need recommendations for our next read aloud (grades 10 and 11)

[cintinative]

UPDATE in last post

 

We are just wrapping up Heart of Darkness by Conrad.  Before that we read To Kill a Mockingbird.  Before that, David Copperfield.  I have no real theme with our read-alouds. I just randomly pick them. (I know that's probably annoying! To be fair, their actual lit classes have time periods attached.)

I was thinking of reading some of Flannery O'Connor's stories next, but I can't remember if they are on the heavy side or not.  I could try an Austen novel (my oldest has read Pride and Prejudice).  

Some others that we have not read that are on my potential list are:

Anna Karenina (although I am hesitant because David Copperfield was so long, and this one is too.)

The Great Gatsby

Lord of the Flies (I think too dark following Heart of Darkness, but maybe later?)

Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations (although we have read Christmas Carol and David Copperfield and my oldest will read Hard Times this year for a class)

Story of My life Helen Keller

The Chosen by Chaim Potok

My Antonia Willa Cather

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Fahrenheit 451

 

Any other suggestions? Or favorites from the list above?

We do like science fiction, but I am not sure what we could read. We have read Wells, C.S. Lewis, Verne. 

 

Edited December 7, 2022 by cintinative

[mathnerd]

In middle school years, we read aloud a lot of Jules Verne books. I was intentionally looking for books that were easier to read, so not sure if you would like them for high school age.

[cintinative]

9 minutes ago, mathnerd said:

In middle school years, we read aloud a lot of Jules Verne books. I was intentionally looking for books that were easier to read, so not sure if you would like them for high school age.

We have read some Jules Verne. I read Around the World in 80 Days and the boys have read 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. I was considering The Mysterious Island as an assigned book or read aloud possibly.

[mathnerd]

13 minutes ago, cintinative said:

We have read some Jules Verne. I read Around the World in 80 Days and the boys have read 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. I was considering The Mysterious Island as an assigned book or read aloud possibly.

Sorry didn’t notice that you said you already read Verne!

[MamaSprout]

For something lighter, maybe The Importance of Being Earnest?

 From your list, maybe The Chosen.

[J-rap]

Grapes of Wrath?

For something really different, we really enjoyed Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, although I think of that as a book to read in the fall.

From your list, I'd probably pick One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, or Story of My Life.  

(Dickens is always my favorite, but you might as well read something else!)

 

[cintinative]

Thanks MamaSprout and J-Rap.  We have read The Importance of Being Earnest.  My oldest read Frankenstein.  

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) we have read so many classics it is now getting hard to choose ones they haven't read or will read for one of their scheduled classes. 

My memory of Grapes of Wrath is that it is really depressing but I read it over 25 years ago. I am not against depressing. I just want to give us a lighter book before proceeding back into the somber stuff.  

@Lori D. suggestions for a lighter book? Maybe Northanger Abbey?

[Guest]

If you’re looking for lighter, more positive books — Silas Marner is an uplifting story with quirky / funny townspeople.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/5035.Uplifting_Fiction

Tale of Two Cities has a very hopeful and redemptive ending.

Three Musketeers is very long, but entertaining.

 

[domestic_engineer]

Maybe check out the offerings in the Rabbit Room storefront?  I often put their recommendations on my lists, both personal and school.  Wendell Berry and Wangerin, perhaps?  Their new "Sir Galahad" book? 

Or what about Kiddie Lit that may have come out since your boys "aged out"?  The summer could be a time to reminisce about the fun read-aloud times you had when they were younger.  Amy Timberlake's Skunk & Badger series, Lauren Wolk's books, Park's Lotus Prairie.  I hear Nayer's Everything Sad is Untrue is excellent.

[Lori D.]

6 hours ago, cintinative said:

... @Lori D. suggestions for a lighter book? Maybe Northanger Abbey?

Yes, I found Northanger Abbey to be laugh-out-loud funny. It reminded me of all the shenanigans back from my public high school days "Does he like me?" "Do you like him?" And the trying to get into the "in" group. And the over-dramatization of everything. 😄 Because of that, I found Northanger Abbey to be incredibly "contemporary" in some ways. 😉 (Note: I read it on my own, as an adult looking back at my own teen years, and not with DSs as part of their high school lit., so not sure how a teen would react...)

