Colors

I’m not too impressed with the novels my professor added to the course I’m taking. So far I’ve read Cabbagetown by Hugh Garner, The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy and The Double Hook by Sheila Watson. here’s the rest of the list:
Timothy Findley, The Wars (Penguin Classics)

Alice Munro, Who Do You Think You Are? (Penguin)

Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion (Vintage)

Joy Kogawa, Obasan (Penguin)

Eden Robinson, Monkey Beach (Vintage)

Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Englishman’s Boy (Emblem)

Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road (Penguin)

Shyam Selvadurai, Funny Boy (Emblem)

If anyone knows anything about any of the novels on the list, please let me know. Also, if you can, let me know of any good Canadian novels whether they’re on my course or not. I’ve read The Wars by Timothy Findley and I liked that one.

Check out these links:
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/Canadians/authors.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_writers
http://www.canadianauthors.net/
http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/canadian-authors

Google: read alike Timothy Findley:
http://en.librarything.com/author/findleytimothy
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29898.The_Wars

I hope this helps. Good Luck!

So this year in my ap english 2 class we have to read a book outside of school, however there is a list (go figure…) and I don’t recognize many of them. Please recommend any books off this list you enjoyed reading and one that might especially be good for a sophomore in high school. Thanks in advance!! By the way ignore the number at the end of each book, it’s something about how many times it has appeared in the ap test.
Achebe, Chinua
Things Fall Apart (5)

Albee, Edward
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (5)

Alcott, Louisa May
Little Women (1)

Anaya, Rudolfo
Bless Me, Ultima (8)

Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid’s Tale (2)

Austen, Jane
Pride and Prejudice (5)

Baldwin, James
Go Tell It on the Mountain (5)

Beckett, Samuel
Waiting for Godot (7)

Bronte, Charlotte
Jane Eyre (15)

Bronte, Emily
Wuthering Heights (18)

Cather, Willa
My Antonia (3)

Chekhov, Anton
The Cherry Orchard (5)

Chopin, Kate
The Awakening (10)

Conrad, Joseph
Heart of Darkness (13); Lord Jim (7)

Defoe, Daniel
Moll Flanders (6)

Dickens, Charles
Great Expectations (16); Bleak House (5)

Dostoevski, Fyodor
Crime and Punishment (15)

Dreiser, Theodore
Sister Carrie (5)

Edwards, Kim
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter (1)

Eliot, T.S.
Murder in the Cathedral (5)

Ellison, Ralph
Invisible Man (23)

Faulkner, William
As I Lay Dying (9); The Sound and the Fury (6)

Flaubert, Gustave
Madame Bovary (7)

Forster, E.M.
A Passage to India (7)

Frazier, Charles
Cold Mountain (2)

Hansberry, Lorraine
A Raisin in the Sun (7)

Hardy, Thomas
Jude the Obscure (7); The Mayor of

Casterbridge (6); Tess of the D’Ubervilles (5)

Heller, Joseph
Catch-22 (11)

Hemingway, Ernest
The Sun Also Rises (6)

Hurston, Zora Neale
Their Eyes Were Watching God (10)

Ibsen, Henrik
An Enemy of the People (6); Hedda Gabler (6);

A Doll’s House (6)

James, Henry
The Golden Bowl; Portrait of a Lady (6);

The Turn of the Screw (6)

Joyce, James
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (11)

Kogawa, Joy
Obasan (6)

McCarthy, Cormac
All the Pretty Horses (6)

Melville, Herman
Moby Dick (15); Billy Budd (11)

Miller, Arthur
Death of a Salesman (7)

Morrison, Toni
Song of Solomon (9); Beloved (8); Sula (7)

O’Connor, Flannery
Wise Blood (5)

Pasternak, Boris
Doctor Zhivago (1)

Paton, Alan
Cry, The Beloved Country (7)

Rhys, Jean
Wide Sargasso Sea (5)

Salinger, J.D.
Catcher in the Rye (2)

Shaffer, Peter
Equus (6)

Shaw, George Bernard
Mrs. Warren’s Profession (5)

Silko, Leslie Marmon
Ceremony (10)

Sinclair, Upton
The Jungle (8)

Steinbeck, John
The Grapes of Wrath (5)

Stoppard, Tom
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (7)

Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver’s Travels (6)

Tolstoy, Leo
Anna Karenina (8)

Walker, Alice
The Color Purple (8)

Warren, Robert Penn
All the King’s Men (6)

Wharton, Edith
Ethan Frome (6)

Williams, Tennessee
The Glass Menagerie (8);

A Streetcar Named Desire (8)

Wilson, August
The Piano Lesson (5)

Woolf, Virginia
Mrs. Dalloway (5)

Wright, Richard
Native Son (8)

These books are all very different, and which you should choose depends on who you are and what you like. For example, you are more likely to enjoy Little Women if you are female. If you are interested in the African American experience, choose Walker’s The Color Purple or Morrison’s Beloved (which is part ghost story, part slave narrative, part love story, and part so much more).

I will say, however, that the top of my list (at your age group) would probably be Joy Kogawa’s Obasan. It is easy to read, and tells the story of the Japanese experience in Canada during and after WWII through the eyes of one woman who was just a little girl during the war. Her family was sent to an internment camp, and basically lost everything. It isn’t all sad, though. It has a very satisfying ending.

