<p>Cloud Atlas by David Michell
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Industry of Souls by Martin Booth
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Imagining Argentina by Lawrence Thornton
July's People by Nadine Gordimer</p>
<p>anything by Charles Dickens</p>
<p>I just finished reading Undaunted Courage about the Lewis & Clark expedition and We Die Alone, an amazing WW II saga set in Norway. Both were incredible stories of survival and endurance. i read them while on a cushy vacation in Hawaii, an odd juxtaposition.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the great suggestions! I am camping with my D and three of her girlfriends/AP classmates in a couple of weeks. They have to bring "The DaVinci Code" to read (AP requirement?? go figure). I'll bring "A Hope in the Unseen" and "Plato and a Platypus...". I got the latter in a deal with Amazon with a book called "The Supremes Greatest Hits"..not about Diana Ross and the girls, but about the most influential Supreme Court decisions, that looked interesting too!</p>
<p>On DS1's list...The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns (both by Khaled Hosseini), Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom, Michael Spivak's Calculus. HP7, of course, plus a bunch of scifi. Would like him to take a shot at Reading Lolita in Tehran -- he read about half the books discussed in the novel in AP Comp this past year, and I think he would find the perspectives quite different and challenging from his own.</p>
<p>I second Mountains Beyond Mountains. The subject, Dr. Paul Farmer, is one of the most fascinating and inspirational people I've ever read about. He is a brilliant man who grew up in poverty, living for some time in the family car, and who went to Harvard Medical School, specializing in infectious diseases. He has devoted himself to the poorest of the poor, rural people in Haiti. He spends about 2/3 of the year working in the clinic there that is funded by his foundation, and 1/3 of the year on the staff of a Harvard teaching hospital, living like a monk, and donating all of his salary beyond what is needed to cover his minimal living expenses to his foundation.</p>
<p>But he does not just quietly serve the poor. He is actively trying to bring about radical change in the way health care, and other resources, are distributed. And he does not mince words. I have been intending to read the books he's written (e.g., Pathologies of Power) since reading MBM.</p>
<p>just saw that Paul Farmer was the commencement speaker at Emory. They have an extremely interesting group of honorary degree recipients:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.emory.edu/COMMENCEMENT/hdks.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.emory.edu/COMMENCEMENT/hdks.html</a></p>
<p>His address:</p>
<p>as said previously (i totally agree) when it comes to voice (essays), and enjoying what you're reading....</p>
<p>The Curious INcident of the Dog in the NIghttime</p>
<p>i read this in one day, its really short. perhaps you can add it on after you read a longer, more reputable book. : )</p>
<p>A departure from the usual is to encourage kids to read well-written biographies about people in history, so that it comes alive. </p>
<p>For History lovers, "1776" or Walter Isaacson's "Benjamin Franklin" come to mind. This is to offset your school district's download of American history curriculum. With the new focus on data base questions and reading from primary sources, plus the textbook, I think some students miss out on wonderful writing style to tell the history. There's never enough time. </p>
<p>I think the same might be said about well-written books about science, but I don't know a title to suggest. </p>
<p>I'm glad someone else had the courage to suggest Elie Wiesel's "Night." There's a new translation by his wife. When I brought it to my son, I intrigued him by saying it was the first very well-written first-person account of the Holocaust. He could not imagine a time when people were unable to describe this in words. It's very short and powerful; starts at around age 14 and up into the late teens. "Without language there is no thought..." so it follows that Wiesel, by putting language around his personal experience, first opened up the world's ability to think about what had just happened.
Although he's written for the rest of his life, he says that's his most important book, although at the time he could not believe anybody would be interested (that's in the introduction to the new translation). </p>
<p>It made me smile to hear "War and Peace" recommended. My Mom carried that with her into the hospital 3 times when birthing her 3 different children, and never got to read a page. (What was she thinking??). It did impress the doctors as it sat by her bedside.</p>
<p>Despite my heavy thoughts above, I also appreciated the poster who encouraged light, pleasurable reading. It's summer! Go by what will inspire YOUR kid to read!!</p>
<p>"On Writing the College Application Essay", by Harold Bauld.</p>
<p>"For Whom the Bell Tolls"</p>
<p>Fiction: Naguib Mahfouz's "Palace Walk," the first in the Cairo Trilogy, for a view of colonialism in the Middle East. Highly engaging and entertaining as well as enlightening.</p>
<p>Nonfiction: "This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War" by James McPherson. A collection of even-handed, elegant, and thoughtful essays (and book reviews) on all the thornier issues by the preeminent scholar/historian on the subject.</p>
<p>Annie Feedmans Fabulous Traveling Funeral by Kris Radish reiterates the importance of remembering it is the journey not the destination that calls our souls to live, laugh and love.</p>
<p>The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.</p>
<p>Personal Favourites:
Stand Before Your God: An American Schoolboy in England (extrodinary and beautiful perception's of a man's time in English boarding schools)
Walking on Water (anyone who has attended an American public school or is sending their child to one must read this)
Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys (I suppose a little odd for a kid, but I read it in seventh grade and loved it)
The Genius Factory
Harry Potter
Step By Wicked Step (though best appreciated if your parents are divorced. If they are, there isn't a better book in the world. If not, it's still good.)
A Child Called It
The His Dark Materials Triology
1984 and/or Animal Farm
<em>The Superior Person's Book of Words</em>
(a trilogy full of excellent and amusing words that express nearly everything that you thought there wasn't a word for but should be. It's so happy that it turns out there are those precise words. For example: defenestration: the act of throwing someone or something of of a window. A word that is neologism's paradigm and justification. If the word were not needed to describe the act, the act would need to be performed to jusitify the word. A very nice picture, too.)
The View From Saturday
Chew on This/Fast Food Nation
Stupid White Men/Dude, Where's My Country (whatever your politics, these books are still useful)
I saved the most important for last: THE COMPLETE CALVIN AND HOBBES Shakespare, J.K. Rowling, Voltaire, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carrol, George Orewell, Marcel Proust, even Paul Watkins, my favourite author--I'm sorry, they have nothing, nothing, on Bill Waterson.</p>
<p>Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral- vote 2</p>
<p>Another of Kris' books, Dancing Naked at the Break of Dawn, also a great woman lit (as opposed to chick lit) book.</p>