The American Library Association’s



College Prep. Reading Students,

The following pages contain lists of books which are acceptable for College Prep. Reading. In addition to the books on these lists, I will probably approve any other novel written by the authors listed here.

The books that are highlighted in yellow are books that I have read, found enjoyable, and would recommend to you. Of course, many of the other books are also wonderful, but I just have not read them.

-Mr. Hardebeck

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The American Library Association’s

list of outstanding books for college-bound students

Agee, James. A Death in the Family. 1957.

The enchanted childhood summer of 1915 suddenly becomes a baffling experience for Rufus Follet when his father dies.

Allison, Dorothy. Bastard Out of Carolina. 1992.

Bone confronts poverty, the troubled marriage of her mother and stepfather, and the stigma of being considered "white trash" as she comes of age in South Carolina.

Alvarez, Julia. In the Time of Butterflies. 1994.

Dede, the only survivor of the four Mirabel sisters, code named Mariposas or butterflies, reveals their role in the liberation of the Dominican Republic from the dictator Trujillo.

Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. 1972.

Ultima, a wise old mystic, helps a young Hispanic boy resolve personal dilemmas caused by the differing backgrounds and aspirations of his parents and society.

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. 1986.

In Gilead, a Christian fundamentalist dystopia, fertile lower-class women serve as birth-mothers for the upper class.

Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Sower. 1993.

Lauren Olamina, who suffers from a hereditary trait called "hyperempathy" that causes her to feel others' pain physically, journeys north along the dangerous highways of twentieth-first century California.

Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game. 1985.

In a world decimated by alien attacks, the government trains young geniuses like Ender Wiggin in military strategy with increasingly complex computer games.

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. 1899.

Edna Pontellier, an unhappy wife and mother, discovers new qualities in herself when she visits Grand Isle, a resort for the Creole elite of New Orleans.

Cisneros, Sandra. The House On Mango Street. 1991.

In short, poetic stories, Esperanza describes life in a low-income, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. 1866.

A sensitive intellectual is driven by poverty to believe himself exempt from moral law.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. 1952.

A young African American seeking identity during his high school and college days, and later in New York's Harlem, relates his terrifying experiences.

Emecheta, Buchi. Bride Price. 1976.

Aku-nna, a very young Ibo girl, and Chike, her teacher, fall in love despite tribal custom forbidding their romance.

Faulkner, William. The Bear. 1931.

Ike McCaslin's hunting trips for the legendary bear, Old Ben, are played out against opposing ideas of corruption and innocence.

Frazier, Charles. Cold Mountain. 1997.

Inman, a wounded Civil War soldier, endures the elements, The Guard, and his own weakness and infirmity to return to his sweetheart, Ada, who is fighting her own battle to survive while farming the mountainous North Carolina terrain.

Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying. 1993.

When Jefferson's attorney states, "I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this," disillusioned teacher Grant Wiggins is sent into the penitentiary to help this slow learner gain a sense of dignity and self-esteem before his execution.

Gardner, John. Grendel. 1971.

In a unique interpretation of the Beowulf legend, the monster Grendel relates his struggle to understand the ugliness in himself and mankind in the brutal world of fourteenth-century Denmark.

Gibbons, Kaye. Ellen Foster. 1987.

Casting an unflinching yet humorous eye on her situation, eleven-year-old Ellen survives her mother's death, an abusive father, and uncaring relatives to find for herself a loving home and a new mama.

Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. 1961.

In this satirical novel, Captain Yossarian confronts the hypocrisy of war and bureaucracy as he frantically attempts to survive.

Hemingway, Ernest. Farewell to Arms. 1929.

World War I is the setting for this love story of an English nurse and a wounded American ambulance officer.

Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha. 1951.

Emerging from a kaleidoscope of experiences and tasted pleasures, Siddhartha transcends to a state of peace and mystic holiness in this strangely simple story.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. 1932.

In a chilling vision of the future, babies are produced in bottles and exist in a mechanized world without soul.

Keneally, Thomas. Schindler's List. 1982.

Oskar Schindler, a rich factory owner, risks his life and spends his personal fortune to save Jews listed as his workers during World War II.

King, Laurie R. The Beekeeper's Apprentice, or, on the Segregation of the Queen. 1994.

Retired Sherlock Holmes meets his intellectual match in 15-year-old Mary Russell, who challenges him to investigate yet another case.

Kosinski, Jerzy. Painted Bird. 1965.

An abandoned dark-haired child wanders alone through isolated villages of Eastern Europe in World War II.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. 1960.

A young girl tells of life in a small Alabama town in the 1930s and her father's defense in court of an African American accused of raping a white woman.

LeGuin, Ursula. The Left Hand of Darkness. 1969.

