Suggested Reading

Grade 9

Adams, Richard – Watership Down
Chronicles the adventures of a group of rabbits searching for a safe place to establish a new warren where they can live in peace.

Anderson, Laurie Halse - Fever of 1793
Fifteen-year–old Mattie survives the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, but loses her grandfather and does not know where her mother is. With the help of their African-American cook, Mattie is determined to make the family coffeehouse a success.

Buck, Pearl - The Good Earth
In this classic novel, an honest farmer and his wife struggle with the sweeping changes within China during the reign of the last Emperor.

Defoe, William – Robinson Crusoe
As the sole survivor of a shipwreck, an Englishman lives for thirty years on a deserted island.

Dickens, Charles – David Copperfield
A classic coming-of-age story, David Copperfield captures the comedy, tenderness, and tragedy of the loss of innocence as children enter the adult world. Young David suffers the wrath of his stepfather, the abusive Mr. Mudstone; the betrayal of the charming sociopath Steerforth; battles the snivelling clerk Uriah Heep; and falls head-over-heels into a doomed infatuation with slow-witted Dora.

Falkner, J. Meade – Moonfleet
In the small, quiet village of Moonfleet, hugging the rugged coast of the beautiful county of Dorset, a smuggling ring is doing a roaring trade. It’s the days of pirates and smugglers, thieves and vagabonds — and a young boy, John Trenchard, who finds himself unwittingly at the very centre of all the action. But after John gets too involved with the smugglers and ends up leaving England in the dead of night with a price on his young head, he has no way of knowing what adventures await him before he sees his beloved Moonfleet again.

Hammett, Dashiell – The Maltese Falcon
A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shop-worn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

Kinsella, W.P. – Shoeless Joe
Shoeless Joe follows the story of unrepentant dreamer, Ray Kinsella, whose goal is to build a baseball stadium in the middle of a cornfield. A baseball announcer's voice tells Ray: "If you build it, he will come." He's referring to Shoeless Joe Jackson, Ray's all-time baseball hero. This timeless story about baseball is also a story about the power of dreams.

Levitin, Sonia – The Cure
In a dystopian society, during the year 2407, a 16-year-old boy is punished for his nonconformity by being sent to the Middle Ages, a time when villagers who feared that the Jews were the cause of the Black Plague burned them to death.

Lipsyte, Robert – The Brave
Having left the Indian Reservation for the streets of New York, a seventeen-year-old boxer, Sonny Bear, tries to harness his inner rage by training with Alfred Brooks, who has left the sport to become a policeman.

Mowat, Farley – Never Cry Wolf
Observations on the caribou and wolf populations living on the Keewatin Lands northwest of the Hudson Bay.

Paulsen, Gary - Dogsong
An Eskimo teen takes a 1400-mile journey by dogsled across ice, tundra and mountains seeking his own "song" of himself.

Paulsen, Gary - Harris and Me
A young boy spends his 10th summer on his aunt and uncle's farm. From sunrise to sunset, his days are filled with back-breaking chores, gut-busting meals, and crazy escapades with his cousin Harris. Master storyteller Paulsen offers a nostalgic and rollicking tale with characters as endearing as Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

Richter, Conrad - Light in the Forest
A 15-year old white boy raised by Indians is forced to return to his people, facing difficult choices about his identity and loyalty.

Staples, Suzanne Fisher – Shabanu : Daughter of the Wind
When eleven-year-old Shabanu, the daughter of a nomad in the Cholistan Desert of present-day Pakistan, is pledged in marriage to an older man whose money will bring prestige to the family, she must either accept the decision, as is the custom, or risk the consequences of defying her father’s wishes.

Tolkien, J.R.R. - The Hobbit
Living comfortably in his hobbit-hole -- until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to share in an adventure from which he may never return -- Bilbo finds courage and sets out on an amazing journey.

Twain, Mark – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Recounts the adventures of a young boy and an escaped slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.

Voight, Cynthia – The Homecoming
Abandoned by their father and their mother, four children begin a search for a home and an identity.

White, T. H. – The Once and Future King
The story of the youth and reign of King Arthur, the establishment of the Round Table and the search for the Holy Grail are described in this story.

Whyndham, John - The Chrysalids
This is a horrific novel of a post-apocalyptic society that deems any physical deviation from the norm as an abomination before God. David is a Picture Talker, a young man with a talent for communicating silently with others like him. Sometimes the blasphemous genetic mutations aren't so obvious and David knows he must keep his secret safe... if he wants to live, in this terrifying vision of the future.