Possibilities for a few other lighter classics:
- Pygmalion (Shaw) -- the play on which the musical movie My Fair Lady was based
- something by PG Wodehouse -- maybe a collection of short stories like Wodehouse on Crime, or Code of the Woosters
- "Farmer Giles of Ham" (Tolkien) -- longish short story length; mock epic
- The Wind in the Willows (Grahame) -- such lovely language, and then further into the book, the antics of Toad and friends; I *appreciated* the writing of the one so much more as an adult then as a child
- some short stories by O. Henry and/or Saki
- The Pickwick Papers (Dickens) -- long
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Twain) -- long
- The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway) -- short, easy adventure read, BUT melancholy

Humorous, but not traditional classics:
- A Year in Provence (Mayle) -- autobiographical sketches of a British couple who move to France and try to fix up a home
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy + The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Adams) -- both are short fast reads; sci-fi
- Cold Comfort Farm (Gibbons) -- there is also a great film version starring Kate Beckinsale

Not "classics" in the traditional sense, but great writing -- contemporary, longer length, positive outlook:
- The Other Bennet Sister (Hadlow) -- beautifully written; a "sequel" to Pride and Prejudice, following the middle sister, Mary
- The Goblin Emperor (Addison) -- fantasy, with slight steam-punk trappings; a lovely, gentle, affirming tale of a young man who unexpectedly becomes emperor of the very extensive and powerful elf-lands kingdom 
- Thick as Thieves (Turner) -- 5th of the 6-book The Thief series, set in a sort of mythological ancient times, involving 3 small created countries, and Persia; it can be read as a stand-alone, and it is absolutely lovely -- best-written book of the series, with inclusion of lovely epic-mythical tales written in an epic poetic form that mimics Gilgamesh
- Watership Down (Adams) -- (the "not contemporary exception -- written in the early 1960s) fantasy adventure-quest; lengthy; rabbits in their Aeneid-like quest for a new homeland

I noticed in your original post you mention Flannery O'Connor.

We found her her moments of a character being hit with a twist of circumstance and revelation about their priggish ideas about themselves to be funny, but not everyone will. And some of her works don't have much humor at all -- they are hard truths lived out in hard ways. And, humor is not the main mood -- it is funny moments within the "Southern Grotesque", a sub genre of the "Southern Gothic. This quote sums up Souther Grotesque (and Flannery O'Connor) very succinctly: "Rather than a sensationalist freak or horror show, grotesque literature cuts through the veil of civility, through decorum and oppressive normative fabrications to expose a harsh, confusing reality of contradictions, violence, and aberrations." -- from the definition by Oxford Research Encyclopedias  

Also, you will want to have some conversations about race/racism; she was writing in the early 1960s, and lived all her life in the Deep South. She was aware of the prejudice and racism in Southern culture, and shows that in her works via the Southern Grotesque. However, she is not writing in today's "contemporary Woke culture way" of discussing these topics, so "cancel culture" has been working on "cancelling" O'Connor. Ironically, that concept of "cancelling" due to stereotyping is exactly what O'Connor's stories point out is the cause of the flaw in many of her characters. Here is a 2020 article on "The Cancelling of Flannery O'Connor."

(Side note: As you can see, I disagree with the whole concept of "cancelling." 😉 A MUCH stronger and ultimately more beneficial for all way of dealing with difficult and offensive topics in literature, or beliefs of others, is to point them out and discuss them, and read a variety of viewpoints from different eras. But, not everyone wishes to take that time and energy, or to look at the whole picture.)  

Flannery O'Connor stories we read:
- A Good Man is Hard to Find
- Revelation
- Everything That Rises Must Converge

Edited July 9, 2022 by Lori D.

[cintinative]

1 hour ago, Lori D. said:

A MUCH stronger and ultimately more beneficial for all way of dealing with difficult and offensive topics in literature, or beliefs of others, is to point them out and discuss them, and read a variety of viewpoints from different eras. But, not everyone wishes to take that time and energy, or to look at the whole picture.
 

Thanks for all the recommendations--this is how we have dealt with this historically. There were obviously racial themes in To Kill A Mockingbird, Heart of Darkness, and Huckleberry Finn, etc. Also there was racial stuff in David Copperfield.  I can't remember all the others. Anyway, we just stop and talk about it in light of the time period in which it was written.  

[ScoutTN]

Sci-fi - not “literature” but with plenty of discussion worthy content:

Ender’s Game
Project Hail Mary
Dune

Fantasy:
Earthsea Trilogy

Seconding some well written kids’ or middle grade books if you need a break from adult classics. Good stories with lots of connection points to other lit.

The Wind in the Willows
The Eagle of the Ninth 
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
White Fang
Treasure Island


We have enjoyed some of Steve Sheinkin’s  history books - non fiction that reads like fiction. Middle grade, not adult.
 

