<p>The World is Flat by Friedman.</p>
<p>A Fool's Errand, A. Tourge
The Orestia, Aeschylus
Native Son, R. Wright
Free to Choose, M. Friedman</p>
<p>Atlas Shrugged</p>
<p>It's summer, take a little time off to relax before a busy year of school. Read something funny (my son loved Dave Barry), or buy something that looks interesting on the best-seller list. Or if you have a favorite author, get a book of theirs that you have not yet read.</p>
<p>Every once in a while I read a book that stays with me, but I find the books I like best are ones that help me escape, rather than books that inspire. That is just the way I am, but it does make it easy for me to find a book to read!</p>
<p>This might not be of much use for an essay, but maybe it will help clear the mind before you do get started on it.</p>
<p>i second the Kite Runner, I just finished it and it was an excellent read!</p>
<p>ATLAS SHRUGGED!!!
By Ayn Rand(Russian refugee) in the 1940s-ish.
It is political commentary written in the form of a novel set in the US. It changed my life when I read it just out of college, have read it four more times. Routinely listed as second only to the Bible as a book that impacted someone's life. There is an essay contest, I believe, that seniors can do after reading it. Very prophetic and pertinent to today's government and economy.</p>
<p>Travels with Charlie
by John Steinbeck
Great read by a great american author about traveling our great country with his dog.</p>
<p>1984 by George Orwell.</p>
<p>It's an absolutely brilliant book. Everything from the writing style to the deeper meaning behind the story is superbly well done. It makes you think, yet at the same time is accessible for the reader.</p>
<p>I'll trot out some of my not-quite-on-the-beaten-path perennials:</p>
<p>Dai Sijie, Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress. A great story, with interesting autobiographical detail about being a smart kid from a "bad" (i.e., professional) class background during the Cultural Revolution, but most of all a sophisticated lesson in real, non-PC multiculturalism. Deepened for me recently by padad's lesson on its resonances with classical Chinese poetry as well as big-time 19th Century novels. And all in fewer than 250 pages.</p>
<p>Mario Vargas Llosa, The War Of The End Of The World. To my mind, the greatest 19th Century historical novel written in the 20th Century. It made me want to read War And Peace, and made me disappointed that the Tolstoy seemed thin by comparison. This is a literary novel for people who care about the real world more than literature, and it remains relevant now that the whole world, not just South America, is confronting idealistic, millenarian terrorism. Added tang: This is one of the most profoundly anti-politics novels ever; political systems are corrupt, even when the participants are intelligent and well-meaning. No politician could ever write this. Yet six years later the author came within a whisker of getting elected president of his country (in which he had hardly lived as an adult). Warning: the last 100 pages or so are extremely violent and upsetting.</p>
<p>Alfredo Bryce Echenique, A World For Julius. A tragi-comic masterpiece about the education of a smart, sensitive, upper-class little boy in late-50s Peru. For some reason, Bryce was left basically untranslated in the Latin American lit Boom; this is the only one of his dozen or so books to come out in English. At his best -- and this is his best -- he is the equal or superior of Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Fuentes, Donoso, or any of the other Boom-ers. And there's not even a hint of magical realism to it.</p>
<p>William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow. As fiction editor of the New Yorker for decades, Maxwell nurtured and satisfied people's taste for stories based on closely observed personal experience. Then, in his mid-70s, he published his first novel in over 40 years to show how it should be done. Really short -- it shouldn't take more than three hours of anyone's time -- and really, really great. It would have made a wonderful college application essay -- how much can you wring out of the mundane details of a boy's life?</p>
<p>Nancy Willard, Things Invisible To See. The only adult novel by an award-winning children's poet. This one does have magical realism -- a lot of it. It goes in and out of print, but I think there's a paperback edition out now. We used to buy every copy we could find to give as gifts, and we don't know anyone who didn't love it. It's about baseball, and Ann Arbor, and a teenage love affair where the girl is wheelchair bound. And Hermann Goering, and Death.</p>
<p>Any of the Dirk Pitt (America's version of James Bond) novels by Clive Cussler, one of America's GREATEST contemporary FUN storytellers...</p>
<p>This is a terrific read for boys, especially... full of real-world history warped to the present day with high-tech treasure hunting, evil, world-destroying villans with a bit of sci-fi thrown in... From NUMA to NASA. From polar-shift to tidal waves. </p>
<p>A bit of trivia... Clive becomes a character in each novel... often as a handyman, janitor, mechanic or someone in a similar minor part -- look out for his name to be slipped in somewhere.</p>
<p>Also, Clive is a true modern-day treasure hunter, finding the world's most valuable undersea pirate treasures.</p>
<p>Hey, I should get paid a royalty for this.</p>
<p>war and peace was so hard to read...ugh i read it b4 freshman year of hs..never got it really got it enough to write a book report though..theres a barnes and nobles classics sale going on buy 2 get one free there all the classics printed by B+N in soft covers...i got the deal</p>
<p>Re: using books to impress admissions officers. A generation ago, I got accepted to Occidental with somewhat mediocre grades (compared to friends that got accepted.) I was convinced that my hook was in my answer to the question: who are your favorite authors? I put "Hemingway, Tolkien, and Dr. Suess."</p>
<p>I would suggest, "Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes" by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
[quote]
Book Description
Here’s a lively, hilarious, not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical traditions, schools, concepts, and thinkers. It’s Philosophy 101 for everyone who knows not to take all this heavy stuff too seriously. Some of the Big Ideas are Existentialism (what do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?), Philosophy of Language (how to express what it’s like being stranded on a desert island with Halle Berry), Feminist Philosophy (why, in the end, a man is always a man), and much more. Finally—it all makes sense!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My son has enjoyed all of Bill Bryson's books, particularly "A Walk in the Woods" and "A Short History of Nearly Everything".</p>
<p>I would suggest reading something really long because one normally doesn't have enough time to read such things during the school year.</p>
<p>Once and Future King by White</p>
<p>Slaughterhouse Five or other books by Vonnegut</p>
<p>Night Ellie Weisel</p>
<p>Books by Michael Moore and Al Franken</p>
<p>Bertrand Russell (for those interested in philosophy)</p>
<p>For Girls: Alexandria Quartet
Age of Innocence</p>
<p>Oh, I love this thread. For myself, not for my kids:-)
I second Lolita, One Hundred Years of Solitude(I would love to be able to read it in original),The Kiter Runner(there is a new book out there by the same author) for the more sophisticated read. But please red Brothers Karamazov - the best work by far by Dostoyewski.
For a lighter read - I Am A Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson (again). I was new to american culture many years ago and finding this book made me feel like I was not alone;-)</p>
<p>And every girl should read Anne of Green Gables - the whole series. Read it,not just watch the movies :-)</p>
<p>The Quincunx by Charles Palliser</p>
<p>Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (or Snowcrash if you haven't read that yet)</p>
<p>Collapse or Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond</p>
<p>Wonderful Life by Stephen J Gould (but NOT The Mismeasure of Man)</p>
<p>The History of the English Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill</p>
<p>On Liberty by John Stuart Mill</p>
<p>The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (House is good, too)</p>
<p>What a great thread! I see I have my summer reading cut out for me.</p>
<p>I just read in one sitting of about 3 hours THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST by Mohsin Hamid and found it very interesting.</p>