Academics
Recommended Summer Reading List
he following list includes recommendations of students and faculty based on personal interest or relevance to the Emma Willard curriculum. It is by no means exhaustive; in fact, we welcome further recommendations. All students are expected to read at least one work from this list, in addition to the assigned summer reading. Students should arrive in September prepared to discuss and/or write about their summer reading within the first week of school.
| Fiction (mostly) | |
| Flatland | Abbott |
| Anthills of the Savannah | Achebe |
| Things Fall Apart | Achebe |
| Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Adams |
| Watership Down | Adams, R. |
| Little Women | Alcott |
| Unmasked: Collected Thrillers | Alcott |
| Reservation Blues | Alexie |
| The House of Spirits | Allende |
| Bastard Out of Carolina | Allison |
| How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents | Alvarez |
| Bless Me, Ultima | Anaya |
| Winesburg, Ohio | Anderson |
| Go Ask Alice | Anonymous |
| The Handmaid's Tale | Atwood |
| The Robber Bride | Atwood |
| Clan of the Cave Bear | Auel |
| Emma | Austen |
| Sense and Sensibility | Austen |
| Gorilla, My Love | Bambara |
| Big Trouble | Barry |
| Theft | Bellow |
| Joy School | Berg |
| Fahrenheit 451 | Bradbury |
| The Martian Chronicles | Bradbury |
| The Mists of Avalon | Bradley |
| Villette | Bronte |
| Rubyfruit Jungle | Brown, R. |
| Cold Sassy Tree | Burns |
| Naked Lunch | Burroughs |
| The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights | Burton |
| A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain | Butler |
| Possession | Byatt |
| In Cold Blood | Capote |
| Ender's Game | Card |
| Alice in Wonderland | Carroll |
| Black Ice | Cary, L. |
| The Horse's Mouth | Cary, J. |
| So Far From God | Castillo |
| My Antonia | Cather |
| O Pioneers! | Cather |
| Canterbury Tales | Chaucer |
| The Perks of Being a Wallflower | Chbosky |
| Girl with a Pearl Earring | Chevalier |
| Murder on the Orient Express | Christie |
| And Then There Were None | Christie |
| Woman Hollering Creek | Cisneros |
| Shogun | Clavell |
| Disgrace | Coetzee |
| Artemis Fowl | Colfer |
| Heart of Darkness | Conrad |
| The Hours | Cunningham |
| Breath, Eyes, Memory | Danticat |
| The Cornish Trilogy | Davies |
| Moll Flanders | Defoe |
| Robinson Crusoe | Defoe |
| The Red Tent | Diamant |
| A Tale of Two Cities | Dickens |
| Great Expectations | Dickens |
| Hard Times | Dickens |
| Oliver Twist | Dickens |
| David Copperfield | Dickens |
| Teaching a Stone to Talk | Dillard |
| Sister of My Heart | Divakaruni |
| Ragtime | Doctorow |
| Yellow Raft on Blue Water | Dorris |
| Crime and Punishment | Dostoevsky |
| Heaven's Coast | Doty |
| The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Doyle |
| An American Tragedy | Dreiser |
| Rebecca | du Maurier |
| House of Sand and Fog | Dubus |
| A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius | Eggers |
| Adam Bede | Eliot, G. |
| Middlemarch | Eliot, G. |
| The Mill on the Floss | Eliot, G. |
| Silas Marner | Eliot, G. |
| As I Lay Dying | Faulkner |
| One Thousand White Women | Fergus |
| The Eyre Affair | Fforde |
| Bridget Jones's Diary | Fielding |
| White Oleander | Fitch |
| A Diamond as Big as the Ritz | Fitzgerald |
| A Room with a View | Forster |
| Where Angels Fear to Tread | Forster |
| The Diary of a Young Girl | Frank |
| My Brilliant Career | Franklin |
| Cold Mountain | Frazier |
| The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman | Gaines |
| A Lesson Before Dying | Gaines |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude | Garcia Marquez |