Wyndham, John - The Day of the Triffids
The Day of the Triffids is the classic-horrific tale of the invasion of carnivorous, animated plants that not only feed on human flesh, but are poised to take over the world -- unless one man can stop them!

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Grade 10

Atwood, Margaret – Cat’s Eye
Controversial painter Elaine Risley returns from Vancouver for a retrospective of her work. Here, in Toronto, the city of her youth, she confronts the submerged layers of her past – her unconventional family, her eccentric and brilliant brother, the self-righteous Mrs. Smeath, and the two men Elaine later came to love in diverse and sometimes disastrous ways. But it is the enigmatic Cordelia, once her tormentor, then her best friend, whose elusive yet powerful presence in her life Elaine finally comes to understand.

Brown, Dan - The DaVinci Code
In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate their every move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher a labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's ancient secret -- and an explosive historical truth -- will be lost forever. The DaVinci Code heralds the arrival of a new breed of lightning-paced, intelligent thriller…utterly unpredictable right up to its stunning conclusion.

Card, Orson Scott – Ender's Game
A Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic--Ender's Game is the story of Ender Wiggin, a boy genetically engineered to be a superior military mind, and bred to win Earth's long war with an alien insectoid race by completely destroying their homeworld. Ender's story is continued in three other novels: Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind; each is worth reading.

Dickens, Charles – Great Expectations
Pip seizes the chance to rise above his humble origins in the Essex marshes when a mysterious benefactor leaves him a small sum of money.

Doyle, Arthur Conan – any Sherlock Holmes Novel
Old England is the setting for these classic mysteries with memorable characters.

Faulkner, William – Light in August
Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joe’s tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the same time Joe’s life is a study of the divided self and becomes a symbol of 20th century man.

Gardner, John – Grendel
The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic “Beowolf”, tells his side of the story.

Griffin, John - Black Like Me
The author tells of his experiences after he darkened his skin and traveled through the south in order to find out how it feels to be black.

Herbert, Frank – Dune
This Hugo and Nebula Award winner tells the sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a Byzantine interstellar empire. Paul Atreides moves with his family to the planet Arrakis and is forced into exile when his father's government is overthrown.

Hornung, E.W. – Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman
Raffles has been the inspiration for numerous fictional characters, including James Bond. Like Bond, Raffles is handsome and debonaire, with refined tastes, yet is swift, cunning, and utterly ruthless when the need arises. And just as Bond is a master of the gaming tables, so Raffles is undeniably "one of the best cricket players in the world." While Bond is on the side of law and order, Raffles makes his living by outwitting the law pulling off some of the most daring burglaries imaginable.

Huxley, Aldous – Brave New World
Originally published in 1932, Huxley's terrifying vision of a controlled and emotionless future "Utopian" society is truly startling in its prediction of modern scientific and cultural phenomena, including test-tube babies and rampant drug abuse.

Lamb, Wally – She’s Come Undone
Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.

Plath, Sylvia – The Bell Jar
This extraordinary work chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful -- but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Esther through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior editor on a magazine, her increasingly strained relationships with her mother and the boy she dated in college, and eventually, devastatingly, into the madness itself. The reader is drawn into her breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies.

Salinger, J.D. – The Catcher in the Rye
This classic 1951 novel tells the tale of a defiant 16-year-old prep school student who runs away to New York City after getting expelled. Although Holden Caulfield is more cynical than a Gen-Xer, his pain and loneliness slowly escape from underneath his tough exterior.

Stoker, Bram – Dracula
A popular bestseller in Victorian England, Stoker’s hypnotic tale of the bloodthirsty Count Dracula, whose nocturnal atrocities are symbolic of an evil ages old yet forever new, endures as the quintessential story of suspense and horror. The unbridled lusts and desires, the diabolical cravings that Stoker dramatized with such mythical force, render Dracula resonant and unsettling a century later.

Tolkien, J.R.R. – The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Continue the saga introduced in The Hobbit and follow the adventures of Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry as they undertake the quest to destroy the one ring. (Usually published in three volumes - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.)

Wilde, Oscar – The Picture of Dorian Gray
Spellbound before his own portrait, Dorian Gray utters a fateful wish. In exchange for eternal youth he gives his soul, to be corrupted by the malign influence of his mentor, the aesthete and hedonist Lord Henry Wotton. Encouraged by Lord Henry to substitute pleasure for goodness and art for reality, Dorian tries to watch impassively as he brings misery and death to those who love him. But the picture is watching him, and, made hideous by the marks of sin, it confronts Dorian with the reflection of his fall from grace, the silent bearer of what is in effect a devastating moral judgement.