We have also enjoyed:
Endurance
Bonhoeffer
The Boys in the Boat
Seabiscuit
The Hiding Place
Hidden Figures

 

 

Edited July 9, 2022 by ScoutTN

[MJmom]

A really fun, contemporary read aloud is West With Giraffes. It’s a fictionalized story about the real journey of 2 giraffes that survived a hurricane and were then driven across the US to the San Diego Zoo. It took place during the Dust Bowl and covers that in a way that’s less heavy than Grapes of Wrath.

[domestic_engineer]

I just saw today on Twitter that Dr. Anika Prather suggested Chinua Achebe be included in a classical education. She suggested starting with Things Fall Apart. 

[Quarter Note]

On 7/7/2022 at 11:13 AM, cintinative said:

The Chosen by Chaim Potok

I haven't done this with my kids (middle school age), but it is really a beautiful, thoughtful book.  It should be a wonderful read aloud with high school age kids.

[Momto6inIN]

5 hours ago, ScoutTN said:

Sci-fi - not “literature” but with plenty of discussion worthy content:

Ender’s Game
Project Hail Mary
Dune

Fantasy:
Earthsea Trilogy

Seconding some well written kids’ or middle grade books if you need a break from adult classics. Good stories with lots of connection points to other lit.

The Wind in the Willows
The Eagle of the Ninth 
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
White Fang
Treasure Island


We have enjoyed some of Steve Sheinkin’s  history books - non fiction that reads like fiction. Middle grade, not adult.
 

We have also enjoyed:
Endurance
Bonhoeffer
The Boys in the Boat
Seabiscuit
The Hiding Place
Hidden Figures

 

 

I was going to say Ender's Game as well.

[Lori D.]

If looking for more sci-fi... These are not heavy or dark (only the last 4 might be considered "classics"):

- The Eyre Affaire (Fforde) -- speculative fiction/detective; great romping fun through literature, with other other elements thrown in
- Shades of Gray (Fforde) -- NOT the s*x book, but a clever, lighter dystopia with some humor
- Cinder (Meyer) -- popcorn YA read; very fun futuristic world with a cyborg mechanic Cinderella; first in the Lunar series
- The Thrawn Trilogy (Zahn) -- adventure/space opera set in the Star Wars universe

- Foundation (Asimov) -- collection of connected short stories that each jump further forward in time around the same "world"
- I, Robot (Asimov) -- collection of loosely connected short stories (one of which sets the standard of the 3 rules for robotic or AI
- The MartianChronicles (Bradbury) -- collection of loosely connected short stories
- Alas Babylon (Frank) -- post a-bomb survival story (sort of like a new type of "pioneering") that ends positively

[Farrar]

From your list, My Antonia has sentences that are so good they make me want to cry.

You mention having read two books with themes on race by white authors. Please, please read a non-white author at some point. Things Fall Apart is an excellent suggestion, but there's so many options. Some non-white authored books I read with my kids and later with my local class during our American lit year included:

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Black Boy
Ceremony
The Joy Luck Club

Your list seems to imply you're trying to stick with classics, but we also read YA books. There are wonderful scifi books by Black authors, like Parable of the Sower or the works of Nnedi Okorafor, which are mostly YA titles. 

 

[Rosie_0801]

Possibly everyone ought to read 'Braiding Sweetgrass.'

[serendipitous journey]

Reading the suggestions puts me in mind of Octavia Butler -- maybe "Kindred"?  but that's not a lighter read, so maybe for another time. 

ETA: oh, now I know who I'd been trying to remember: N.K. Jemisin & her Broken Earth books.  Fun, fabulous sci-fi reads by a Black author. 

Edited July 10, 2022 by serendipitous journey

[Junie]

Another vote for My Antonia.  It is my favorite novel ever.

[MamaSprout]

On 7/9/2022 at 3:43 PM, ScoutTN said:

Sci-fi - not “literature” but with plenty of discussion worthy content:

Ender’s Game
Project Hail Mary
Dune

Fantasy:
Earthsea Trilogy

Seconding some well written kids’ or middle grade books if you need a break from adult classics. Good stories with lots of connection points to other lit.

The Wind in the Willows
The Eagle of the Ninth 
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
White Fang
Treasure Island


We have enjoyed some of Steve Sheinkin’s  history books - non fiction that reads like fiction. Middle grade, not adult.
 

We have also enjoyed:
Endurance
Bonhoeffer
The Boys in the Boat
Seabiscuit
The Hiding Place
Hidden Figures

 

 

I’ll just + 1 this list.

I liked Ender’s Game, but the level of swearing in it would make it challenging to read aloud. 

