<p>Ender's Game was teh pwn.</p>
<p>@almostmidnight: you mean like the 75-page speech? ;)</p>
<p>i can't think of the author, but the book Repeat After Me was funny</p>
<p>Bowdoin has each incoming freshman class to read a common book over the summer to discuss in small groups during orientation. The book for this year is The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. Last year it was Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder.</p>
<p>I'm also reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.</p>
<p>And Here's a list of Top 100 Books by the BBC (<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml)%5B/url%5D">http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml)</a>. Plenty of choices.</p>
<p>"The Sound and The Fury- by William Faulkner </p>
<p>Best of luck!"</p>
<p>Ha, yeah.... reading that book during the school year was NOT a good idea. My workload meant that I got to read ~5 pages every two weeks. I'd then have to repeat parts over and over to refresh my memory.... basically, I barely got through the second part. I'm going to start over completely this summer and I imagine that it will be a lot easier, haha.</p>
<p>"1984 > Brave New World." i disagree with this. i thought brave new world was WAY more complicated and powerful than 1984. Huxley was a true Englishman of background of famous scientists...who was Orwell?? a soldier in Burma...</p>
<p>someone mentioned Pride and Prejudice...tell me, do u like that book because of the way it is written or the message and theme ?? i never read jane austen books so u tell me.</p>
<p>firstly i will name the works that only a VERY advanced student could [barely] handle:</p>
<p>Paradise Lost : this epic poem is the reason why England is respected for it compares to Homer's or Virgil's works. it is EXTREMELY difficult to understand both in language (more than shakespeare) and </p>
<p>The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire this is like twice the length of the Bible. </p>
<p>Iliad</p>
<p>for moderately advanced student:</p>
<p>Shakespeare, Locke, Plato, Plotinus etc.</p>
<p>and for hopelessly behind: Garfield (i read em all), harry potter.</p>
<p>The Bunny suicides managed to get me through the first two years of college. I then got bored, needed some new reading material, and bam, there is The Return of the Bunny suicides. For advanced readers with deep, deep thoughts, I might recommend Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy.</p>
<p>--Totally agree with
Ender's Game (and Ender's Shadow. And all of Enderverse. [/huge Enderverse fan), Hitchhicker's Guide series
His Dark Materials
1984 (and Brave New World too, though I did not like it as much)
Any Chuck Palahniuk (esp. Fight Club and Choke, his best, IMO)
Vonnegut
Toni Morrison </p>
<p>--If you like/a curious about sci-fi at all, also check out
Philip K. Dick (I loved A Scanner Darkly)
Isaac Asimov (his robot stories are my favorites, though the Foundation series is obviously a classic)
The Dune Series
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller (one of my all time favorite books. Utterly fantastic).<br>
The Left Hand of Darkness </p>
<p>--For some good recent fiction:
Three Junes, by Julia Glass
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
The Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst</p>
<p>--Other random suggestions
Robertson Davies is one of the most absolutely underappreciated authors out there. Check out anything he wrote, but esp. The Deptford Trilogy (Fifth Business, The Manticore, World of Wonders. Despite the titles, they are not fantasy).
Neil Gaiman is fun, as is Terry Pratchett. The book they wrote together, Good Omens, is utterly fabulous and a quick read, definitely check it out.
Nabokov is wonderful. If you haven't read it, Lolita is a must-read. For something more challenging/unique, check out Pale Fire
End of the Road, John Barth. I just read it this year, and loved it</p>
<p>The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is a great book that you should read.</p>
<p>I'm reading the one book I have to for college and the rest?? Fluff/beach books. :) Fourth Comings is coming out in August!! WHOO!</p>
<p>if you are looking for prep books, there is an AP canon that your english teacher might have a copy of/be able to make recommendations for you.</p>
<p>if you just like to read i highly suggest chuck klosterman, a decade of curious people and dangerous ideas. AMAZING. if anyone knows another author like klosterman let me know</p>
<p>i've been reading some david sedaris short stories-- they're a really fast read, and i love his style.
i also absolutely loved rilke's "letters to a young poet" when i read it this summer-- it's short, but there's a LOT to it.</p>
<p>I second Life of Pi. Its an awesome book.</p>
<p>If you read one work of literature in your life it should be Dante's Divine comedies.</p>
<p>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams
The Alchemist- Paolo Coelho
Interpreter of Maladies-Jhumpa Lahiri
Rebecca- Daphne DuMaurier
Bird by Bird- Anne Lamott</p>
<p>This is my own to-read list (lots of indian and latin american literature. current interest).
Veronika Decides To Die- Paolo Coelho
Into the Wild
Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar
Maximum City:Bombay Lost and Found
The Man in The High Castle-Philip K. Dick
I am not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer Purcell
Freak Show by James st James
Wild Ducks Flying backwards by Tom Robbins
Collapse by Jared Diamond
Gun, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Love in the Time of Cholera-Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Unbearable Lightness of Being-Milan Kundera
Ignorance- Milan Kundera
If On a Winter's Night a Traveller, Invisible Cities- Italo Calvino
Pale Fire
Steppenwolfe, Narcissus and Goldmun -Herman Hesse
Soul Mountain- Gao Xingjian
Blood of the Sun Trilogy-Noureddin Farah
The Kiss of the Spider Woman
Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair- Pablo Neruda
A Heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Midnight's Children- Salman Rushdie
Brick Lane- Monica Ali
God of Small Things
Corelli's Mandolin</p>
<p>Enjoy</p>
<p>Read stuff for <em>pleasure</em> -- NOT academics...</p>
<p>Read things you like now, because once college hits, reading for pleasure tends to stop pretty quickly when you have 200 pages of textbook reading to do every week.... and it won't really resume, except possibly for a few breaks, until 4 years later when, God willing, you graduate.</p>
<p>"The Game" by Neil Strauss.</p>
<p>Thank me later.</p>
<p>Elegant Universe. Brian Greene </p>
<p>This book changed my view of the world. Especially since I'm not a theoretical physicist. </p>
<p>Another book that I would recommend is Crime and Punishment by Foydor Doestoevsky.</p>
<p>Strunk and White. Know it, love it.</p>