Novels that employ the Journey Archetype (suitable for Unit 1)

This is just a short list to help get your started - you don't have to choose a book from this list - in fact, I would prefer that you try to find your own titles for this unit and only refer to this list as a guideline or last resort.

Adams, Richard — Watership Down
Chronicles the adventures of a group of rabbits searching for a safe place to establish a new warren where they can live in peace.

Defoe, William — Robinson Crusoe
As the sole survivor of a shipwreck, an Englishman lives for thirty years on a deserted island.

Falkner, J. Meade — Moonfleet
In the small, quiet village of Moonfleet, hugging the rugged coast of the beautiful county of Dorset, a smuggling ring is doing a roaring trade. It’s the days of pirates and smugglers, thieves and vagabonds — and a young boy, John Trenchard, who finds himself unwittingly at the very centre of all the action. But after John gets too involved with the smugglers and ends up leaving England in the dead of night with a price on his young head, he has no way of knowing what adventures await him before he sees his beloved Moonfleet again.

White, T. H. — The Once and Future King
The story of the youth and reign of King Arthur, the establishment of the Round Table and the search for the Holy Grail are described in this story.

Atwood, Margaret — Cat’s Eye
Controversial painter Elaine Risley returns from Vancouver for a retrospective of her work. Here, in Toronto, the city of her youth, she confronts the submerged layers of her past — her unconventional family, her eccentric and brilliant brother, the self-righteous Mrs. Smeath, and the two men Elaine later came to love in diverse and sometimes disastrous ways. But it is the enigmatic Cordelia, once her tormentor, then her best friend, whose elusive yet powerful presence in her life Elaine finally comes to understand.

Card, Orson Scott — Ender's Game
A Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic--Ender's Game is the story of Ender Wiggin, a boy genetically engineered to be a superior military mind, and bred to win Earth's long war with an alien insectoid race by completely destroying their homeworld. Ender's story is continued in three other novels: Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind; each is worth reading.

Dickens, Charles — Great Expectations
Pip seizes the chance to rise above his humble origins in the Essex marshes when a mysterious benefactor leaves him a small sum of money.

Herbert, Frank — Dune
This Hugo and Nebula Award winner tells the sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a Byzantine interstellar empire. Paul Atreides moves with his family to the planet Arrakis and is forced into exile when his father's government is overthrown.

Plath, Sylvia — The Bell Jar
This extraordinary work chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful -- but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Esther through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior editor on a magazine, her increasingly strained relationships with her mother and the boy she dated in college, and eventually, devastatingly, into the madness itself. The reader is drawn into her breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies.

Salinger, J.D. — The Catcher in the Rye
This classic 1951 novel tells the tale of a defiant 16-year-old prep school student who runs away to New York City after getting expelled. Although Holden Caulfield is more cynical than a Gen-Xer, his pain and loneliness slowly escape from underneath his tough exterior.

Stoker, Bram — Dracula
A popular bestseller in Victorian England, Stoker’s hypnotic tale of the bloodthirsty Count Dracula, whose nocturnal atrocities are symbolic of an evil ages old yet forever new, endures as the quintessential story of suspense and horror. The unbridled lusts and desires, the diabolical cravings that Stoker dramatized with such mythical force, render Dracula resonant and unsettling a century later.

Tolkien, J.R.R. — The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Continue the saga introduced in The Hobbit and follow the adventures of Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry as they undertake the quest to destroy the one ring. (Usually published in three volumes - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.)

Wilde, Oscar — The Picture of Dorian Gray
Spellbound before his own portrait, Dorian Gray utters a fateful wish. In exchange for eternal youth he gives his soul, to be corrupted by the malign influence of his mentor, the aesthete and hedonist Lord Henry Wotton. Encouraged by Lord Henry to substitute pleasure for goodness and art for reality, Dorian tries to watch impassively as he brings misery and death to those who love him. But the picture is watching him, and, made hideous by the marks of sin, it confronts Dorian with the reflection of his fall from grace, the silent bearer of what is in effect a devastating moral judgment.

Golding, William — Lord of the Flies
This classic debut novel from William Golding follows a group of English schoolchildren stranded on a deserted island following the crash of their airplane. Readers are quickly drawn into the boys' increasingly brutal world as they become divided in a bitter power struggle that exposes the darkest elements of human nature. Masterfully written, this adventure novel imparts valuable lessons about how easily society can slide into barbarism.

