Feeling left out of the book lists on the younger boards.

[Jenny in Florida]

I keep clicking to look at the reading lists folks are posting on the younger boards and feeling sad when I realize my kid is too old for those books.

 

So, how about we play over here, too?

 

These are the books I'm planning on having my son read for school this coming year. He's 14 and a rising 10th grader (more or less).

 

Modern U.S. History: 1865 - present

- The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald

- Paper Moon, Brown

- The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck

- The Chosen, Potok

- All the President's Men, Woodward and Bernstein

 

American Government

- Race, Mamet (because a local theatre is doing the play)

 

Chemistry

- Uncle Tungsten, Sacks

- The Disappearing Spoon, Kean

 

English: Dystopian Literature

- Utopia, Moore

- The Time Machine, Wells

- Gulliver's Travels (part 4), Swift

- Walden (excerpts), Thoreau

- Brave New World, Huxley

- Animal Farm, Orwell

- Anthem, Rand

- "The Machine Stops" (short story), Forster

- "The Lottery" (short story), Jackson

- Lord of the Flies, Golding

- 1984, Orwell

- Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury

- "Harrison Bergeron" (short story), Vonnegut

- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dick

- The Lathe of Heaven, Le Guin

- "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (short story), Le Guin

- Feed, Anderson

- The Hunger Games Trilogy, Collins

 

He'll also read four books of his choice that have dystopian themes.

Shakespeare Elective

We're doing this over a couple of years guided by live performances available locally. This year's reading will be:

- The Tempest

- Othello

So, what's on your high schooler's assigned reading list?

[TippyCanoe]

.

[Barb_]

:lurk5: Sorry, nothing to share. Needing inspiration.

[elegantlion]

We're heavy on the Greeks this year, but he'll have some choice in his free reading time.

 

For GB:

 

Iliad

Odyssey

Plato's Republic, Last Days of Socrates

Birds

Oedipus Rex

Oresteia

Herodotus

Gilgamesh

Some Egyptian Lit

Some Aristotle

Greek Myths (pulled from several sources)

 

non-history/GB:

We're doing fairy tales from Japan, Grimms, Norse, and some Russian tales

Japanese poetry

The Hobbit (which we never got to this summer)

Sherlock Holmes (not sure which ones)

 

I have a ton of other books that I'll let him choose from. He was a delayed reader, so he might end up reading some of the things he missed in the earlier years.

[KAR120C]

Grapes of Wrath, Walden, Brave New World... thinking about Fahrenheit 451 too, but not assigned, just recommended. Also The Sun Also Rises, Inherit the Wind, Lord Jim, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, and When I Was Puerto Rican.

 

He's doing a Coursera class on mythology with The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Oedipus Rex, and some others I can't remember now....

 

And we're going to see A Winter's Tale, The Imaginary Invalid, Blithe Spirit, Marriage (Gogol), and something called "Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)"

[mathwonk]

As a math geek, when I see such beautiful sophisticated reading lists in English it makes me wonder why so many people, even some who who read these works, do not use equally worthy math texts, like Euclid and Euler. I still have the original copies of Shakespeare and Dumas used in school by my uncles and aunts, some 90-100 years ago. This is the same material in use today in English courses. But the math books have been continually watered down over 100 years of steady decline, starting apparently with the move away from Euclid in schools around 1910. The books many people teach math from today are comparable to reading Jughead or Nancy comic books for English. No one recommends a series called Shakespeare for Dummies. Just a geek's lament. How did this happen? :confused:

Edited August 4, 2012 by mathwonk

[KAR120C]

We did read Euclid.... just not this year.

[mathwonk]

What a delight to hear! How far did you get? (Of the 13 books, I have only read 6 closely myself.) Did you supplement it with exercises? How did it go?

 

In my post I was thinking of my childrens' private school, where the books listed here were on the reading lists in English, but the math texts were of the Jughead type.

Edited August 4, 2012 by mathwonk

[goldberry]

Good thread....I have a reluctant reader and struggle to find books meaningful and challenging but actually interesting to her.

 

Here's what I have so far for 9th grade:

 

The Hobbit

A Wrinkle in Time

Something Wicked This Way Comes (saving Fahrenheit 451 for later)

Hamlet

Edgar Allen Poe (several short stories and poems)

Jack London - Call of the Wild and To Build A Fire

Never Cry Wolf (about a naturalist studying wolves in Canada)

Into Thin Air (about Everest climbers)

Lord of the Flies

Tristan and Isolde

 

Previously our book lists were just reading and discussion, occasional report. Starting in high school now, we are spending more time on literary analysis as an element of our English cirriculum.

