Recommended Reading

Colleges want to know about your personal reading list, NOT just what your english teacher assigned last semester.

My students and I often swap book ideas. I’ve included their recommendations in this list as well as some books I’ve read recently. If you have an idea about how to rate their difficulty, I’d like to hear it. Some of them are really difficult, because on a personal level I like to be challenged and inspired.  They’re in alphabetical order by title… I hope.

• 1984 – George Orwell
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again – David Foster Wallace
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carrol
• Blindness – Jose Saramago
• Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
• Dubliners – James Joyce
• The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
  
• Get Me Out Of Here – Rachel Reiland
• Godel Escher Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
• The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
• The History of Love – Nicole Krauss
• House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
• Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri
• The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
• Letters to a Young Poet – Rainer Maria Rilke
• Life of Pi – Yann Martel
• Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Marisha Pessl (This book is awesome and is especially great for teen girls who may not read often.)
• The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd (I’m not going to lie: I preferred the movie. But that’s unusual.)
• Wicked - Gregory Maguire
• Women of the Silk - Gail Tsukiyama
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig

This is always a working list of suggested reading; it’s not a manifesto of my political or religious views.

I’ve read 99% of what’s listed. Feedback and suggested additions are always welcome.