First envoy to the technologically primitive world of Winter, Al must deal with a hostile climate; a suspicious, bickering government; and his own conventional sexual mores.

McCullers, Carson. The Member of the Wedding. 1946.

A young Southern girl is determined to be the third party on a honeymoon, despite all advice.

McKinley, Robin. Beauty. 1978.

Love is the only key to unlocking a curse and transforming the Beast into a man.

Malamud, Bernard. The Fixer. 1966.

Victim of a vicious anti-Semitic conspiracy, Yakov Bok is in a Russian prison with only his indomitable will to sustain him.

Markandaya, Kamala. Nectar In A Sieve. 1954.

Natural disasters, an arranged marriage, and industrialization of her village are the challenges Rukmani must face as the bride of a peasant farmer in southern India.

Mason, Bobbi Ann. In Country. 1985.

After her father is killed in the Vietnam War, Sam Hughes lives with an uncle whom she suspects suffers from the effects of Agent Orange, and struggles to come to terms with the war's impact on her family.

Mori, Kyoko. Shizuko's Daughter. 1993.

In the years following her mother's suicide, Yuki develops the inner strength to cope with her distant father, her resentful stepmother, and her haunting, painful memories.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987.

Preferring death over slavery for her children, Sethe murders her infant daughter who later mysteriously returns and almost destroys the lives of her mother and sister.

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. 1990.

These stories follow Tim O'Brien's platoon of American soldiers through a variety of personal and military encounters during the Vietnam War.

O'Connor, Flannery. Everything That Rises Must Converge. 1965.

Stories about misfits in small Southern towns force the reader to confront hypocrisy and complacency.

Potok, Chaim. The Chosen. 1967.

A baseball injury brings together two Jewish boys, one Hasidic, the other Orthodox, first in hostility but finally in friendship.

Power, Susan. The Grass Dancer. 1994.

Ending in the 1980s with the love story of Charlene Thunder and grass dancer Harley Wind Soldier, this multigenerational tale of a Sioux family is told in the voices of the living and the dead.

Shaara, Michael. Killer Angels. 1974.

Officers and foot soldiers from both the Union and Confederacy steel themselves for the bloody Battle of Gettysburg.

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. 1939.

An Oklahoma farmer and his family leave the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression to go to the promised land of California.

Uchida, Yoshiko. Picture Bride. 1987.

Hana Omiya journeys to America in the early 1900s to marry a man she has never met.

Watson, Larry. Montana 1948. 1993.

The summer he is 12, David watches as his family and small town are shattered by scandal and tragedy.

Wright, Richard. Native Son. 1940.

For Bigger Thomas, an African American man accused of a crime in the white man's world, there could be no extenuating circumstances, no explanations and only death.

Yolen, Jane. Briar Rose. 1992.

Disturbed by her grandmother Gemma's unique version of Sleeping Beauty, Rebecca seeks the truth behind the fairy tale.

101 Great Books

Recommended for College-Bound Readers by the College Board

It's a good idea to talk to your parents, librarians, teachers, and counselor about your reading list. They can help you choose the best books for you from among your many options.