Project Hail Mary was one my dd suggested to me. It was good.

My Antonia is a favorite.

ETA- The novella of Beggars in Spain. I haven’t read the novel.

Edited July 11, 2022 by MamaSprout

[cintinative]

So far, we have read short stories by Flannery O'Connor, part of Northanger Abbey (they hated it, so I abandoned the attempt), My Antonia, Fahrenheit 451, and The Chosen (we are finishing this one). We covered Much Ado about Nothing in there somewhere. ETA: Also "Barn Burning" by Faulkner.

I am considering Uncle Tom's Cabin or Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry next.  Roll of Thunder is a young adult book, very easy.  Thoughts?

Edited December 7, 2022 by cintinative

[Guest]

Are you looking for a book that explores slavery and civil rights? Other suggestions: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman or Pudd’nhead Wilson. 

[cintinative]

3 minutes ago, WTM said:

Are you looking for a book that explores slavery and civil rights? Other suggestions: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman or Pudd’nhead Wilson. 

Yes, that is one thing that I am looking for, and we have read Pudd'nhead Wilson

Edited December 7, 2022 by cintinative

[Lucy the Valiant]

We (current teens and I) are reading Everything Sad Is Untrue right now (I've read it before, now sharing it with them). 

^ Seconding Lori D's comments about O'Connor (and I'd add Twain to that thought, too - Huck Finn doesn't mean what most book-banners think it does).

A non-fiction read for that age that I haven't seen listed is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. 

(We find a lot of modern treasures on Redeemed Reader blog.)

 

 

[Lucy the Valiant]

1 minute ago, cintinative said:

Yes, and we have read Pudd'nhead Wilson

Oh, ignore my suggestions; they're not on American civil rights.

ETA: Both titles you mention are quality reads, leading to quality discussions; when my older teens are reading "heavier" books for their serious classes, they often appreciate "lighter" books in read-aloud (which would cause me to choose Roll of Thunder over Uncle Tom, for example). But . . . given the heaviness of General Life, we have actually pivoted to non-heavy read-alouds as "just for fun" - heavy SUBJECTS okay, but lighter / gentler tone, if that makes sense? I'm probably not saying it well.

Edited December 7, 2022 by Lucy the Valiant

[cintinative]

Just now, Lucy the Valiant said:

Oh, ignore my suggestions; they're not on American civil rights.

I am open to more than just civil rights ones. I just want to make sure I have that particular topic covered too.  😃

[ScoutTN]

Roll of Thunder is a good story. We have revisited some middle grade stories as RA or, more frequently, audiobooks. Everything doesn’t have to be heavy or “great” literature. 

Maybe something cozier or Christmas themed for December?!

Seconding Redeemed Reader for contemporary books worth reading. 
 

 

[Vintage81]

Have you read The Outsiders? Also, this year I read Scythe by Neil Shusterman to my DDs, and they enjoyed it. It’s not sci-fi…more dystopian, but it has an interesting premise that might spark some interesting discussion. 

[Eilonwy]

On 12/7/2022 at 3:38 PM, cintinative said:

I am considering Uncle Tom's Cabin or Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry next.  Roll of Thunder is a young adult book, very easy.  Thoughts?

I haven’t read Uncle Tom’s Cabin to compare, but I did Roll of Thunder as a read-aloud with my Gr. 9 student this autumn, and it worked really well, with good discussions.  We’re currently reading The Night Diary, another YA book that is not difficult to read, but has a weighty theme (partition of India at independence).

[ScoutTN]

On a totally different vein, Project Hail Mary is good. My Ds loved it last year. 

[Trilliumlady]

Wow.  Timely post, glad I stumbled on this.  Bookmarking for when we finish some Wendell Berry short stories we’re working on…

[Farrar]

Uncle Tom's Cabin is really a work of outdated fiction that's only of importance as an historic artifact at this point. It has heavy importance in that role, but as a work of fiction, it relies on white stereotypes and tropes, and has a lot of problematic elements. It's also just overwrought and not very good. I genuinely don't understand why people read it outside of history classes or specialized courses looking at the literature of the abolition movement. 

Roll of Thunder is a wonderful book. It's a YA book (essentially... it was originally published as middle grades before YA was a thing and its sequels are often published as adult fiction so it really straddles a funny place in terms of audience). It tells a really nuanced story and is very much worth the read. It also covers a time period that is often not focused on. A lot of historical fiction novels that are about African-Americans have in the past focused on either enslavement or Civil Rights. 

[cintinative]

Thank you @Farrar That really helps.