Grade Ten Reading List

We have completed our first novel unit, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, in my sophomore English class, and because so many of you were generous enough to contribute to help raise the books we needed, I am working on a report for you about how that was.  My recap is not finished yet, but in the mean time...

The parish has now ordered the new Shakespeare plays we must do: Hamlet for grade twelve and Macbeth for grade ten.  Julius Caesar is a goner. Et tu, Brute?   I received word that they are now in and we'll be able to get started on those on schedule.  This is good news.

When we started the year, this was the list from which I was to choose our reading material.

Question:  What two books would you choose from this list to use in a 10th grade classroom?  And do the demographics and average reading level of your class factor into that choice?  (I'm taking Macbeth off this list because we are required to do that one.  We will do Macbeth and two more).

·         1984- Orwell

·         The Book of Lost Things- Connolly

·         The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime- Haddon

·         The Death of Ivan Ilyich- Tolstoy

·         A Doll’s House- Ibsen

·         Falling Leaves- Mah

·         Fast Food Nation- Schlosser

·         The Glass Menagerie- Williams

·         The Grapes of Wrath- Steinbeck

·         H-The House of Spirits- Allende

·         H-How the Irish Saved Civilization- Cahill

·         H-Idylls of the King- Tennyson

·         The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks- Skloot

·         H- Inferno- Dante- J. Ciardi version

·         The Joy Luck Club- Tan

·         Life of Pi- Martell

·         Macbeth -

·         H-Midnight’s Children- Rushdie

·         My Sister’s Keeper- Picoult

·         H-The Namesake- Lahiri

·         One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich- Solzhenitsyn

·         H- One Hundred Years of Solitude- Marquez

·         Phantom of the Opera- Leroux

·         The Picture of Dorian Gray- Wilde

·         H- The Poisonwood Bible- Kingsolver

·         The Prince- Machiavelli

·         The Seagull- Chekhov

·         So Long a Letter- Ba

·         A Thousand Splendid Suns- Hosseini

·         Things Fall Apart- Achebe

·         Three Cups of Tea- Mortenson

·         Trifles- Glaspell

·         True Grit- Portis

·         H-Turn of the Screw- James

·         Twelve Angry Men- Rose

·         H- The Woman in Black- Hill

The "H" designation is for Honors classes.   My honors class is next semester.

Vote now.

And thank you.