| Love in the Time of Cholera | Garcia Marquez |
| Grendel | Gardner |
| The Prophet | Gibran |
| Herland | Gilman |
| The Finishing School | Godwin |
| The Bee Season | Goldberg |
| Memoirs of a Geisha | Golden |
| The Princess Bride | Goldman |
| July's People | Gordimer |
| The Pickup | Gordimer |
| Six Feet of the Country | Gordimer |
| I, Claudius | Graves |
| The Power and the Glory | Greene, G. |
| Snow Falling on Cedars | Guterson |
| Bound for Glory | Guthrie |
| A Civil Action | Harr |
| Plainsong | Haruf |
| A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings | Head |
| Tales of Tenderness and Power | Head |
| What's Eating Gilbert Grape | Hedges |
| Catch-22 | Heller |
| The Old Man and the Sea | Hemingway |
| The Sun Also Rises | Hemingway |
| All Creatures Great and Small | Herriot |
| Out of the Dust | Hesse |
| Siddhartha | Hesse |
| The Illiad | Homer |
| How to Be Good | Hornby |
| Brave New World | Huxley |
| A Prayer for Owen Meany | Irving |
| Castaways of the Flying Dutchman | Jacques |
| Portrait of a Lady | James |
| The American | James |
| The Wings of the Dove | James |
| The Turn of the Screw | James |
| An Unsuitable Job for a Woman | James, P.D. |
| The Adam Dalgliesh Series | James, P.D. |
| Fear of Flying | Jong |
| Metamorphosis | Kafka |
| Running with the Wolves | Kebbe |
| Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word | Kennedy |
| On the Road | Kerouac |
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Kesey |
| Flowers for Algernon | Keyes |
| The Secret Life of Bees | Kidd |
| A Small Place | Kincaid |
| Lucy | Kincaid |
| Hearts in Atlantis | King |
| The Dark Tower Series | King |
| Pigs in Heaven | Kingsolver |
| Poisonwood Bible | Kingsolver |
| Woman Warrior | Kingston |
| Stalky and Company | Kipling |
| A Separate Peace | Knowles |
| Obasan | Kogawa |
| Into the Wild | Krakauer |
| Into Thin Air | Krakauer |
| Interpreter of Maladies | Lahiri |
| The Namesake | Lahiri |
| She's Come Undone | Lamb |
| Selected Short Stories of D.H. Lawrence | Lawrence, D. H. |
| Sons and Lovers | Lawrence, D. H. |
| Inherit the Wind | Lawrence, J. |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Lee |
| The Orsinian Tales | LeGuin |
| The Left Hand of Darkness | LeGuin |
| Many Waters | L'Engle |
| Martha Quest | Lessing |
| The Chronicles of Narnia | Lewis |
| Moon Tiger | Lively |
| Call of the Wild | London |
| The Giver | Lowry |
| Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister | Maguire |
| Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West | Maguire |
| The Natural | Malamud |
| The Assisstant | Malamud |
| Nectar in a Sieve | Markandaya |
| The Life of Pi | Martel |
| The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother | McBride |
| The Ship Who Searched | McCaffrey |
| Angela's Ashes | McCourt |
| I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala | Menchu |
| Spring Snow | Mishima |
| Gone with the Wind | Mitchell |
| House Made of Dawn | Momaday |
| Utopia | More |
| Song of Solomon | Morrison |
| Sula | Morrison |
| Tar Baby | Morrison |
| The Bluest Eye | Morrison |
| The Tiger's Daughter | Mukherjee |
| Jasmine | Mukherjee |
| A Fairly Honourable Defeat | Murdoch |
| The Women of Brewster Place | Naylor |
| Never in a Hurry | Nye |
| The Things They Carried | O'Brien |
| In the Lake of the Woods | O'Brien |
| The Complete Stories | O'Connor, Flannery |
| 1984 | Orwell |
| Animal Farm | Orwell |
| Cry, the Beloved Country | Paton |
| Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe | Poe |
| Davita's Harp | Potok |
| The Chosen | Potok |
| Dark Materials series | Pullman |
