Help me choose some Literature for next year!

[Liza Q]

We will be doing World History 1600-2000 for 12th grade (9th grade was Ancient, 10th grade was Med/Ren/Ref and 11th grade was American). I have a working list but I need some help!

 

I am looking for a few more short books - not more than about 200 pages. She prefers a lot of short books so the majority of books on my list are under 200 pages. She dislikes reading plays so I will just assign a few - Ibsen and Chekhov, maybe Brecht. I will deal with poetry separately...I have several anthologies so I am sure I can find what I need.

 

So far I have -

 

Pilgrim's Progress - Bunyan

The Sorrows of Young Werther - Goethe

On The Social Contract - Rousseau

The Communist Manifesto - Marx/Engels

A Practical View of Christianity - Wilberforce

Frankenstein - Shelley

Fathers and Sons - Turgenev

{Kipling}

All Quiet on the Western Front - Remarque

{Kafka}

Heart of Darkness - Conrad

Night - Weisel

{Mein Kampf}

L'Abri - Schaeffer

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Solzhenitsyn

{Asian - 1945-present}

Things Fall Apart - Achebe

{South American - 1945-present}

Brave New World - Huxley

{modern missions??}

 

First - Kipling. I have read a few of his books (Just-So Stories, Jungle Book, Captains Courageous) but they are not what I am looking for. His poems "The White Man's Burden" and "Recessional" are! So, do any of his books deal with this theme? If not, can anyone recommend a book that was written between, say, 1750-1914, and deals with colonialism from the Western/colonizer (but not American) pov? Did that even make sense :001_huh:?

 

Next - Kafka. Should I go with The Metamorphosis or The Trial? I have not read either so both look good.

 

Now - Hitler and Mein Kampf. In TWEM, SWB suggests some excerpts....I can't decide if I should add this. I have never read it so I have no idea!

 

And - a modern book from Asia and South America. Start suggesting, please!!

 

Finally - I want to find a book that shows some good that has come out of foreign missions to non-western cultures. After reading Things Fall Apart a few years ago I began to feel very discouraged about this. And I would like to end the year with something more hopeful than Brave New World!

 

Thanks so much for your thoughts/suggestions :)

Edited March 29, 2010 by Liza Q
left off a book!

[TXMary2]

Maybe www.abookintime.com will have something you are looking for durring the date range you want.

[Ester Maria]

Next - Kafka. Should I go with The Metamorphosis or The Trial? I have not read either so both look good.

If I had to limit myself to one, I'd definitely go with The Trial, BUT, I'll just remind that The Metamorphosis is very, very short (and they tend to publish them together anyway) and doesn't require particular mental effort to read it (unlike The Trial, which is a lot more complex work), so I'd suggest you to have her at least read it as well, even if you decide to study only The Trial.

And - a modern book from Asia and South America. Start suggesting, please!!

I'd go with Marquez or Sabato, and throw in some Borges' short stories, but I'm far from being an expert for that part of the world.

And I would like to end the year with something more hopeful than Brave New World!

I seriously suggest you to add some fresh thematical air to that list of long dizzy dark corridors, suicides, labor camps, wars and surreal visions, and some older works. While I realize I'm not answering your question, you might consider Moliere or Calderon de la Barca (even though you said she doesn't like plays), Voltaire (superb humor in Candide, even if it's primarily a philosophical work making fun of a cheerful optimism), then teens usually like Hesse, some of Mann's shorter works are a good option, Yourcenar's Hadrian's Memoirs (are you classical?), then Bulgakov's Master and Margarita is brilliant (especially if you did some Faust before), Kundera is generally not a bad choice (kids that age are old enough already to appreciate it), Brodsky's Watermark, Kishon's satires, etc. :)

[Liza Q]

Maybe www.abookintime.com will have something you are looking for durring the date range you want.

 

Thanks! My daughter has read many of these but this will be a big help for my younger children!

[vmsurbat]

We will be doing World History 1600-2000 for 12th grade (9th grade was Ancient, 10th grade was Med/Ren/Ref and 11th grade was American). I have a working list but I need some help!

 

And - a modern book from Asia and South America. Start suggesting, please!!

 

Thanks so much for your thoughts/suggestions :)

 

I suggest looking at the books Hewitt includes for their Lightning Lit World Lit I&II program. ALL the books suggested are modern *and* written by non-Westerners...

 

Two that particularly fit the bill of Asia/South America which we enjoyed are:

 

My Invented Country by Isabelle Allende (Chile)

 

Overview taken from Amazon: Allende was inspired to write this glimmering and audacious memoir of her life as a traveler, exile, and immigrant by an eerie overlaying of dates. She lost a country, she writes, on Tuesday, September 11, 1973, when a military coup brought down Chile's democratic government, then headed by Salvador Allende, a cousin of her father's. And she gained a country on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, when the terrorist attacks induced her to recognize her deep allegiance to the U.S., her adopted land. Drawing on the profoundly fluent storytelling skills and canniness that make her fiction so scintillating and her memoirs so powerful, Allende retraces her circuitous path from Santiago circa 1940 to today's San Francisco, remembering her family and critiquing her country with equal measures of nostalgia and pain, fury and humor.

 

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro.

 

Overview taken from Wikipedia: It is set in post-World War II Japan and is narrated by Masuji Ono, an aging painter, who looks back on his life and how he has lived it. He notices how his once great reputation has faltered since the war and how attitudes towards him and his paintings have changed. The chief conflict deals with Ono's need to accept responsibility for his past actions.

 

HTH,

Edited March 29, 2010 by vmsurbat
typo

[Liza Q]

Ester Maria - some good ideas here!

 

If both Kafka books are short I can see that she could read both - they are on my summer reading list.

 

The only Marquez book I read was Love in the Time of Cholera and I just did not like it at all! I will take a look at the other authors you recommend - some short stories would be good as I haven't any on my list!

 

As for something more cheerful... I was not too worried about the darkness of the books I am assigning as she reads plenty of lighter books on her own.

 

She has already read Master and Margarita. The only book by Kundera I have read is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. While I loved it, I am not ready for her to read that one! Hesse and Mann are appealing as I would like to have her read some more German authors as she is interested in minoring in German in college. I have never read Mann as I found the length of The Magic Mountain and Buddenbrooks intimidating! I did not know that he had any shorter works...I need to look! The only book by Hesse I have read is Siddhartha and I thought it was just ok. I have not even heard of most of the others you mentioned...oh, there is so much to learn!

[Liza Q]

Thanks, Vicki! I will check these out on Amazon and probably add them to my library list.