Theroux, Paul — The Mosquito Coast
Abominating the cops, crooks, scavengers and funny-bunnies of the twentieth century, Allie Fox abandons civilization and takes his family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured, quixotic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness and terror.

Herman Hesse — Siddhartha
Following a young man's desperate search for meaning in his life, Siddhartha is a study in growing up. The hero first of all leaves his family to live a quiet life where he can reflect on the world around him. Quickly bored, he abandons his ideal and lives life as if he were dominated only by his rawest emotions. When he fathers a son he moves on again, in search of greater pleasures to satisfy his appetite. It's only when Hesse's character finds the source of life in a riverbed that he begins to heal and understand his quest for truth.

Thomas Harris — The Silence of the Lambs
Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the FBI Academy, is surprised to be summoned by Jack Crawford, chief of the Bureau's Behavioural Science section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter - Hannibal the Cannibal - who is kept under close watch in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Dr. Lecter is a former psychiatrist with a grisly history, unusual tastes, and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of The Silence of the Lambs an ingenious, masterfully written book and an unforgettable classic of suspense fiction.

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Grade 11

Atwood, Margaret – The Handmaid’s Tale
It is the world of the near future, and Offred is a Handmaid in the home of the Commander and his wife. She is allowed out once a day to the food market, she is not permitted to read, and she is hoping the Commander makes her pregnant, because she is only valued if her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she was an independent woman, had a job of her own, a husband and child. But all of that is gone now...everything has changed.

Bradbury, Ray – Fahrenheit 451
Nowadays firemen start fires. Fireman Guy Montag loves to rush to a fire and watch books burn up. Then he met a seventeen-year old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid, and a professor who told him of a future where people could think. And Guy Montag knew what he had to do.... First published in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 is a classic novel set in the future when books forbidden by a totalitarian regime are burned. The hero, a book burner, suddenly discovers that books are flesh and blood ideas that cry out silently when put to the torch.

Brontë, Charlotte – Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is a truly modern heroine. Orphaned as a child, Jane overcomes her station in life to become a governess to the children of Mr. Rochester. Jane’s intelligence and forthrightness impress her mysterious employer and they fall in love. But Mr. Rochester has a terrible secret that Jane gradually uncovers.

Brontë, Emily – Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is the only novel of Emily Brontë, who died a year after its publication, at the age of thirty. A brooding Yorkshire tale of a love that is stronger than death, it is also a fierce vision of metaphysical passion, in which heaven and hell, nature and society, are powerfully juxtaposed. Unique, mystical, with a timeless appeal, it has become a classic of English literature.

Burgess, Anthony – A Clockwork Orange
Told by the central character, Alex, this brilliant, hilarious, and disturbing novel creates an alarming futuristic vision of violence, high technology, and authoritarianism. Anthony Burgess’ 1963 masterpiece stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a classic of twentieth century post-industrial alienation, often shocking us into a thoughtful exploration of the meaning of free will and the conflict between good and evil.

Clarke, Arthur C. – Childhood’s End
Without warning, giant silver ships from deep space appear in the skies above every major city on Earth. Manned by the Overlords, in fifty years, they eliminate ignorance, disease, and poverty. Then this golden age ends--and then the age of Mankind begins....

Conrad, Joseph – Heart of Darkness
Around the turn of the nineteenth century, a man named Marlowe falls deep into the Belgian Congo in search of a renegade trader named Kurtz. Heart of Darkness tells the story of his journey, one marred by the inevitable brutality inherent in human nature, including his own.

Davies, Robertson – Fifth Business
The first instalment in Robertson Davies' widely praised Deptford Trilogy tells the extraordinary story of Dunstan Ramsay - a rational man who one day discovers the marvellous. (Also consider reading The Manticore and The World of Wonders.)

Golding, William – Lord of the Flies
This classic debut novel from William Golding follows a group of English schoolchildren stranded on a deserted island following the crash of their airplane. Readers are quickly drawn into the boys' increasingly brutal world as they become divided in a bitter power struggle that exposes the darkest elements of human nature. Masterfully written, this adventure novel imparts valuable lessons about how easily society can slide into barbarism.

Greene, Graham – Brighton Rock
In Brighton, England, a gang war is raging through the seaside city. The diabolical Pinkie is an isolated young gangster unmoved by human feeling. He commits crimes fearlessly, without any thoughts of retribution - but all that changes when Ida Arnold enters his world. Ida is one of his victim's avenging angels and takes great delight in bringing Pinkie to complete justice.

Heller, Joseph – Catch-22
Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep trying to kill him. Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to someone dangerously sane. It is a novel that lives and moves and grows with astonishing power and vitality -- a masterpiece of our time.

