WALTHAM HIGH SCHOOL

2010 Summer Reading entering Grade 11 

Printable version of the Waltham High School 2010 Summer Reading list for entering grade 11 students:  

Choice Books

• Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Fist Stick Knife Gun by Geoffrey Canada
• Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
• Blessings by Anna Quindlen
• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
• Friday Night LIghts by H.G. Bissinger
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Moneyball by Michael Lewis
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  by Philip K. Dick

Required Non-Fiction for all levels:  All Souls  by Michael MacDonald    All Souls takes us deep into 1970s Southie, the proudly insular Boston neighborhood with the highest concentration of white poverty in America. Rocked by drugs, crime, and school busing riots, MacDonald shares his life growing up in the projects, losing four of his eight siblings.  Gritty but touching, All Souls shares a powerful message of hope, renewal, and redemption. MacDonald is now an activist against violence and helped start the successful gun buy-back program in Boston.

Required Classic for English 11 Honors:  The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway     A brilliant profile of the Lost Generation, Hemingway's first bestseller captures life among the expatriates on Paris's Left Bank during the 1920s, the brutality of bullfighting in Spain, and the moral and spiritual dissolution of a generation.

Choice Books - All levels select two:

Nineteen Minutes  by Jodi Picoult    In a small New Hampshire town, 17 year old student Peter Houghton endures years of verbal and physical abuse from his classmates.  One final incident pushes him over the edge and leads him to commit an act of violence that forever changes the lives of the town's residents. Rich with psychological and social insight, Picoult delivers a poignant and thought provoking novel.

Interpreter of Maladies   by Jhumpa Lahiri    Relationships, unexpected blessings, sudden calamities, and the powers of survival—these are among the themes of Jhumpa Lahiri's extraordinary, Pulitzer Prize-winning debut collection of stories. Traveling from India to New England and back again, Lahiri charts the emotional voyages of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations, cultures, religions, and generations. Infused with the passionate details of both Indian and American cultures, they also speak with universal compassion to everyone who has ever felt like an outsider.

Fist Stick Knife Gun   by Geoffrey Canada    When award-winning educator and activist Geoff Canada was growing up in the Bronx, the "sidewalk" boys learned the codes of the block from their elders and were ranked--and to some degree protected--through the rituals of fist, stick, and knife. Weaving in and out of his stark storytelling is a cogent anaylsis of how the complicity of gun manufacturers turned this contained violence into today's world of drive-by shootings and automatic weapons.

Ellen Foster  by Kaye Gibbons    After the death of her mother, 11 year old Ellen is abused and neglected by her father.  She is shuttled from one uncaring relative's home to another before she finally takes matters into her own hands and finds herself a place to belong. With only her own wit and courage, and the occasional kindness of others, she survives her childhood and rises above her misfortune.

Blessings  by Anna Quindlen    18 year old Skip Cuddy, ex-con and caretaker for a vast estate owned by a joyless old matriarch Lydia Blessing, finds an abandoned baby girl in a box and decides to keep her. With tender devotion and a new purpose in life, he cares secretly for the baby for four months.  When Lydia discovers his secret, she admires his parenting skills and decides to help him. The bond they form changes both of their lives. A poignant novel of love, redemption, and personal change.

The Secret Life of Bees  by Sue Monk Kidd    Searching for the truth about her mother's life and death, a fourteen year old Lily finds answers, love, and acceptance where she least expects it.  Poignantly written with an off beat plot, the story is set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest in the south.

Friday Night Lights   by H.G. Bissinger    Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bissinger spent 1988 in Odessa, Tex., a town obsessed with its champion high-school football team, the Permian Panthers.

The Road  by Cormac McCarthy    After an apocalyptic catastrophe, a father and his young son embark on a grim and perilous quest following the road to the sea.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game  by Michael Lewis    Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  by Philip K. Dick    By 2021, the World War had killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remained coveted any living creature, and for people who couldn't afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacrae: horses, dogs, cats, birds. . . .They even built humans.