[KAR120C]

What a delight to hear! How far did you get? (In the 13 books.)

We had a companion book by Benno Artmann that made it rather more comprehensible than the straight text, and we spread it over the course of about three years. We were also using Zome geometry materials and the AoPS number theory book and course, which both went rather well with it.

[Jenny in Florida]

And I'm certainly getting an education in drama that I never expected!

 

I'm totally with you there! Both of my kids are theatre nerds. My daughter got her degree in acting/directing a little over a year ago. So, we see LOTS of theatre. We've had season tickets for each kid to the Shakespeare theatre (which does some Shakespeare and some other stuff each season) since they were eight or nine.

 

We saw God of Carnage this past year and all loved it. We spent hours afterward discussing and arguing about it, too!

 

Their 2012-2013 season includes:

 

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged (which both kids have already seen a couple of times but always enjoy)

Race

The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society's Production of "A Christmas Carol"

Othello

Sense and Sensibility

Titus Andronicus

 

We'll also see a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that is a collaboration between the Shakespeare theatre and the local philharmonic orchestra. I'm especially looking forward to that one! (Again, my son has seen Midsummer multiple times, but this one should be extra special.)

 

I plan to take him to a couple of the Metropolitan Opera's HD broadcasts, specifically Otello and The Tempest, which is why I want to read those plays to put toward his Shakespeare credit this year. I'm thinking it will be interesting for him to compare and contrast the original play with the opera of Othello.

 

Careful . . . I could talk about theatre all day!

Edited August 4, 2012 by Jenny in Florida

[Jenny in Florida]

. . . and something called "Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)"

 

Ooooh, that one sounds really interesting!

[mathwonk]

"We had a companion book by Benno Artmann that made it rather more comprehensible than the straight text, and we spread it over the course of about three years. We were also using Zome geometry materials and the AoPS number theory book and course, which both went rather well with it.

__________________

Erica"

 

 

Thank you for these details. May I ask what age were the students?

 

Boy oh boy, what a wonderful guide that book by Artmann seems to be! Thank you for this reference! if i had known about it I would have used it for my students last summer in teaching Euclid. In fact I will try to recommend it this summer.

 

Interestingly, although Artmann's book is copyright 1999, he cites Hartshorne's 2000 book, Geometry, Euclid and beyond, with which I am familiar, and which I used as a guide to Euclid. OOps, Artmann costs even more than Hartshorne and has far less content. That's the problem with so many user friendly guides.

 

(For the interested fine point aficionado, I have a small quibble with Artmann's criticism of Euclid's proof of Prop. !.16. Artmann observes this proposition fails in spherical (elliptic) geometry but that Euclid's first 4 axioms hold there, hence Euclid's proof is flawed. That is not quite true, since there are two valid interpretations of Euclid's second axiom, one of which fails in elliptical geometry. More precisely, the axiom says every line segment can be arbitrarily prolonged into a full line. ["To produce a finite straight line continuously in a straight line."] But in elliptical geometry that full line cycles back upon itself, as a great circle, and one could plausibly think the axiom meant that in contrast to a finite line, that a "straight line" is an infinite line, hence one that does not cycle back upon itself as on a sphere itself. This is what makes Euclid's geometry so interesting.)

 

Did you learn about Artmann by searching on the web, or is there a list somewhere, like the ones you are sharing here, that give such high quality math references? I would like to learn more about such resources.

Edited August 4, 2012 by mathwonk

[Jenny in Florida]

No one recommends a series called Shakespeare for Dummies. Just a geek's lament. How did this happen? :confused:

 

Actually, lots of people recommend those kinds of books. Hang around a while and you'll see all too many posts asking if it's really necessary to read any classic literature and if it isn't just as good to watch the movie or read an adaptation or abridgement. Shakespeare, in particular, seems to invoke a special kind of fear and resentment I've never understood.

 

And TWTM does recommend reading some of the classic texts of math and science. We just don't happen to emphasize those subjects in our own homeschool plan, because neither of my kids is especially interested.

[KAR120C]

Into Thin Air (about Everest climbers)

I haven't read Into Thin Air yet, but there's another about the same season, written by Tenzing Norgay's son, called Touching My Father's Soul. It's part travelog/ mountaineering book, part autobiography, part biography (of his father) and partly a memoir of his spiritual journey and coming "home"... It's definitely worth a look.