Hesse, Hermann – Steppenwolf
Steppenwolf is the profoundly memorable and affecting story of Harry Haller--an evocative portrayal of the wrenching conflict between the needs of the flesh and the spirit and a searing appraisal of Western civilization.

Keneally, Thomas – Schindler’s List
Schindler's List is a remarkable work of fiction based on the true story of German industrialist and war profiteer, Oskar Schindler, who, confronted with the horror of the extermination camps, gambled his life and fortune to rescue 1,300 Jews from the gas chambers.

Laurence, Margaret – The Stone Angel
The Stone Angel is a compelling journey seen through the eyes of a woman nearing the end of her life. At ninety, Hagar Shipley speaks movingly of the perils of growing old and reflects with bitterness, humor, and a painful awareness of her own frailties on the life she has led.

Miller, Walter M. – A Canticle for Leibowitz
In the Utah desert, Brother Francis of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: the relics of the martyr Isaac Leibowitz himself, including the blessed blueprint and the sacred shopping list. They may provide a bright ray of hope in a terrifying age of darkness, a time of ignorance and genetic monsters that are the unholy aftermath of the Flame Deluge. But as the spellbinding mystery at the core of this extraordinary novel unfolds, it is the search itself--for meaning, for truth, for love--that offers hope to a humanity teetering on the edge of an abyss.

Mistry, Rohinton – A Fine Balance
Set against the emergency measures imposed by Indira Gandhi in the mid-1970s, A Fine Balance follows the lives of four unlikely people as they struggle “to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.” Originally published in 1995, A Fine Balance is both a warning about the human terrors that await a society without compassion and a testimony to the enduring greatness of the human spirit.

Orwell, George – 1984
Satire on the possible horrors of a totalitarian regime in England in 1984.

Richler, Mordecai – Barney's Version
Barney Panofsky has always clung to two cherished beliefs: life is absurd and nobody truly ever understands anybody else. But when his sworn enemy publicly states that Barney is a wife abuser, an intellectual fraud and probably a murderer, he is driven to write his own memoirs.

Swift, Jonathan – Gulliver’s Travels
Swift’s masterful satire describes the astonishing voyages of one Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon, to surreal kingdoms inhabited by miniature people and giants, quack philosophers and scientists, horses endowed with reason and men who behave like beasts. Written with great wit and invention, Gulliver’s Travels is a savage parody on man and his institutions that has captivated readers for nearly three centuries.

Theroux, Paul – The Mosquito Coast
Abominating the cops, crooks, scavengers and funny-bunnies of the twentieth century, Allie Fox abandons civilization and takes his family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured, quixotic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness and terror.

Unsworth, Barry – Sacred Hunger
Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger is a violently evocative novel about slavery and the slave trade. William Kemp is sailing around the coast of Africa, collecting slaves in his last-ditch attempt to make his fortune. Along for the ride are his greedy son, Erasmus, and his nephew, a kind doctor with more compassion than both of the other men. When William commits suicide and the slaves get sick and start dying, the captain begins tossing the sick ones into the sea, until the rest of the crew turns on him. The ship continues on to Florida, the slaves are freed and everyone, except Erasmus, lives together happily as equals.

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Grade 12

Achebe, Chinua – Things Fall Apart
The 1958 novel chronicles the life of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo (Ibo) community, from the events leading up to his banishment from the community for accidentally killing a clansman, through the seven years of his exile, to his return. Addresses the problem of the intrusion in the 1890s of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society, and describes the simultaneous disintegration of its protagonist Okonkwo and of his village. The novel was praised for its intelligent and realistic treatment of tribal beliefs and of psychological disintegration coincident with social unraveling. Things Fall Apart helped create the Nigerian literary renaissance of the 1960s.

Margaret Atwood – The Blind Assassin
“Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.” These words are spoken by Iris Chase Griffen, married at eighteen to a wealthy industrialist but now poor and eighty-two. Iris recalls her far from exemplary life, and the events leading up to her sister’s death, gradually revealing the carefully guarded Chase family secrets. Among these is “The Blind Assassin,” a novel that earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following. Sexually explicit for its time, it was a pulp fantasy improvised by two unnamed lovers who meet secretly in rented rooms and seedy cafés. As this novel-within-a-novel twists and turns through love and jealousy, self-sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real narrative, as both move closer to war and catastrophe. Margaret Atwood’s Booker Prize-winning sensation combines elements of gothic drama, romantic suspense, and science fiction fantasy in a spellbinding tale.

