Wuthering Heights by Charlette Bronte

A difficult but powerful novel about two people who fall in love. Their love is so intense that it burns them and everyone else around them to the ground. I think the central question you must answer in this novel is "Can true love be destructive?"

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was a "Beat Generation" writer. He was a part of the generation of young people in the 50s (before the Hippy movement) who hitchhiked around the country, wrote poetry, climbed mountains, danced all night (and partied pretty hard.) Kerouac wrote the book in just a few days and writes in a weird, stream-of-consciousness style. It's about young people thirsting for adventure. Highly recommend.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau lived by himself in the woods for two years and kept a journal. He's from the mid-1800s and wordy, but he offers a lot of reflection and thought-provoking ideas for you to chew on. Also, it's a great text to use for AP Lang essays!

The Gift by Hafiz

This is a book of poetry written by a Sufi mystic poet. (Sufists are Muslim). It's a modern translation of these old poems that are religiously-themed, but is funny, playful, and full of deep ideas and joy. If you are religious, despite your tradition, you would get a lot out of this. The poems are short and simple. Here's one of my favorites:

God
and I have become
like two giant fat people living
in a tiny
boat.

We
keep bumping into
each other
and laughing

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

This is a Victorian novel. Hardy is a tough, dense writer, but he's worth it. The story is about a guy having everything going for him. Then he meets a girl who seduces him and gets pregnant. He has to abandon his dreams now that he has a family. It ends incredibly tragically. I read this in AP Lit my senior year, and it hit hard. A great novel to attempt to improve your vocabulary and challenge yourself as a reader.

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

This is one of the best-selling books in the history of the world. It is Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Emporer's, personal journal. If you are into Stoic philosophy, you'll really like this.

Essays by Wendell Berry

We've read a few of these in class. Wendell Berry is one of my personal heroes. He's also a poet. He's all about simple living, fulfilling work, and living in deep connection with the land and one's community. These are also good essays to use to analyze rhetoric in preparation for AP Lang.

Watchmen by Alan Moore

This graphic novel, while quite mature, is insane. It seems like it's about superheroes, but it's not. It's about the darkness of man and our response to that darkness. I'm not a big graphic novel guy, but this one kept me thinking for days.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

This was the debut novel of Jeffrey Eugenides. His second novel won the Pulitzer. It's a tragic, lyrically novel with amazing sentences and passages that will keep a pen in your hand annotating. Below is the summary from Amazon:

First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicides announced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters--beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys--commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family's fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death. Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time. ...The Virgin Suicides is a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life.

More to come...