 

And if you want something light (both of those are quite tragic, being about that particular climbing season), The Ascent of Rum Doodle is really hysterical once you've read anything about mountain climbing. For the Everest-specific connection, there's a bar in Kathmandu called Rum Doodle's... It's a thin connection, but there it is! LOL

[KAR120C]

Thank you for these details. May I ask what age were the students?

I did Zome with a group of late elementary to early high school kids, but my own child was 8-11 at the time. He doesn't make a representative sample though - his math has been extremely accelerated.

 

I don't remember where I found Artmann, but at the time we were surrounded by universities where I had library privileges, so we didn't have to pay for it - we just checked it out again every few months. If I couldn't borrow it I would absolutely pay for it though - it's worth the price.

Edited August 5, 2012 by KAR120C

[KAR120C]

Ooooh, that one sounds really interesting!

I have no idea what it's going to be like, but I'm intrigued! They're doing Othello too, but we've seen it several times, and it always makes me sob which is a little awkward in public... lol

[mathwonk]

I started to ask what TWTM is, just a bit slow here.

 

I myself read only classic comic versions of great books for years as a kid. I still have a collection of those great comics. The art was what pulled me in, since although the great works like Les Miserables and Count of Monte Cristo and Oliver Twist were originally published with illustrations that I have since seen in antique bookstores in Paris, the pictures had been removed by the time of publications in my era. The classic comic artists however sometimes were apparently inspired by illustrations from the nineteenth century books. (I don't know if Moby Dick was originally illustrated, but the classic comics cover is a great one.)

 

 

I hope as a comic book reader I am not automatically expelled from TWTM. I do also have an extensive collection of beautiful unabridged versions of all those books now, many published by Estes and Lauriat in Boston I think around 1890. My comics however are worth many times more than my real books.

Edited August 4, 2012 by mathwonk

[TippyCanoe]

.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Doodler

[TippyCanoe]

.

[TippyCanoe]

[.

[Jenny in Florida]

And in relation to Carnage -- did you see the movie version with Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet? If you did, did you prefer the movie or the play? I'm very curious, as we had a powerful preference.

 

We haven't watched it yet. My daughter the theatre snob is unenthusiastic about viewing the sure-to-be-inferior film version. I think the cast sounds great, though. So, I'll get around to watching it one night when no one else is around to complain.

[TippyCanoe]

.

[Jenny in Florida]

National Theater Live is broadcasting a filmed version of the London performance of Timon of Athens, I think on November 1 this fall. Like the opera broadcasts, the NT plays show at movie theaters around the country on particular days.

 

I'm so bummed that none of the movie theatres anywhere near us show these. I would have LOVED to see Frankenstein, but the closest theatre is an hour away.

[mathwonk]

Here's the comic version I still remember from 60 years ago.

[Susan of Croton]

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire -- Gibbon

Reinforce vocab/good history narrative

 

The Long Ships, Frans G. Bengtsson (1954) Fiction, Viking times, some references to carnality but not explicit.

 

Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Unsdet (expansive nobel fiction) Set in medieval scandinavia, female narrator. Fabulous fictional bio.

 

Prince of Foxes, Samuel Shellabarger (1947). This author, now largely forgotten, writes well-scripted historical fiction. Prince of Foxes is set in Renaissance Northern Italy and captures well the spirit of the times in an action-packed novel. (My 13 year old ds read it!) If this book takes, he wrote tons of stuff.

 

Historical fiction by Taylor Caldwell; Pillar of Iron concerns Cicero

 

The Laughter of Aphrodite, Peter Green (a novel about sappho of Lesbos) well done, re-imagines the life of Ancient Greek poets/poetesses.

 

Peter Green is a genius for ancient history; very readable and accessible to motivated high schooler; esp. check out

The Year of Salamis (covers Greek naval warfare in detail)

Alex. the Great (great biography)

Alex to Actium (Hellenistic history)

The Greco-Persian wars (xerxes, boat bridge over hellespont, etc.)

 

Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome spicy bios of emperors. A "gateway" book to enjoying ancient subjects.

 

The White Goddess, by Robert Graves. Um. If anyone understands this, please contact me! This is a deconstruction of ancient and pagan myths and symbols, and is full of what I call unexplored paths.