Austen, Jane – Sense and Sensibility
The Dashwood sisters are very different from each other in appearance and temperament; Elinor's good sense and readiness to observe social forms contrast with Marianne's impulsive candour and warm, but excessive, sensibility. Both struggle to maintain their integrity and find happiness in the face of a competitive marriage market.

Christie, Agatha – Murder on the Orient Express
Hercule Poirot refuses a stranger's request to help and then within six hours is asked to find the stranger's killer.

Doyle, Roddy – The Commitments
A group of working class Irish kids who decide to make it their mission to bring American soul music to Dublin.

du Maurier, Daphne – Rebecca
At the great Cornwall estate of Manderley, Maxim de Winter and his frightened new wife try to live with the haunting legacy of Maxim's first wife, the beautiful and cold Rebecca, who died in a sailing accident.

Golden, Arthur – Memoirs of a Geisha
Meet Sayuri, one of Japan's most respected geishas, a woman who is both performer and courtesan, slave and goddess. From the tender age of nine, her parents sell her into the rigid world of becoming a geisha. She learns dance, how to be the perfect woman and how to deal with jealous rivals.

Hardy, Thomas – The Mayor of Casterbridge
The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a shocking and haunting scene: In a drunken rage, Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a visiting sailor at a local fair. When they return to Casterbridge some nineteen years later, Henchard—having gained power and success as the mayor—finds he cannot erase the past or the guilt that consumes him.

Irving, John – A Prayer for Owen Meany
In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys--best friends--are playing in a Little League baseball game in New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother. Owen Meany believes he didn't hit the ball by accident. He believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after 1953 is extraordinary and terrifying.

Kesey, Ken – One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome power of the Combine.

Kingsolver, Barbara – The Poisonwood Bible
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it--from garden seeds to Scripture--is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

Kipling, Rudyard – Kim
Kim is an orphan, living from hand to mouth in the teeming streets of Lahore. One day he meets a man quite unlike anything in his wide experience, a Tibetan lama on a quest. Kim’s life suddenly acquires meaning and purpose as he becomes the lama’s guide and protector--his chela. Other forces are at work as Kim is sucked into the intrigue of the Great Game and travels the Grand Trunk Road with his lama.

Lewis, C.S. – Out of the Silent Planet
Out of the Silent Planet introduces Dr. Ransom and chronicles his abduction by a megalomaniacal physicist and his accomplice via space ship to the planet Malacandra. The two men are in need of a human sacrifice and Dr. Ransom would seem to fit the bill. Dr. Ransom escapes upon landing, though, and goes on the run, a stranger in a land that is enchanting in its difference from Earth and instructive in its similarity.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia – Love in the Time of Cholera
Florentino Ariza has loved Fermina Daza almost all his life - there was even a time when she loved him too. But she's a practical, ambitious woman who marries a rich doctor instead of the kind-hearted poet. Instead of despairing, Florentino lives his life, loves many women and writes many poems: but he never forgets his true love. As real as those experiences are, his existence truly begins after more than 50 years have passed and Fermina's husband dies.

McCollough, Colleen – The Ladies of Missalonghi
Missy Wright feels doomed to a life of near poverty, as a plain, shy spinster in her 30s. Dreaming of romance and longing to be married, Missy, with rebellious courage, decides one day to take her fate into her own hands and with the help of the local librarian, begins her plot to catch and marry the mysterious newcomer John Smith. Ladies of Missalonghi is a compelling tale about a plain young woman who manages to shock her narrow world, as she consults romance novels for advice and transforms herself into an exciting enchantress.

Monsarrat, Nicholas – The Cruel Sea
A powerful novel of the North Atlantic in World War II, this is the story of the British ships Compass Rose and Saltash and of their desperate cat-and-mouse game with Nazi U-boats. First published to great acclaim in 1951, The Cruel Sea remains a classic novel of endurance and daring.

Ondaatje, Michael – In the Skin of a Lion
In the Skin of a Lion is a love story and an irresistible mystery set in the turbulent, muscular new world of Toronto in the 20s and 30s. Michael Ondaatje entwines adventure, romance and history, real and invented, enmeshing us in the lives of the immigrants who built the city and those who dreamed it into being: the politically powerful, the anarchists, bridge builders and tunnellers, a vanished millionaire and his mistress, a rescued nun and a thief who leads a charmed life. This is a haunting tale of passion, privilege and biting physical labour, of men and women moved by compassion and driven by the power of dreams -- sometimes even to murder.