So this year in my ap english 2 class we have to read a book outside of school, however there is a list and I don’t recognize many of them. Please recommend any books off this list you enjoyed reading and one that might especially be good for a sophomore in high school. I had already asked this question once but I guess I was a bit vague, I am a 15 year old boy no ramantic novels please!! For the last six weeks I read Catcher in the Rye and enjoyed it for the most part if that helps. By the way ignore the number at the end of each book, it’s something about how many times it has appeared in the ap test.
Achebe, Chinua
Things Fall Apart (5)

Albee, Edward
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (5)

Alcott, Louisa May
Little Women (1)

Anaya, Rudolfo
Bless Me, Ultima (8)

Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid’s Tale (2)

Austen, Jane
Pride and Prejudice (5)

Baldwin, James
Go Tell It on the Mountain (5)

Beckett, Samuel
Waiting for Godot (7)

Bronte, Charlotte
Jane Eyre (15)

Bronte, Emily
Wuthering Heights (18)

Cather, Willa
My Antonia (3)

Chekhov, Anton
The Cherry Orchard (5)

Chopin, Kate
The Awakening (10)

Conrad, Joseph
Heart of Darkness (13); Lord Jim (7)

Defoe, Daniel
Moll Flanders (6)

Dickens, Charles
Great Expectations (16); Bleak House (5)

Dostoevski, Fyodor
Crime and Punishment (15)

Dreiser, Theodore
Sister Carrie (5)

Edwards, Kim
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter (1)

Eliot, T.S.
Murder in the Cathedral (5)

Ellison, Ralph
Invisible Man (23)

Faulkner, William
As I Lay Dying (9); The Sound and the Fury (6)

Flaubert, Gustave
Madame Bovary (7)

Forster, E.M.
A Passage to India (7)

Frazier, Charles
Cold Mountain (2)

Hansberry, Lorraine
A Raisin in the Sun (7)

Hardy, Thomas
Jude the Obscure (7); The Mayor of

Casterbridge (6); Tess of the D’Ubervilles (5)

Heller, Joseph
Catch-22 (11)

Hemingway, Ernest
The Sun Also Rises (6)

Hurston, Zora Neale
Their Eyes Were Watching God (10)

Ibsen, Henrik
An Enemy of the People (6); Hedda Gabler (6);

A Doll’s House (6)

James, Henry
The Golden Bowl; Portrait of a Lady (6);

The Turn of the Screw (6)

Joyce, James
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (11)

Kogawa, Joy
Obasan (6)

McCarthy, Cormac
All the Pretty Horses (6)

Melville, Herman
Moby Dick (15); Billy Budd (11)

Miller, Arthur
Death of a Salesman (7)

Morrison, Toni
Song of Solomon (9); Beloved (8); Sula (7)

O’Connor, Flannery
Wise Blood (5)

Pasternak, Boris
Doctor Zhivago (1)

Paton, Alan
Cry, The Beloved Country (7)

Rhys, Jean
Wide Sargasso Sea (5)

Salinger, J.D.
Catcher in the Rye (2)

Shaffer, Peter
Equus (6)

Shaw, George Bernard
Mrs. Warren’s Profession (5)

Silko, Leslie Marmon
Ceremony (10)

Sinclair, Upton
The Jungle (8)

Steinbeck, John
The Grapes of Wrath (5)

Stoppard, Tom
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (7)

Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver’s Travels (6)

Tolstoy, Leo
Anna Karenina (8)

Walker, Alice
The Color Purple (8)

Warren, Robert Penn
All the King’s Men (6)

Wharton, Edith
Ethan Frome (6)

Williams, Tennessee
The Glass Menagerie (8);

A Streetcar Named Desire (8)

Wilson, August
The Piano Lesson (5)

Woolf, Virginia
Mrs. Dalloway (5)

Wright, Richard
Native Son (8)

Most of these are either girly or very difficult or both. Sorry.

Your best bet might be Wise Blood. It’s a little angsty and sexy and cynical, and it’s about a guy questioning the existence of God after being brought up very Christian. Makes fun of religion a lot and it’s got this one character who’s just hilariously dumb, and another who’s a hot rebellious preacher’s daughter. Teenage boys should like.

"As I Lay Dying" is kind of a funny family tragic comedy about these dysfunctional rednecks trying to get over the death of their matriarch.

"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" is supposed to be quite funny.

I really like Crime and Punishment but it’s pretty philosophical and I’m not sure you’re old enough to appreciate it. It’s about this pretty depressed guy wondering whether he’s just doomed to be mediocre all his life or is actually special and intelligent and meant to be in command of others. He convinces himself it’s okay to do horrible things in order to make good things happen, if you’re one of these godlike humans. It’s very sad.

I’ll put in a plug for Wuthering Heights too although it is technically about the relationship between a boy and a girl. It’s not a typical romance though. It’s not like "Oh, we love each other so much but we can’t be together because of circumstances and comical misunderstandings". It’s about two people who can’t be together for the simple reason that they’re selfish, wild, cruel people and the more they claim they love each other the more they do bad things to each other and turn each other bitter. Good character study.