Book Nook: High School Edition

So my oldest two kids are enrolled in a dual-credit high school/ community college English class.  Imagine my surprise when they weren’t assigned any books the first quarter!  Well, turns out it’s more of a rhetoric and analysis class, ergo, no books.  Wanting them to please, for the love of Pete, PUT DOWN THE DEVICE AND READ, I made them a list for the sole ugly purpose of bribery.

Read one of mine, and I’ll buy you one of your choice.  Read ten of mine, and I’ll give you Big Bucks.

It occurs to me that many of you might face the same dilemma and wonder where to start.  What are the great classics worth reading?  Which books are the right combination of challenging and “hooking,” as my kids like to say — which ones are entertaining enough to overcome reluctant readers?  Which ones are a pretty safe bet for a PG read?  And some of you might just want a new audio book from the library to pass the time while driving.  Here ya go.

I offer the following list with a disclaimer:  I have not read every single title on this list.  Out of 99, I have read 56 of these, many others by the same authors, and chunks of several listed.  Those I haven’t read made the cut either because I’ve heard glowing reviews or because they are on my own lifetime I-really-oughta-read-this list.  Use your own discretion.

Most of these are novels, ranging from old school classics to science fiction.  There are short stories, plays, nonfiction, and poems as well.  Some of them are more enlightening than entertaining, and a sprinkling are more entertaining than informative.  (I think it’s a crime to make reading something your kids will dread.)  I didn’t bother to list the books my kids gravitate toward on their own; the point of this list is to stretch them.  Some come from a very different world view than my own, and are important for digesting/ discussing/ interacting with.  The last part of the list are explicitly Christian books (you can see where the alphabetizing starts over).  These are just a sampling from my pastor husband’s shelf — a few of the most accessible ones.  There would be another whole list for a slightly older or younger group — these were my best guesses for kids 14-18.

I didn’t bother to alphabetize the titles, just the authors, so don’t hate.  If you catch a mistake, let me know.  And please, from one reader to another, leave more must-reads for high schoolers in the comment box below!

99 Books for A Rainy Day

1. Alcott, Louisa May:  Little Women
2. Austen, Jane:  Pride and Prejudice
3. Austen, Jane:  Sense and Sensibility
4. Austen, Jane:  Emma
5. Babbitt, Natalie:  Tuck Everlasting
6. Barrie, JM:  Peter Pan
7. Berry, Wendell:  Fidelity
8. Brontë, Charlotte:  Jane Eyre
9. Brontë, Emily:  Wuthering Heights
10. Card, Orson Scott:  Ender’s Game
11. Cather, Willa:  My Antonia
12. Chesterton, GK:  The Best of Father Brown
13. Christie, Agatha:  Murder on the Orient Express
14. Conrad, Joseph:  Heart of Darkness
15. Crane, Stephen:  The Red Badge of Courage
16. Defoe, Daniel:  Robinson Crusoe
17. Dickens, Charles:  Oliver Twist
18. Dickens, Charles:  A Christmas Carol
19. Dickinson, Emily:   Poetry
20. Dillard, Annie:  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
21. Dillard, Annie:  An American Childhood
22. Doig, Ivan:  Sweet Thunder
23. Du Bois, WEB:  The Souls of Black Folk
24. Enger, Leif:  Peace Like a River
25. Equiano, Olaudah:  The Life of Olaudah Equiano
26. Frank, Anne:  Diary of Anne Frank
27. Frost, Robert:  Poetry
28. Gladwell, Malcolm:  Outliers
29. Golding, William:  Lord of the Flies
30. Griffin, John Howard:  Black Like Me
31. Grisham, John:  A Time to Kill
32. Hawthorne, Nathaniel:  The Scarlet Letter
33. Hemingway, Ernest:  A Farewell to Arms
34. Hemingway, Ernest:  The Old Man and the Sea
35. Henry, O:  Short Stories of O. Henry
36. Herriot, James:  All Creatures Great and Small
37. Homer:  The Iliad
38. Homer:  The Odyssey
39. Hurston, Zora Neale:  Their Eyes Were Watching God
40. Huxley, Aldous:  Brave New World
41. Keyes, Daniel:  Flowers for Algernon
42. King, Jr., Martin Luther:  Letter from a Birmingham Jail
43. Lee, Harper:  To Kill a Mockingbird
44. L’Engle, Madeleine:  A Ring of Endless Light
45. Lowry, Lois:  The Giver
46. McCullough, David:  1776
47. McCullough, David:  The Wright Brothers
48. Miller, Arthur:  Death of a Salesman
49. Mortenson, Greg:  Three Cups of Tea
50. Orwell, George:  Animal Farm
51. Paterson, Katherine:  Jacob Have I Loved
52. Paton, Alan:  Cry, The Beloved Country
53. Potok, Chaim:  The Chosen
54. Ransome, Arthur:  Swallows and Amazons
55. Rawls, Wilson:  Where the Red Fern Grows
56. Remarque, Erich Maria:  All Quiet On The Western Front
57. Sayers, Dorothy:  Lord Peter
58. Shaara, Michael:  The Killer Angels
59. Shelley, Mary:  Frankenstein
60. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr:  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
61. Steinbeck, John:  Of Mice and Men
62. Stevenson, Robert Lewis:  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
63. Stevenson, Robert Lewis:  Treasure Island
64. Stowe, Harriet Beecher:  Uncle Tom’s Cabin
65. Swift, Jonathan:  Gulliver’s Travels
66. Twain, Mark:  Huckleberry Finn
67. Washington, Booker T:  Up From Slavery
68. Weisel, Elie:  Night
69. Wilde, Oscar:  The Importance of Being Earnest
70. Wilder, Thornton:  Our Town

1. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich:  Cost of Discipleship
2. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich:  Life Together
3. Bunyan, John:  Pilgrim’s Progress
4. Chan, Francis:  Crazy Love
5. Cymbala, Jim:  Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire
6. Elliott, Elisabeth:  Shadow of the Almighty
7. Graham, Billy:  Just As I Am
8. Hayes, Dan:  Fireseeds of Spiritual Awakening
9. Keller, Timothy:  Generous Justice
10. Keller, Timothy:  A Reason for God
11. Lewis, CS:  The Screwtape Letters
12. Lewis, CS:  The Space Trilogy
13. Lewis, CS:  Till We Have Faces
14. Little, Paul:  Know What You Believe
15. Little, Paul:  Know Why You Believe
16. McDowell, Josh:  More Than a Carpenter
17. Mextaxas, Eric:  Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
18. Packer, JI:  Knowing God
19. Piper, John:  Don’t Waste Your Life
20. Perkins, John:  With Justice for All
21. Platt, David:  Radical
22. Reeves, Michael:  Rejoicing in Christ
23. Reeves, Michael:  Delighting in the Trinity
24. Richardson, Don:  Eternity in their Hearts
25. Tolkien, JRR:  Lord of the Rings
26. Tozer, AW:  The Pursuit of God
27. Tozer, AW:  Knowledge of the Holy
28. Ten Boom, Corrie:  The Hiding Place
29. Yancey, Philip:  The Jesus I Never Knew