| Object Lessons | Quindlen |
| The Fountainhead | Rand |
| All Quiet on the Western Front | Remarque |
| Interview with a Vampire | Rice |
| Goodbye, Columbus | Roth |
| The God of Small Things | Roy |
| Empire Falls | Russo |
| The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat | Sacks |
| Catcher in the Rye | Salinger |
| Franny and Zooey | Salinger |
| Nine Stories | Salinger |
| Blindness | Saramago |
| The Small Room | Sarton |
| Journal of a Solitude | Sarton |
| Drowning Ruth | Schwarz |
| The Lovely Bones | Sebold |
| Me Talk Pretty One Day | Sedaris |
| The Pilot's Wife | Shreve |
| Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen | Shulman |
| The Jungle | Sinclair |
| A Thousand Acres | Smiley |
| The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | Spark |
| Of Mice and Men | Steinbeck |
| The Grapes of Wrath | Steinbeck |
| The Pearl | Steinbeck |
| The Crystal Cave | Stewart |
| The Hollow Hills | Stewart |
| The Last Enchantment | Stewart |
| Uncle Tom's Cabin | Stowe |
| Sophie's Choice | Styron |
| The Joy Luck Club | Tan |
| The Hundred Secret Senses | Tan |
| The Bonesetter's Daughter | Tan |
| Secret History | Tartt |
| The Little Friend | Tartt |
| Vanity Fair | Thackeray |
| Walden | Thoreau |
| The Hobbitt | Tolkien |
| The Lord of the Rings | Tolkien |
| Anna Karenina | Tolstoy |
| Without Vodka: Adventures in Wartime Russia | Topolski |
| The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | Twain |
| The Accidental Tourist | Tyler |
| Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant | Tyler |
| 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea | Verne |
| Cat's Cradle | Vonnegut |
| Slaughterhouse Five | Vonnegut |
| Meridian | Walker |
| The Color Purple | Walker |
| Big Fish | Wallace |
| All the King's Men | Warren |
| The Loved One | Waugh |
| Brideshead Revisited | Waugh |
| The Age of Innocence | Wharton |
| The Once and Future King | White |
| The Gates of the Forest | Wiesel |
| Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit | Winterson |
| Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves | Wodehouse |
| Right Ho, Jeeves | Wodehouse |
| The Inimitable Jeeves | Wodehouse |
| This Boy's Life | Wolff |
| The Barracks Thief | Wolff |
| Orlando | Woolf |
| To the Lighthouse | Woolf |
| Native Son | Wright |
| Drama | |
| Zoo Story | Albee |
| A Man for All Seasons | Bolt |
| Dancing at Lughnasa | Friel |
| Little Foxes | Hellman |
| The Children's Hour | Hellman |
| Pentimento | Hellman |
| Crimes of the Heart | Henley |
| Death of a Salesman | Miller |
| A Midsummer Night's Dream | Shakespeare |
| As You Like It | Shakespeare |
| Julius Caesar | Shakespeare |
| King Lear | Shakespeare |
| The Tempest | Shakespeare |
| Measure for Measure | Shakespeare |
| Major Barbara | Shaw |
| St. Joan | Shaw |
| True West | Shepherd |
| School for Scandal | Sheridan |
| The Rivals | Sheridan |
| Biloxi Blues | Simon |
| Brighton Beach Memoirs | Simon |
| The Heidi Chronicles | Wasserstein |
| Lady Windemere's Fan | Wilde |
| Salome | Wilde |
| Our Town | Wilder |
| Two Trains Running | Wilson |
| Fences | Wilson |
| Jitney | Wilson |
| Poetry | |
| Look for poetry collections by Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Bradstreet, Gwendolyn Brooks, Billy Collins, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Mark Doty, Rita Dove, Robert Frost, Louise Gluck, Joy Harjo, Langston Hughes, Maxine Kumin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Pablo Neruda, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, William Stafford, Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth, and William Butler Yeats. | |