Parker, Robert B. – Early Autumn
A bitter divorce is only the beginning. First the father hires thugs to kidnap his son. Then the mother hires Spenser to get the boy back. But as soon as Spenser senses the lay of the land, he decides to do some kidnapping of his own. With a contract out on his life, he heads for the Maine woods, determined to give a puny 15 year old a crash course in survival and to beat his dangerous opponents at their own brutal game.

Shute, Nevil – A Town Like Alice
A Town Like Alice tells of a young woman who miraculously survived a Japanese "death march" in World War II, and of an Australian soldier, also a prisoner of war, who offered to help her, even at the cost of his life.

Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse Five
Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

Wells, Rebecca – Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel
A mother-daughter relationship is negatively impacted by a New York Times article as a gang of friends conspire to make things right.

Wolfe, Thomas – Look Homeward, Angel
Thomas Wolfe's classic coming-of-age novel, first published in 1929, is a work of epic grandeur, evoking a time and place with extraordinary lyricism and precision. Set in Altamont, North Carolina, this semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of a restless young man who longs to escape his tumultuous family and his small town existence.

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Writer's Craft

King, Stephen - On Writing (Scribner)
On Writing is a fusion of autobiography and comments and suggestions on writing and publishing by an author who knows his business. His irreverent second preface will make any writer chuckle in empathy. And keep his solid advice to get a copy of The Elements of Style and Omit Needless Words. King rewards us with no-nonsense writing instruction, information from his early “too poor to have a phone” days, to his accident, and his inspiring recovery. Struggling writers will identify with King's Dickens-like living conditions before selling Carrie, and respect his wife Tabitha's encouragement throughout his ever-rising career. Enlightening and practical, is his inclusion near the end of On Writing of an example of his unedited work. A model of how he corrects his rough draft into his popular style that has helped him produce over 35 best-sellers follows that. Good practical advice. King even throws in a bibliography of suggested books to read.

London, Jack - Martin Eden (Airmont)
Martin Eden seems a loosely veiled autobiography of Jack London. London was the Stephen King of his day with successful novels like Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea Wolf bringing him great financial success. In Martin Eden, the protagonist is a passionate writer shown surmounting the endless trials endured on the way to publication. These include: difficulty of gaining respect--even from those dearest, difficulty of publishing, and the difficulty of deciding where his art itself would go when faced with the harsh business world. Don't follow Eden's solution to the writing life, but his struggles along the way to publishing will present struggling writers with a strong dose of déjà vu.

Heller, Joseph - Portrait of an Artist (Simon & Shuster)
The writer bought this book in the discard bin of my local bookstore. That supports some of the statements made by the recently deceased Joseph Heller, in the guise of his protagonist, Eugene Pota about the public's taste. Through Pota, Heller admits frustration at never presenting his public with a volume they held to be of the same high caliber as his first masterpiece: Catch 22. That war satire brought him fame and respect, but left him with the writer’s equivalent of “what do you do after you’ve scaled Everest?” Heller’s reports on the lives of other great novelists are a soul-searching journey for aspiring writers who have ever wondered why they write. And Pota’s countless false starts at the beginning his novel reveal Heller’s own genius at work.

Bradbury, Ray - Zen in the Art of Writing (Bantam)
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury exposes the writer and reader to the inner workings of one of the fines writing minds alive today. A man who makes a metaphor or simile purr like a contented cat. A man who makes you jealous that he sculpted the phrase, “Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep” and you did not. Ray Bradbury’s suggestion for inspiration: (the reading of poetry) is sound advice for releasing the creative flow. And take his advice on how to “Keep and Feed a Muse.” How can you go wrong listening to writing instruction from the man who gave us Dandelion Wine, Fahrenheit 451, and Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Orson Scott Card - Characters & Viewpoint
What attracts readers to a fictional character or, alternatively, makes them loathe another? Award-winning sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card suggests ways to create real characters that will provoke emotional responses from your readership in Characters & Viewpoint. The author also advises you on how to ensure your characters are appropriate to the storyline and don’t overpower or undermine your novels, plays, short stories and scripts.

Other major works and authors that aspiring writers should read:

The Bible – focus on these books first: Genesis, Exodus, Samuel I & II, Kings I & II, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Daniel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, Corinthians I & II, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians I & II, Timothy 1 & 2, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation

William Shakespeare – at least 10 plays (3 history, 3 comedy, 4 tragedy) if not his complete works

Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince

Christopher Marlowe - Dr. Faustus, Tamburlaine, Edward the Second, and The Jew of Malta (if not his complete works, as well)

Greek and Roman mythology.