 

Dante/Boccacio/Petrarch for 14th century Italian literature. Boccacio's Decameron, a collection of stories told by refugees from the Black Death, contains ribald stories. Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror covers 14th C. history with broad stroke for non-fiction.

 

Hope this helps.

[mathwonk]

If anyone wants to know what he civil rights struggle was like in the 50's and 60's, there is Taylor Branch's America in the King years, 3 volumes.

[-M-]

*Love* reading lists!

 

Since we just wrapped up a school year, I'd like to lead with that list. I am doing an inadequate job of recording the short stories and poems, to say nothing of the interest-driven non-fiction reading that the Misses do, but here are the plays, novels, and a few of the non-fiction titles (not textbooks):

 

Academic Year 2011-2012

 

Plays (other than Shakespeare's works):

■ Elizabeth Rex *

■ The Crucible

■ Our Town

 

Novels:

■ The Time Machine (H.G. Wells)

■ The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells)

■ A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)

■ Johnny Tremain (Esther Forbes) ***

■ Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

■ Feed (MT Anderson) ****

■ The Scarlet Pimpernel (Baroness Emmuska Orczy)

■ The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) ****

■ Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

■ Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) ***

■ Paradise Lost (John Milton; abridged/adapted)

 

Non-fiction:

■ The Pen Commandments (Steven Frank)

■ Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (Joshua Foer)

■ Words We Live By (Linda R. Monk)

■ The Genius of Shakespeare (Jonathan Bate) ******

Our Shakespeare studies have sorted out as follows:

 

Academic year 2009-2010 (middle school)

■ Julius Caesar

■ Much Ado about Nothing

■ Romeo and Juliet *

■ As You Like It **

■ The Tempest **

 

Academic year 2010-2011 (ninth and seventh grades)

■ Twelfth Night

■ Romeo and Juliet (review / revisit) *

■ Henry V

■ Macbeth *

■ The Merchant of Venice *****

■ A Midsummer Night's Dream

■ The Winter's Tale **

 

Academic year 2011-2012 (tenth and eight grades)

■ Henry IV, Part I

■ Henry IV, Part II

■ The Tempest (review/revisit)

■ Coriolanus

■ The Taming of the Shrew *

■ Midsummer Night’s Dream (review / revisit) *

■ Timon of Athens *

■ Othello **

 

Academic year 2012-2013 (eleventh and ninth grades)

■ Julius Caesar (review / revisit) *

■ Henry VIII *

 

As for the rest of the 2012-2013 reading list… well, let’s just say that it’s a work in progress. So far, though, we’ve committed to the following novels:

 

■ Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)

■ The Island of Dr. Moreau (H.G. Wells)

■ The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)

■ The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

■ Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)

■ Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)

 

As for drama, we’ll read Three Sisters (Anton Chekov) when we finish Frankenstein because we have tickets to see the Tracy Letts / Anna D. Shapiro adaptation being staged at the Steppenwolf. Ditto for The Misanthrope (Molière) because the adaptation The School for Lies is part of our Chicago Shakespeare Theater subscription this year. And we’ll read a translation of the libretto for La bohème in December or early January, as we already have tickets to see that at the Lyric.

 

But the rest? Up in the air, for now.

_________________________________________

 

* Chosen because they are / were Chicago Shakespeare Theater productions.

** Chosen because they were part of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival line-up.

*** Somehow, we missed these when they were younger, so we figured, “Why not catch them now?”

**** Family book club selections – although to be fair to Mr. M-mv, he is keeping pace with much of our assigned reading these days.

***** Perhaps this doesn't deserve a note, but we saw a live performance featuring the wonderful F. Murray Abraham as Shylock!

******* This ended up on their list when we scored tickets to see Simon Callow in Being Shakespeare this past April. The one-man show was written by Bate.

Edited August 4, 2012 by Mental multivitamin
to make an addition

[goldberry]

I haven't read Into Thin Air yet, but there's another about the same season, written by Tenzing Norgay's son, called Touching My Father's Soul. It's part travelog/ mountaineering book, part autobiography, part biography (of his father) and partly a memoir of his spiritual journey and coming "home"... It's definitely worth a look.

 

And if you want something light (both of those are quite tragic, being about that particular climbing season), The Ascent of Rum Doodle is really hysterical once you've read anything about mountain climbing. For the Everest-specific connection, there's a bar in Kathmandu called Rum Doodle's... It's a thin connection, but there it is! LOL

 

Oh, that is cool, I'm definitely checking that out. It would be great to have her read an account by a different person, especially a totally cultural difference. Thank you!

