Summer Reading List
Why a Summer Reading List?
It has been said that reading is an additional art through which we all learn. At LACHSA we firmly believe that reading is an integral part of our academic culture. To this end, we strongly recommend that all students read three to five books over the course of the summer.
This list, compiled by our faculty, represents merely a starting place. It represents a wide array of genres and topics and many important and significant texts.
Enjoy your summer and read, read, read!
Fiction
The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak
The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse
Bread and Wine, Ignazio Silone
The Wild Numbers, Philibert Schogt
A Separate Peace, John Knowles
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Ken Kesey
Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth, Hermann Hesse
Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder
Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson
Always Running, Luis Rodriguez
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Witches of Eastwick, John Updike
The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Jane Austen
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Night, Elie Wiesel
The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
The Odyssey, Homer
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
The Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Non-Fiction
Survival of the Sickest, Dr. Saron Moalem
The China Study, Colin Campbell
Hyperspace, Michio Kaku
A Mathematician’s Apology (Essay), G.H. Hardy
The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers
Myths To Live By, Joseph Campbell
A Dream of Passion, Lee Strassberg
Amusing Ourselves To Death, Neil Postman
Meeting The Shadow (Essays), Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams
Autobiography
Personal Recollections of Mary Somerville, Mary and Martha Somerville
Letters to a Young Poet, Reiner Maria Rilke
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor E. Frankl
Poetry and Drama
The Would Be Gentleman (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme), Moliere
Tartuffe, Moliere
The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams
Our Town, Thorton Wilder
The Elephant Man, Bernard Pomerance
Waiting For Godot, Samuel Becket
Rosencrans and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard
No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre
Death Of A Salesman, Arthur Miller
Blood Wedding, Federico Garcia Lorca
What The Butler Saw, Joe Orton
Look Back In Anger, John Osborne
True West, Sam Shepard
Marisol, Jose Rivera
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neil
A Moon For The Misbegotten, Eugene O’Neil
The Importance of Being Ernest, Oscar Wilde
Fences, August Wilson
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, August Wilson
Angels In America (Part 1 and 2), Tony Kushner
The Birthday Party, Eugene Ionesco
Oedepus Rex, Sophocles
Antigone, Sophocles
Medea, Sophocles
The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov
Uncle Vanya, Anton Chekhov
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Edward Albee
The Zoo Story, Edward Albee
Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry
The Children’s Hour, Lillian Hellman
Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand
Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw
Heartbreak House, George Bernard Shaw
Complete Works of:
William Shakespeare
Baudelaire
T.S. Elliot
Rimbaud
Pablo Neruda
Langston Hughes
Octavio Paz
Allan Ginsberg
Jack Kerouac
Dorothy Parker
Lucille Clifton
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
Anne Sexton
Sylvia Plath
Octavio Paz
Allan Ginsberg
Jack Kerouac
Dorothy Parker
Lucille Clifton
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
Anne Sexton
Sylvia Plath
