Literature Circle Book Choices English 300/301
2009-2010
Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing
In a beleaguered city where rats and roving gangs terrorize the streets, where government has broken down and meaningless violence holds sway, a woman—middle aged and middle class—is brought a twelve-year-old girl and told that it is her responsibility to raise the child. This book is that woman’s journal—a glimpse of a future only slightly more horrendous than our present, and of the forces that alone can save us from total destruction.
Atonement by Ian McEwan
On a summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world’s most heinous villains—a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother’s children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England’s throne? Grant determines to find out once and for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind of man Richard Plantangenet really was and who killed the Little Princes in the Tower.
Waterland by Graham Swift
Set in the bleak fen country of East Anglia and spanning some 240 years in the lives of its haunted narrator and his ancestors, Waterland is a book that takes on eels and incest, ale-making and madness, the heartless sweep of history and a family romance as tormented as any in Greek tragedy.
Regeneration by Pat Barker
In 1917 Siegfried Sassoon, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: The war was a senseless slaughter. He was officially classified as “mentally unsound” and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon’s “sanity” and sending him back to the trenches.
Making History by Stephen Fry
What is Hitler had never been born? Michael Young is a graduate student who is reading history at Cambridge and finishing his dissertation on the early life of Adolf Hitler. Leo Zuckerman is an aging German physicist and Holocaust survivor. Together they embark on an historical experiment to change the course of history. But will it create a better world? With characteristic brilliance and wit, Stephen Fry presents an alternate history that is black comedy at its very best.
Katherine by Anya Seton
This classic novel tells the most romantic love story in British history—the true tale of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the ancestors of much of the British royal family. It is set in the vibrant 14th century England of Chaucer, when magnificent pageantry was confronted by the Black Death, when knights went to battle in expensive foreign wars while peasants struggled to survive, and when the magnificent but despotic Plantangenets ruled over a court rotten with intrigue. In this era of danger and passion, John of Gaunt, the King’s son and the proudest of the family, fought for power and fell desperately in love with the already married Katherine. Their well-documented romance persisted through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
One of the most haunting tales ever written, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness follows Marlow, a riverboat captain, on a voyage into the African Congo at the height of European colonialism. Astounded by the brutal depravity he witnesses, Marlow becomes obsessed with meeting Kurtz, a man of legendary idealism stationed farther along the river. What he finally discovers, however, is a horror beyond imagining.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Perhaps it is a story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner, and searching the pubs for his father, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
In the summer of her twenty-eighth year, Edna Pontellier and her children spend the summer in Grand Isle, an idyllic coastal community on the Gulf of Mexico. Away from her husband and the sweltering heat of 1890s New Orleans, Edna releases herself to her deepest yearnings, plunging into an illicit liaison that reawakens her long-dormant desires, enflames her heart, and, eventually, blinds her to all else.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston’s beloved classic is an enduring Southern love story sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Take a lighthearted, nostalgic trip to a simpler time, seen through the eyes of a very special boy named Tom Sawyer. It is a dreamlike summertime world of hooky and adventure, pranks and punishment, villains and first love, filled with memorable characters. Adults and young readers alike will continue to enjoy this delightful classic of the promise and dreams of youth from one of America’s most beloved authors.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
He has no mother, his father is a brutal drunkard, and he sleeps in a barrel. He’s Huck Finn—liar, sometime thief, and rebel against respectability. But when Huck meets a runaway slave named Jim, his life changes forever. On their exciting flight down the Mississippi aboard a raft, the boy nobody wanted matures into a young man of courage and conviction. As Ernest Hemingway said of this glorious novel: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
Literature Circle Project 2009-2010
Rationale: The goal of the literature circle is for students to read and discuss novels in a cooperative setting. Students may help each other to comprehend, close read, and respond to the novel in question. They will also work cooperatively to produce a persuasive paper about their book.
Directions:
1. Choose three books you group is interested in reading. Rank them from one (most want to read) to three (least want to read). I will then assign books based on student preference and availability.
2. Begin reading the book. Read on your own and during reading workshop. Your group needs to set a pace and stick to it.
3. When reading, write down any questions you have.
4. At the beginning of every lit. circle class period, begin with questions raised. Help each other to understand the book.
5. Fill out the Novel Packet as you go. Some of the activities will need to be done while reading, some will need to be left until the novel is finished.
6. The final project is the essay and presentation persuading the next group to read (or not to read) your book.
Novel Journal Packet (60 points):
_____Pay it forward
_____Getting up to speed
_____Expanding Vocab
_____Metaphors, similes, symbols (301 only)
_____Down on the farm
_____Tone
_____Social Influences
_____Cause/Effect
_____Beginning of the end
_____See . . .
_____Club Read
_____Minute Made
Please turn in the packet when finished.
Persuasive Essay (100 points):
· 2-4 pages, typed, double spaced, 12-point font
· includes an introduction, conclusion, and several body paragraphs
· gives specific reasons for reading or avoiding the book in question
· gives specific examples from the book in question
· anticipates and answers objections
· uses persuasive strategies
· uses correct grammar, spelling, usage, punctuation, and sentence structure
First Quarter projects due Monday, Oct. 19
Second Quarter/first semester projects due Monday, Dec. 14