[TammyS]

Two questions:

 

1. Am I the only one with a kid who reads EVERYTHING (even the back of shampoo bottles and such) and so doesn't bother to assign literature, but rather just makes sure there's lots of it around? (I do keep a log)

 

2. Am I the only one who frequently feels a lot of the common books assigned for high school require more maturity to understand than a high schooler is capable of? I'm not talking about "inappropriate" content or "difficulty" of the language, but just a lack of life experience making it difficult? (ex: while I think a high schooler can understand what happens in "The Glass Menagerie" I don't think that anyone can get that play until they've been disappointed by life in some way)

[goldberry]

I started to ask what TWTM is, just a bit slow here.

 

I myself read only classic comic versions of great books for years as a kid. I still have a collection of those great comics. The art was what pulled me in, since although the great works like Les Miserables and Count of Monte Cristo and Oliver Twist were originally published with illustrations that I have since seen in antique bookstores in Paris, the pictures had been removed by the time of publications in my era. The classic comic artists however sometimes were apparently inspired by illustrations from the nineteenth century books. (I don't know if Moby Dick was originally illustrated, but the classic comics cover is a great one.)

 

 

I hope as a comic book reader I am not automatically expelled from TWTM. I do also have an extensive collection of beautiful unabridged versions of all those books now, many published by Estes and Lauriat in Boston I think around 1890. My comics however are worth many times more than my real books.

 

Bless you... I thought I was committing heresy because I saw some of those comics online and almost bought one for DD! Seriously, with a reluctant reader I can't just force her to go through as many of the classics as I would like her exposed to. I KNOW she would read those comics (she is a visual kid).

 

Isn't it better that she is at least exposed to some of the stories? For us, it's not a choice of book or comic, it's more comic or nothing.

 

Recommendations for some of the best ones?

[regentrude]

1. Am I the only one with a kid who reads EVERYTHING (even the back of shampoo bottles and such) and so doesn't bother to assign literature, but rather just makes sure there's lots of it around? (I do keep a log)

 

We are a little bit similar. For Ancients, Medieval and Renaissance, I did select reading for her because that is not material she would have found herself (but loved many of the selections). For the more modern lit, starting this semester, I will make only recommendations. DD reads a lot and chooses well. This summer she read (just for fun) Great Gatsby, Voltaire's Candide, Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, two books by Edith Wharton and is currently on Thackeray's Vanity Fair... I will actually let HER choose which works she wants to read for British and American Lit.

 

2. Am I the only one who frequently feels a lot of the common books assigned for high school require more maturity to understand than a high schooler is capable of? I'm not talking about "inappropriate" content or "difficulty" of the language, but just a lack of life experience making it difficult? (ex: while I think a high schooler can understand what happens in "The Glass Menagerie" I don't think that anyone can get that play until they've been disappointed by life in some way)

 

No, I do not think so. My DD does not have the life experiences to deal with jealousy, dysfunctional families, grief after bereavement... yet she is able to appreciate the literary works. We discuss literature quite often, and her insights into the psychology of characters are amazing. Certainly NOT because she has experienced these things in her own life.

I myself have not had many negative life experiences. I am grateful that I have not experienced the loss of a child or spouse, or been the victim of a crime, or grown up with an alcoholic parent... yet I am able to understand and appreciate literature about it, feel empathy for the characters. How do I even know that certain situations exist? From reading. the same goes for high schoolers. The more they read, the more they are confronted with mature themes and situations outside their first hand experience, and the more they will think about them and form opinions.

 

If one had to experience something oneself to understand literature about it, there would be no books about the holocaust. Good literature makes the experience accessible to the person who did NOT have it.

[KAR120C]

Rum Doodle is one of my dd's favorite books. How wonderful to come across another fan!

Rum Doodle fans are so few and far between - and it used to be a very difficult book to find in the US!

 

So I have to ask - is that the source of your board name?? :D

[TippyCanoe]

.

[KAR120C]

Oh, I wanted so much to see The Imaginary Invalid!!! But it was out of our state, and so out of our price range, to attend. Please write about it on the boards when you see it!!!

 

I bet the Gogol will be interesting... dd really wants to see The Government Inspector.

DH is a huge Moliere fan and I'm a bit of a Russophile, so we're really looking forward to this year's theater season! :)

[-M-]

Two questions:

1. Am I the only one with a kid who reads EVERYTHING (even the back of shampoo bottles and such) and so doesn't bother to assign literature, but rather just makes sure there's lots of it around? (I do keep a log)

 

The Misses and I craft our lists together, based on interests, pursuits, and other studies, as well as our theater, opera, symphony, and museum adventures.

