Independent Reading- 11 th

1. Independent Reading- 11th

2. Requirements: • Book selections by next class • Have a copy of the book by 3/12 (odd) 3/13 (even) & bring it to class with you! • Have at least 10 entries in your independent reading log (use the sentence starters and don’t repeat them) • Reading logs due 4/12 (odd) and 4/13 (even)

3. Angela’s Ashes“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while…” So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank’s mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. The story is not all doom and gloom, however; Angela’s Ashes,is imbued on every page with Frank McCourt’s astounding humor and compassion.

4. The Color Purple“I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?)…” The Color Purple is the story of two sisters—one a missionary to Africa and the other, Celie, a child wife living in the South—who remain loyal to one another across time, distance, and silence. Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, this classic of American literature is rich with passion, pain, inspiration, and an indomitable love of life.

5. Slaughterhouse- Five"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time…" Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

6. The Bell Jar“Wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air…” Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.

7. The Poisonwood Bible“I am the unmissionary, as Adah would say, beginning every day on my knees asking to be converted…” 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.

8. The Water is Wide“The people of the island have changed very little since the Emancipation Proclamation. Indeed, many of them have never heard of this proclamation…” Yamacrawisland is nearly deserted, haunting, beautiful. Across a slip of ocean lies South Carolina. But for the handful of families on the island, America is a world away. For years the people here lived proudly from the sea, but now its waters are not safe. They must learn a new way of life. But they will learn nothing without someone to teach them; they need a teacher– Pat Conroy.