Sophocles - Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone

Homer - The Iliad and The Odyssey

Ovid – Metamorphosis

Beowolf - any modern translation will do

Chaucer - The Cantebury Tales

Darwin - Origin of Species

Marx - The Communist Manifesto

Edward Gibbon - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Read at least one Restoration Drama.

Read at least one Gothic Novel - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Monk by Matthew Lewis, Dracula by Bram Stoker, etc.

Michel de Montaigne - a French writer attributed with inventing the personal essay.

Hornung, E.W. – Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman
Raffles has been the inspiration for numerous fictional characters, including James Bond. Like Bond, Raffles is handsome and debonaire, with refined tastes, yet is swift, cunning, and utterly ruthless when the need arises. And just as Bond is a master of the gaming tables, so Raffles is undeniably "one of the best cricket players in the world." While Bond is on the side of law and order, Raffles makes his living by outwitting the law pulling off some of the most daring burglaries imaginable.

Consider reading major works by these authors as well:

Dostoevsky	Tolstoy	Shaw
Virginia Wolf	James Joyce	Nabakov
Faulkner	Oscar Wilde	Hawthorne
Whitman	Joseph Conrad	Jane Austen
Ondaatje	Atwood	Hemmingway
François Rabelais	Ezra Pound	Melville
Alexandre Dumas	All the Brontës	Victor Hugo
William Forrester

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Poetry

Dante, Petrarch, Milton, Donne, Pope, Dryden, Blake, Ben Johnson, Shelley, Yeats, Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Tennyson, Keats, T.S. Eliot, E.E. Cummings, Charles Bukowski, Emily Dickenson, Shakespeare (again) & every other piece of poetry you can get your hands on.

Get started with these...

T.S. Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot - Preludes
E.E. Cummings - Since Feeling Is First
Leonard Cohen - I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries
Leonard Cohen - Famous Blue Raincoat
Alfred Tennyson - Ulysses
Matthew Arnold - Dover Beach
Dennis Lee - 400: Coming Home
W.H. Auden - Musée des Beaux Arts
Paul Vermeersch - The Day Dogs Die
F.R. Scott - A Grain of Rice
Charles Bukowski - upon phoning an x-wife not seen for 20 years
Charles Bukowski - Poetry Readings
Michael Holmes - Got No Flag At All
Mark Doty - Difference
Jewel Kilcher - Little Sister

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Non-Fiction

Marcus Buckingham
What would happen if men and women spent more that 75% of each day on the job using their strongest skills and engaged in their favorite tasks, basically doing exactly what they wanted to do? According to Marcus Buckingham (who spent years interviewing thousands of employees at every career stage and who is widely considered one of the world’s leading authorities on employee productivity and the practices of leading and managing), companies that focus on cultivating employees’ strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success. If such a theory sounds revolutionary, that’s because it is. Marcus Buckingham calls it the “strengths revolution.”

I have had the pleasure to hear Marcus Buckingham speak on two separate occasions now and I consider his books "must-reads" if you want to learn more about your strengths and how you can leverage them to ensure success.

Buckingham's four best-selling books are: First, Break All the Rules (coauthored with Curt Coffman, Simon & Schuster, 1999); Now, Discover Your Strengths (coauthored with Donald O. Clifton, The Free Press, 2001); The One Thing You Need to Know (The Free Press, 2005) and Go Put Your Strengths To Work (The Free Press, 2007).

Michel de Montaigne
Humanist, skeptic, acute observer of himself and others, Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) was the first to use the term "essay" to refer to the form he pioneered and he has remained one of its most famous practitioners. He reflected on the great themes of existence in his masterly and engaging writings, his subjects ranging from proper conversation and good reading, to the raising of children and the endurance of pain, from solitude, destiny, time and custom, to truth, consciousness, and death. Having stood the test of time, his essays continue to influence writers nearly five hundred years later.

Edward Gibbon - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Considered by many to be the most impressive work of history in all of, well, history, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire takes a definitive look at the most infamous dynasty ever to rule the west. Edward Gibbon’s style and research makes every event captivating, this combined with his all-knowing perspective makes it a truly grand work of history.

Joseph Gibaldi - MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (6th edition)
The MLA Handbook is published by the Modern Language Association, the authority on MLA documentation style. Widely adopted in high schools, colleges, and publishing houses, the MLA Handbook treats every aspect of research writing, from selecting a topic to submitting the completed paper. The expanded, revised, and redesigned sixth edition of the Handbook is a complete, up-to-date guide to documentation style and online research.

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Grade 9	Writer's Craft
Grade 10	Poetry
Grade 11	Non-Fiction
Grade 12	My Favourite Reads

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