 

2. Am I the only one who frequently feels a lot of the common books assigned for high school require more maturity to understand than a high schooler is capable of? I'm not talking about "inappropriate" content or "difficulty" of the language, but just a lack of life experience making it difficult? (ex: while I think a high schooler can understand what happens in "The Glass Menagerie" I don't think that anyone can get that play until they've been disappointed by life in some way)

 

When I reread / revisit works I first read as a student, I am often surprised, nay, overwhelmed by how much I missed or simply didn't understand during the first encounter -- which is I why I am repeatedly *gobsmacked* by the insights, perceptions, and observations of the Misses. In every way, they (and their brother before them) are more sophisticated readers, thinkers, and learners than I was at the same age. Perhaps this is the result of their unconventional education; perhaps there is more natural ability at work; perhaps both. It matters not. They seem to intuit that good literature, while not a substitute for life, can be one of Life's great truth-tellers. They amaze me (as did their brother), and encountering literature, theater, music, art, and all the rest of it with them has been a perpetual source of delight.

[Jenny in Florida]

Two questions:

 

1. Am I the only one with a kid who reads EVERYTHING (even the back of shampoo bottles and such) and so doesn't bother to assign literature, but rather just makes sure there's lots of it around? (I do keep a log)

 

Oh, mine are both big readers, too. My son is actually the only person I've ever met who reads like I do (all the time). But I assign books, anyway, because I want to make sure he's reading more widely than he would left to his own devices. I had parents who were very hands off and left me alone to read (or not) what was assigned in school and whatever I wanted to read, and I feel like I missed a lot because I wasn't nudged out of my comfort zone. Don't get me wrong: I read lots of good stuff. (I was the kid whose idea of a great summer afternoon was to hang out next to the pool at my friend's apartment and read Shakespeare plays aloud together.) I just wish I'd had a broader education.

 

2. Am I the only one who frequently feels a lot of the common books assigned for high school require more maturity to understand than a high schooler is capable of? I'm not talking about "inappropriate" content or "difficulty" of the language, but just a lack of life experience making it difficult? (ex: while I think a high schooler can understand what happens in "The Glass Menagerie" I don't think that anyone can get that play until they've been disappointed by life in some way)

 

Huh. I guess I don't think that reading a book "early" ever ruins it for later.

 

We adhere to what my husband and I call the "immersion theory of education," which means that we believe in introducing good quality stuff across the board as early and as often as we can in the hopes that our kids will gain familiarity that will let them come back to it later.

 

We think of it like a vaccination: Start attending live Shakespearean performances when you're eight, and it'll be easier to understand and more fun when you get to high school.

 

Maybe I just have unusually mature kids. But, for example, my son saw The Glass Menagerie with me at a local theatre a few years ago. I think he was 11. He obviously wasn't as deeply affected as I was by it, but he got it, absolutely. He understood about the unicorn (which, by the way, was shattering to me when I read the play as a kid), and we had very thoughtful conversation about the characters after seeing the show.

 

My son, in particular, has always taken literature and drama on board as a way to verbalize his own feelings and his observations of the world.

 

I remember reading Siddhartha aloud to my daughter when she was about seven. (She was deeply interested in Buddhsm at the time.) I had printed out a study guide for the book from some college class, and I was stopping every now and then to ask a couple of the questions. After the third or fourth one, she gave this exasperated little sigh and told me the correct answer in that "what am I, stupid?" tone. So, I quit asking the questions, and we just read the book.

 

She still keeps it on her shelf.

 

Personally, I think that in a world of books that talk down to kids, we forget how really smart and perceptive children can be, given the chance.

