My English teacher in high school always handed out a list of other books we didn’t have time to cover in class but that she thought we might enjoy. She was always willing to discuss them with us outside of class and I know some of us took her up on the offer. She believed that education doesn’t end when the bell rings, and I’ll always be glad she did that.
Great idea!
FWIW…I really liked it as a freshman in high school more than 30 years ago.
I don’t think there’s much that ties it to a specific time, so I would think kids would still like it.
GT
Thing is that it’s very specifically about the Russian Revolution (in 8th grade English we discussed the revolution and were given a long list of the symbols in the book). The USSR collapsed when your students were about three years old. I don’t know if they’d like it or hate it, but it might not seem very relevant.
And just to clarify what I wrote, I absolutely hated Lord of the Flies.
Put italics in all the proper places:
Some offhand favorites My Antonia, Cold Sassy Tree, Steinbeck’s The Pearl, Catch-22, The Great Gatsby, Beckett’s “Happy Days,” Confederacy of Dunces.
Romeo and Juliet, please-- that is just old. Hell, these kids are living that drama. Let them watch West Side story or Romeo Must Die or DiCraprio’s version or…In fact avoid books with movie adaptations. The temptation can be great. Go for the Merchant of Venice or The Tempest. Shylock and Caliban are the kewlest.
You could kill, um, challenge them and assign Ulysses. No? How about Moby Dick minus the cetology chapters.
Just say no to Dickens,Hemingway, and Ibsen, and not Ivanhoe. You want them to remember you fondly and these authors can be hit-or-miss with students. Read The Grapes of Wrath, The Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye with caution, unless you want some depressed kids. Definitely not close to finals.
Oldies but goodies:Beowulf (Seamus Heaney’s translation is the BEST) and Canterbury Tales (at least parts of it, choose wisely).
You could compare The Once and Future King and Mists of Avalon. Maybe parallel parts?
For some ethnic and comparative lit try Amy Tan, Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse, Zora Neale Hurston, Tony Morrison (I would avoid Beloved).
You absolutely ** must must must ** assign The Tale of Genji. It is the first novel! That would pair well with Beowulf. I fell in love with Genji in highschool and I would have never fallen on that one on my own.
Be the coolest teacher on the block and assign a graphic novel! League of Extraordinary Gentlemen might be cool.
I have a list of about 300 hundred books my school had as summer reading suggestion for 9-12 grades. Lots of expected ones and some good challenging books. I can post it somewhere soon, if’n you want it.
Here is a truncated list.
I agree with all of your choices except for Tale of Two Cities which I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never read.
Other recommendations…I enjoyed Paul’s Case by Willa Cather, and I think Philip Roth, though some may think is a bit mature for HS students, is probably a very good choice.
That’s pretty daunting in page length. Pulling out my copy of Once and Future King: 639 pages of tiny text. Looking on amazon.com, Mists of Avalon more than pulls its weight at 912 pages in the paperback. The combined 1551 pages is enough to fill an entire school year for some kids. (Not that I don’t like the idea, especially because I LOVE Once and Future King)
Would be a great and fun idea, as long as the school is on board with buying “comic books.”
Her job is to introduce them to literature, not make the kids remember her fondly. 
It’d be a little more interesting to assign them something they wouldn’t ordinarily read, wouldn’t it?
Graphic novels, eh?
I recommend Maus. There’s no way you’d get away with assigning Watchmen (TONS of literature references, including a character named Ozymandias). I think EVERY teenager should have to read Death: The High Cost of Living. It can completely change a perceptive, sensitive person’s outlook on life and death. It would have for me, but I was past the age. It just reaffirmed me when I read it. Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men are good choices. I would add Steppenwolf. That was a mindfuck in 12th grade. Fun book.
What about Johnny Got His Gun? It’s such a quick read and may appeal to the boys in the class.
I liked that one, and it might be timely.
Thank you all for the great advice!
So which ones are you gonna do?
[QUOTE=Only Mostly Dead[/QUOTE]
: Yeah a lot of pages. Definitely not overnight reads! I didin’t explain myself well. I meant more to read selected chapters, ones that give different treatments of the same subject.
Hung Mung: Maus is good a choice, too. Especially if is corresponds to the history class.
And it would be hard to get something like a graphic novel past the powers that be in most schools. I went to a great high school that had very liberal and forward thinking administrators.
Marley 23: There often seems to be a positive correlation between the awful teachers and the amount that you learn. “He was a hard and mean teacher, but, man, I learned a lot.”
Also, I don’t think some of those graphic novels are read widely among all high schoolers. And anyway, it could be a good launching point than a large portion of the syllabus.
And, yeah, marymargaret, what is your syllabus looking like. I, for one, would love to hear how the class responds to your choices later in the year. Good luck. I hope everyone helped some. I am stealing some of these ideas to present as a syallbus for a high school I am applying to teach at. I will be sure to cite y’all.
If you do Hamlet be sure to follow this up with Tom Stoppard’s Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I loved both in H.S.–the whole class loved Stoppard–although these days King Lear is my favorite Shakespeare tragedy.
I’m working on my syllabus right now and trying to finalize my choices. I should be able to post my final choices tomorrow.
Of course, I stilll have to meet with the department chair.
Seeing as though I’m still in high school, some of these might be supplanted, but…
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad (we just finished the year with this actually)
Macbeth and Hamlet
And, finally, as is on every other list:
Slaughterhouse Five
My pancreas is all aquiver with antici
pation. 
I absolutely would not lock into final choices now. You have no idea what the reading level of your students will be, and it may well surprise you in either direction. Have lots and lots of possibilities in mind, but don’t commit to anything in writing–if you have to cull some because the kids aren’t ready, they will be like “Oh, are we not doing what you said 'cause you think we’re too stupid now that you know us?” That may well be true, but them realizing it will be bad for morale.
You really don’t have to lock into anything at this point–in your syllabus focus on the themes and skills you will be working on this year and tell them that specific novels will be announced. You can fit a wide variety of novels of all reading levels into a given theme/skill set.
And one more time: Any novel can be engaging if taught well. Focus on what novels will allow you to teach them the things they need to know–for AP, how to do a close textual reading and how to identify universal themes in lit.
In case you are curious, here is my (American Survey) reading list:
Princess Bride (Summer Reading)
Utopia (Sets up universal issues we grapple with all year)
Short selections for Puritan works, as Puritans wrote no novels and I am real strict about using primary sources.
Short selections for Rationalist works, same reason.
Scarlet Letter (Romantic)
Huck Finn (Realist)
A Narrative of the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs. (Slave Narrative, outside reading)
Maggie --Stephen Crane (Naturalism)e
Gatsby (Modernism)
Of htose, they like SL the least, but it’s very good for teaching both allegory and romanticism. And every year it really does resonate for some kids. Just, for the love of God, skip The Custom House.