2010 Summer Reading List

The purpose of summer reading program at Bishop O'Connell High School is to provide students an opportunity to maintain and sharpen their reading, thinking, and writing skills over the summer months through exposure to quality works of literature.

Students are required to read the assigned works and to annotate each text.  In addition, students may wish to take notes that focus on character, theme, plot, setting, point of view, use of language, symbolism, etc.  These notes are for the student’s personal use only. Students will take a test and/or write an essay on each work during the week of September 6.

*English 3 AP Language and English 4 AP Literature require written assignments for each work.  Separate handouts will be distributed by the teacher of each course; students enrolled in English 1 Honors received, by mail, a separate written assignment for Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.

CLICK HERE to download a printable version of the summer reading list.

English 1  

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

English 1 Honors

The Chosen by Chaim Potok
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Mythology by Edith Hamilton (assigned sections only)

English 2   

Night by Elie Wiesel
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

English 2 Honors

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (Fawcett Abridged Edition)
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Night by Elie Wiesel

English 3

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
October Sky by Homer Hickam, Jr.

English 3 Honors

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

AP English 3 Language* 

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas

English 4 

1984 by George Orwell
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

English 4 Honors        

1984 by George Orwell
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

AP English 4 Literature*       

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
4th book from designated list