[Kfamily]

Our list is still in the works...and rather eclectic too...:lol:

 

Like regentrude, my dd reads a lot on her own (especially with modern/American works), so I'll let her have a lot of voice in our choices. (Besides, she's a lot easier to work with when she has some input!:lol:)

 

 

Bulfinch's Age of Fable (for a mythology review)

Iliad (with TC lecture)

Odyssey (with TC lecture)

Three Theban Plays

The Oresteia

Plutarch's Lives (selections)

 

and maybe a couple of others...if not we'll get those in another year

 

Gulliver's Travels was on the list, but I'm considering a dystopia/utopia study in the future and may let this wait (we'll read A Modest Proposal for sure)

Pride and Prejudice

The Count of Monte Cristo

essays, poetry, short stories (still working in this)

Julius Caesar

The Merchant of Venice

 

 

She was so set against reading A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, even though she was reading other books by Dickens and enjoying them. I wanted her to read it, but was willing to let it wait. She read David Copperfield and Bleak House recently and liked those a lot. She decided to watch the movie A Tale of Two Cities to see what it was like. This was one time when watching the movie first was a great idea! She liked it so much, she started reading it and finished it last night.:hurray::party:

[Joani]

I have younger kids, but I'm by far the most excited about my 9th grader's reading list for "English I". He'll use Excellence in Literature to study some of these; others we'll just read and discuss. This will likely be our heaviest year of English, before he gets into more time-consuming math and sciences. He really does love reading, but wouldn't pick up most of these on his own.

 

The Book of Revelation

Psychomachia

Roman de la rose

Beowolf

The Song of Roland

The Divine Comedy

The Canterbury Tales

Troilus and Criseyde

Pearl

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Piers Plowman

Everyman

The Faerie Queene

Le Morte d’Arthur

 

The Tempest

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Julius Caesar

Macbeth

 

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights - Steinbeck

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Twain

The Prince and the Pauper - Twain (I tried to take these two off the list when it got too long, but he wouldn't let me :tongue_smilie:)

The Road - McCarthy

Anthem - Rand

 

The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition - C. S. Lewis

How to Read Literature Like a Professor - Thomas C. Foster

 

I'll also be assigning a few books for Health (I really should pick those soon) and he'll read at least the chemistry chapters from Hakim's The Story of Science.

[mathwonk]

coloraoperkins, well unfortunately they are mostly stories about boys, if that matters. a few have girl heroes like jane eyre,

 

here is the link to the pricey collectors versions:

 

http://classicscentral.com/class1.htm

 

 

and I attach a jane eyre and an alice in wonderland cover.

 

and bless you. i went out on a limb there!

 

To be honest, I have always felt that the comics I read and visualized helped make me the successful imaginative geometer that I became.

 

Oh yes, and many years after reading the comics, I now own a real copy of every single original that had a Classic Comic version (except I do not own all 17 volumes of the Arabian Nights. I do however have all the stories that were in the comic.)

 

In fact I have several copies of some books. As mentioned below e.g., I have two unabridged copies of Don Quixote, one with and one without the illustrations by Dore', as well as a Dover oversized reproduction of the drawings. I own collectors version of the beautifully and profusely illustrated nature books Lives of the Hunted, and Animals I have known by Ernest Seton Thompson.

 

I also have two copies of The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter, (the story of William Wallace), one illustrated by N.C Wyeth but unfortunately abridged by the well meaning Kate Wiggin, and another unabridged reading copy. Since one of my ancestors died on the battleground at Falkirk, I also bought the wonderful history of Robert Bruce by Agnes Mackenzie. The ridiculous Mel Gibson movie is roughly on the level of the comic book, but Ms Mackenzie's history made clear that the battle of Stirling Bridge was not fought in an open field.

 

I have two copies of the Autobiography of Cellini, and two of the comic. The nicer hard copy of the book sold for $35, and the nicer copy of the comic is worth several hundred.

 

So even a child who prefers comics at first may well read more once her interest is piqued.

Edited August 5, 2012 by mathwonk

[lewelma]

 

He'll also read four books of his choice that have dystopian themes.

 

 

We have also started a dystopian unit. May I suggest 2 books that we both really loved: The Crysalids and The Day of the Triffids both by John Wyndham.

 

Ruth in NZ

[Candid]

This is a grueling year for us. My ds is a sophmore; we use Tapestry of Grace and we do everything. The minor poetry mostly comes from either of the Norton Anthology of Western Lit I or Norton Anthology of British Lit I.

 

Medieval parables

Medieval lyric poems

Arabian Nights*

Chanson de Roland

Beowulf

Inferno, Purgatorio* and Paradiso* (Dante)

Piers Plowman*

Canterbury Tales* (Chaucer)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Early Arthurian legends (Malory et al.)

Sonnets (Petrarch, Wyatt, Shakespeare)

Renaissance poetry*

Faerie Queene*

English medieval plays

Doctor Faustus (Marlowe)

Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, King Lear, The Tempest (Shakespeare)

Don Quixote* (Cervantes)

Pilgrim's Progress, Part I (Bunyan)

17th-Century English poets (Donne et al.)

