
Benioff, David: City of Thieves (by the director of “Game of Thrones”)
Leningrad, Russia: WWII: two teenage boys thrown in prison. Lev Beniov is caught looting a German’s
paratrooper’s corpse. Even though the punishment is execution, Colonel Grechko instead sends him on a mission.
He is paired with Kolya, a Russian army deserter, and “they set off on a journey that takes them through a series
of nightmarish war zones, populated by cannibals, prostitutes, starving children, and demonic Nazi chess
enthusiasts.”(The New Yorker)
Diamant, Anita: The Boston Girl
Anita Diamant’s “vivid, affectionate portrait of American womanhood” (Los Angeles Times), follows the life of
one woman, Addie Baum, through a period of dramatic change. Addie is The Boston Girl, the spirited daughter of
an immigrant Jewish family, born in 1900 to parents who were unprepared for America and its effect on their
three daughters.
Domet, Sarah: The Guineveres
Four teenagers, each named Guinevere, find themselves under the strict guidance of the nuns at Our Lady of
Perpetual Adoration. Although they share a common name, Gwen, Ginny, Win, and Vere all have different and
equally heartbreaking reasons for coming to live at the convent. Sent to the convent’s convalescent wing as
punishment, the young women must take care of five unidentified and comatose soldiers. Domet’s debut will lure
readers in with well-developed characters, rich language, and small miracles. Recommended for students who
are looking for weighty romance novels. –Krystina Kelley, Belle Valley School, Belleville, IL
Egan, Jennifer: A Visit from the Goon Squad
Robert Fulford from The National Post wrote, “When finally I read the first pages, I was transfixed. For the next
36 hours I found all other activities bothersome because they took me away from this marvelous book.” The novel
is a collection of linked stories and won The Pulitzer Prize in 2011. “Most of her characters live within popular
music: They play it, write it, produce recordings of it or sell it. We follow them from the excitement of high-school
punk bands in San Francisco to the disappointment and disillusionments of their New York lives.”
Gretsky, Wayne, and Kirstie McLellan Day: 99: Stories of the Game
“Arguably the best player in the history of hockey, [Gretzky] has written a warm and enthusiastic collection of
memories and stories. This book showcases some of hockey’s best moments through the keen eyes of an avid
student, lover, and ambassador of the game. VERDICT: Essential for all hockey fans, old and new.”—Library
Journal
Hemingway, Ernest: The Sun Also Rises (honors and AP students may not select this book for summer reading)
If you want to read one of the greatest American authors, then pick up this book. The writing is succinct, and the
characters will give you a sense of the 1920s Lost Generation. Is Brett Ashley willing to forgo her desires for
other men and stay with Jake Barnes? Can Jake stop the spinning of his life to find meaning in it with or without
Brett? Will Robert Cohn, the outsider, find a way into the group of ex-patriots? The aimless wandering of these
characters peaks at the San Fermin festival--the running of the bulls--in Pamplona. As a junior, you will read The
Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and this novel is a nice companion to it.
Jones, Tayari: Untelling
Aria Jackson lived through the car crash that killed her father and baby sister when she was nine. At 25, she
begins to unearth secrets about family, friends, her past, and her altered reality in this journey through truth and
forgiveness. “Tayari Jones is a remarkable novelist, able to face down the tragedies of life with the clarity and
beauty and even the dark humor of a true artist. And she has unerring storytelling instincts.” (Robert Olen Butler,
Pulitzer Prize-winning author)
McCreight, Kimberly: Reconstructing Amelia
“Kate believes her daughter, 15-year-old Amelia, has committed suicide, jumping from the roof of her private
school—until she receives an anonymous text saying simply, ‘Amelia didn’t jump.’ Could she have been
murdered?” (Michael Cart)
Moore, Edward Kelsey: The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat
Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat diner in Plainview, Indiana is home away from home for Odette, Clarice, and Barbara
Jean. Dubbed "The Supremes" by high school pals in the tumultuous 1960s, they’ve weathered life’s storms for
over four decades and counseled one another through marriage and children, happiness and the blues. (School
Library Journal)
Morrison, Toni: The Bluest Eye
John Leonard of The New York Times wrote that this novel “is an inquiry into the reasons why beauty gets
wasted in this country. The beauty in this case is black; the wasting is done by a cultural engine that seems to
have been designed specifically to murder possibilities; the ‘bluest eye’ refers to the blue eyes of the blond
American myth, by which standard the black-skinned and brown-eyed always measure up as inadequate. Miss
Morrison’s prose is so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes
poetry.”
Ng, Celeste: Everything I Never Told You
“Lydia is dead. From the first sentence of Celeste Ng’s stunning debut, we know that the oldest daughter of the
Chinese-American Lee family has died. What follows is a novel that explores alienation, achievement, race,
gender, family, and identity--as the police must unravel what has happened to Lydia, the Lee family must uncover
the sister and daughter that they hardly knew. Achingly, precisely, and sensitively written.” --Chris Schluep
Rand, Ayn: Anthem
“Equality 7-2521 tells us he is a sinner and criminal. But what crimes has he committed? Being alone, writing,
having personal preferences. He is ‘cursed’ with an active, questioning mind in a society where every institution
aims to crush independence and instill obedience to the authority of the collective.” (aynrand.org) Equality 72521 and Liberty 5-3000 escape to the forest outside the city where they fall in love and begin to rediscover
individualism and free thought.
Simmons, Dan: Hyperion
A science fiction classic. “On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature
called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have
vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through
time, the Shrike waits for them all” (Booklist)
Steinbeck, John: The Grapes of Wrath
If you want to read one of the greatest American authors or you loved East of Eden, then pick up this book.
“When it was published in 1939, America, still recovering from the Great Depression, came face to face with
itself in a startling, lyrical way. John Steinbeck gathered the country's recent shames and devastations--the
Hoovervilles, the desperate, dirty children, the dissolution of kin, the oppressive labor conditions--in the Joad
family. For this marvel of observation and perception, he won the Pulitzer in 1940. The prize must have come, at
least in part, because alongside the poverty and dispossession, Steinbeck chronicled the Joads' refusal, even
inability, to let go of their faltering but unmistakable hold on human dignity.” (Melanie Rehak in Amazon.com
review)
Tremblay, Paul: Disappearance at Devil’s Rock
For fans of horror and suspense. A family is shaken to its core after the mysterious disappearance of a teenage
boy in this eerie tale. “This tense, quick-moving story, part mystery and part folktale with a dash of police
procedural, moves between points of view that offer tantalizing clues and moments of discomfort.” (Booklist
Reviews 2016)