What's On Your Summer Reading List?

Every year nowadays, most schools don't just let students have a summer completely free of academics. Most high schools, for example, now require their students to finish a list of books to get them ready for the next grade. It's all part of the plan to get students properly prepared for that next step: college.

So here's what is on students' summer reading list this year:

For students entering 10th grade Advanced Standing English: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.

For students entering 11th grade English as part of the International Baccalaureate program: Macbeth by William Shakespeare, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, and The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

For students entering 12th grade English as part of the International Baccalaureate program: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, The Fall by Albert Camus, and Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton.

All 10th, 11th, and 12th grade college prep students are to read two books of their own choice that they haven't previously read.

I'd like to encourage the students to read, read, read (and don't procrastinate), but also to share what you're reading with the rest of the community. Use San Bruno Patch to tap into the community's knowledge pool to help you understand things that don't make sense in the books you're being required to read (i.e. What do yams symbolize in Things Fall Apart?).

Here's another challenge to the rest of the community: What's on your reading list this summer? Feel free to share your experiences.

What's on mine?

Currently, I'm going to back to the classics by starting with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I recently finished Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

I also want to read John Steele Gordon's A Thread Across the Ocean about the laying of the transatlantic cable in 1866 and Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage about the famous exploring duo Lewis and Clark.