Paradise Lost (Milton)

Tartuffe (Moliere)

Phaedra (Racine)

Dryden's poetry*

Gulliver's Travels (Swift)

The Rape of the Lock (Pope)

Selected poems (Cowper, Gray, Smart)

 

I'm excited about a lot of things. I've never chased Petrarchan sonnets from Petrarch himself to to the English sonnets. Tons of good big poetry and drama, I wish we could read more Racine, but there is no more time.

[Paisley Hedgehog]

nm

[Luckymama]

Thanks all for sharing your lists :)

[mathwonk]

Those are mighty impressive lists. As I recall, Arabian Nights alone is some 17 volumes, in Sir Richard Burton's translation, (not all of which are PG13).

 

I love Don Quixote especially in the translation by Walter Starkie, but the edition I have does not reproduce Gustave Dore's marvellous illustrations. So I bought another edition from Hogarth Press that does. (This is one book whose Classics comics version is not very good. I guess Don Quixote is just too subtle and wonderful to render easily in heroic cartoons. It took a Dore' to capture it.)

 

If your book is not illustrated, there is a fantastic large scale reproduction of 190 of them from Dover Press for about $12, linked here:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Dores-Illustrations-Quixote-Dover-History/dp/0486243001/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344185087&sr=1-1&keywords=Dores+illustrations+for+don+quixote

 

I used to have two of them posted on my office door as a symbol of the optimism and realities of teaching. In the first one the Don goes out in the early morning on his steed with head and banner high, and in the second one he returns slumping home soundly beaten, but presumably not permanently defeated.:)

Edited August 5, 2012 by mathwonk

[Candid]

Those are mighty impressive lists. As I recall, Arabian Nights alone is some 17 volumes, in Sir Richard Burton's translation, (not all of which are PG13).

 

I love Don Quixote especially in the translation by Walter Starkie, but the edition I have does not reproduce Gustave Dore's marvellous illustrations. So I bought another edition from Hogarth Press that does.

If your book is not illustrated, there is a fantastic large scale reproduction of 190 of them from Dover Press for about $12, linked here:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Dores-Illustrations-Quixote-Dover-History/dp/0486243001/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344185087&sr=1-1&keywords=Dores+illustrations+for+don+quixote

 

Don't be too impressed, I'm pretty sure we aren't reading all 17 volumes or even close. Also, I bought the Burton version to read myself, I think it is complete, but all 17 volumes manage to fit in one book, I think how volumes and books used to be are different from how they are now so sometimes what sounds HUGE isn't quite so big.

Edited August 6, 2012 by Candid

[Jenny in Florida]

Novels:

■ The Time Machine (H.G. Wells)

■ The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells)

■ A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)

■ Johnny Tremain (Esther Forbes) ***

■ Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

■ Feed (MT Anderson) ****

■ The Scarlet Pimpernel (Baroness Emmuska Orczy)

■ The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) ****

■ Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

■ Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) ***

■ Paradise Lost (John Milton; abridged/adapted)

 

 

It's interesting to see a lot of overlap with our list for the upcoming year.

 

Our list for last year was mostly Greek and Greek-related stuff.

 

The Odyssey of Homer, Henry Christ

The Odyssey, Book Eleven, Homer (Robert Fitzgerald, translator)

Mythology, Edith Hamilton

The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles, Padraic Colum

Clash of the Titans, Alan Dean Foster

Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

A Wonder Book, Nathaniel Hawthorne

Antigone, Sophocles

Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw

Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus

Oedipus the King, Sophocles

“Euthyphro,†The Trial and Death of Socrates, Plato

The Frogs, Aristophanes

The King Must Die, Mary Renault

Goddess of Yesterday, Caroline B. Cooney

Troy, Adele Geras

[Jenny in Florida]

We have also started a dystopian unit. May I suggest 2 books that we both really loved: The Crysalids and The Day of the Triffids both by John Wyndham.

 

Ruth in NZ

 

Thanks! I'm creating a list (and a stack of stuff I have on hand) from which he will be able to choose if he's not otherwise inspired. I'll add these to the list.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I think there are many works that you understand better with some life under you belt.

 

But I also think some reading of works beyond you (present) experience helps to equip you for those times when life serves up challenges.

 

To paraphrase a post about the value of reading Jane Austen, a familiarity with such stories can forearm one to recognize the Wickhams of the world.

[TippyCanoe]

.