Reading Lists for Next Year

This list is by no means definitive, and I haven't posted lately due to a death in the family, but now that I'm coming back up for air I thought I'd give a heads-up on titles for next year.  Bear in mind that no student will ever be REQUIRED to purchase a book, but it would be helpful to start building your own reading library and owning your own books enables you to annotate directly on each page.  If you are in a financial situation in which acquiring these titles is entirely too much to deal with, shoot me an e-mail at jennifer.hilley@ocps.net and give me a heads-up and I'll be sure to take care of you.

This is what I'm envisioning for Gifted English II next year, and pretty much in this order:

Summer Reading (The Stranger and Death of a Salesman)

Short Fiction (from the textbook and other in-class anthologies)

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas

Candide by Voltaire

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by Shakespeare

Othello by Shakespeare

1984 by Orwell

Things Fall Apart by Achebe

Either Wuthering Heights by Bronte or Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky for the final reading--student choice

Other titles I've been noodling about with are Notes from Underground and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but that all depends on time.  The tenth grade course is time-limited by registration and FCAT demands, but I've also built a poetry unit, a unit that focuses on non-fiction and research strategies, and various assignments focusing on vocabulary acquisition and grammar.  

For Advanced Placement Literature and Comp, this is my vision thus far.  Mrs. Covert and I teach different texts, but this is representative of what my class might look like next year:

Summer Reading:  Madame Bovary, The Awakening, and Gatsby, with emphasis on How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Foster.  

Macbeth and Hamlet by Shakespeare, with related literary criticisms

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

A Streetcar Named Desire by Williams

The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean

Beloved by Toni Morrison

This list is not exhaustive, and also doesn't list the myriad of short pieces, sample passages, and other forms of writing in which we will be happily engaged.