|Author |Title |

|-- |Beowulf |

|Achebe, Chinua |Things Fall Apart |

|Agee, James |A Death in the Family |

|Austen, Jane |Pride and Prejudice |

|Baldwin, James |Go Tell It on the Mountain |

|Beckett, Samuel |Waiting for Godot |

|Bellow, Saul |The Adventures of Augie March |

|Brontë, Charlotte |Jane Eyre |

|Brontë, Emily |Wuthering Heights |

|Camus, Albert |The Stranger |

|Cather, Willa |Death Comes for the Archbishop |

|Chaucer, Geoffrey |The Canterbury Tales |

|Chekhov, Anton |The Cherry Orchard |

|Chopin, Kate |The Awakening |

|Conrad, Joseph |Heart of Darkness |

|Cooper, James Fenimore |The Last of the Mohicans |

|Crane, Stephen |The Red Badge of Courage |

|Dante |Inferno |

|de Cervantes, Miguel |Don Quixote |

|Defoe, Daniel |Robinson Crusoe |

|Dickens, Charles |A Tale of Two Cities |

|Dostoyevsky, Fyodor |Crime and Punishment |

|Douglass, Frederick |Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass |

|Dreiser, Theodore |An American Tragedy |

|Dumas, Alexandre |The Three Musketeers |

|Eliot, George |The Mill on the Floss |

|Ellison, Ralph |Invisible Man |

|Emerson, Ralph Waldo |Selected Essays |

|Faulkner, William |As I Lay Dying |

|Faulkner, William |The Sound and the Fury |

|Fielding, Henry |Tom Jones |

|Fitzgerald, F. Scott |The Great Gatsby |

|Flaubert, Gustave |Madame Bovary |

|Ford, Ford Madox |The Good Soldier |

|Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von |Faust |

|Golding, William |Lord of the Flies |

|Hardy, Thomas |Tess of the d'Urbervilles |

|Hawthorne, Nathaniel |The Scarlet Letter |

|Heller, Joseph |Catch 22 |

|Hemingway, Ernest |A Farewell to Arms |

|Homer |The Iliad |

|Homer |The Odyssey |

|Hugo, Victor |The Hunchback of Notre Dame |

|Hurston, Zora Neale |Their Eyes Were Watching God |

|Huxley, Aldous |Brave New World |

|Ibsen, Henrik |A Doll's House |

|James, Henry |The Portrait of a Lady |

|James, Henry |The Turn of the Screw |

|Joyce, James |A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man |

|Kafka, Franz |The Metamorphosis |

|Kingston, Maxine Hong |The Woman Warrior |

|Lee, Harper |To Kill a Mockingbird |

|Lewis, Sinclair |Babbitt |

|London, Jack |The Call of the Wild |

|Mann, Thomas |The Magic Mountain |

|Marquez, Gabriel García |One Hundred Years of Solitude |

|Melville, Herman |Bartleby the Scrivener |

|Melville, Herman |Moby Dick |

|Miller, Arthur |The Crucible |

|Morrison, Toni |Beloved |

|O'Connor, Flannery |A Good Man is Hard to Find |

|O'Neill, Eugene |Long Day's Journey into Night |

|Orwell, George |Animal Farm |

|Pasternak, Boris |Doctor Zhivago |

|Plath, Sylvia |The Bell Jar |

|Poe, Edgar Allan |Selected Tales |

|Proust, Marcel |Swann's Way |

|Pynchon, Thomas |The Crying of Lot 49 |

|Remarque, Erich Maria |All Quiet on the Western Front |

|Rostand, Edmond |Cyrano de Bergerac |

|Roth, Henry |Call It Sleep |

|Salinger, J.D. |The Catcher in the Rye |

|Shakespeare, William |Hamlet |

|Shakespeare, William |Macbeth |

|Shakespeare, William |A Midsummer Night's Dream |

|Shakespeare, William |Romeo and Juliet |

|Shaw, George Bernard |Pygmalion |

|Shelley, Mary |Frankenstein |

|Silko, Leslie Marmon |Ceremony |

|Solzhenitsyn, Alexander |One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich |

|Sophocles |Antigone |

|Sophocles |Oedipus Rex |

|Steinbeck, John |The Grapes of Wrath |

|Stevenson, Robert Louis |Treasure Island |

|Stowe, Harriet Beecher |Uncle Tom's Cabin |

|Swift, Jonathan |Gulliver's Travels |

|Thackeray, William |Vanity Fair |

|Thoreau, Henry David |Walden |

|Tolstoy, Leo |War and Peace |

|Turgenev, Ivan |Fathers and Sons |

|Twain, Mark |The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |

|Voltaire |Candide |

|Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. |Slaughterhouse-Five |

|Walker, Alice |The Color Purple |

|Wharton, Edith |The House of Mirth |

|Welty, Eudora |Collected Stories |

|Whitman, Walt |Leaves of Grass |

|Wilde, Oscar |The Picture of Dorian Gray |

|Williams, Tennessee |The Glass Menagerie |

|Woolf, Virginia |To the Lighthouse |

|Wright, Richard |Native Son |

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York Globe, established the Pulitzer Prize through an endowment to Columbia University. The Fiction Award is given annually for fiction in book form by an American author and preferably dealing with American life.

1918: Ernest Poole His Family

1919: Booth Tarkington The Magnificent Ambersons

1920: No award

1921: Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

1922: Booth Tarkington Alice Adams

1923: Willa Cather One of Ours

1924: Margaret Wilson The Able McLaughlins

1925: Edna Ferber So Big

1926: Sinclair Lewis Arrowsmith

1927: Louis Bromfield Early Autumn

1928: Thornton Wilder The Bridge of San Luis Rey

1929: Julia Peterkin Scarlet Sister Mary

1930: Oliver La Farge Laughing Boy

1931: Margaret Ayer Barnes Years of Grace

1932: Pearl S. Buck The Good Earth

1933: T.S. Stribling The Store

1934: Caroline Miller Lamb in his Bosom

1935: Josephine Winslow Johnson Now in November

1936: Harold Davis Honey in the Horn

1937: Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind

1938: John Phillips Marquand The Late George Apley

1939: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings The Yearling

1940: John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath

1941: No award

1942: Ellen Glasgow In this Our Life

1943: Upton Sinclair Dragon's Teeth

1944: Martin Flavin Journey in the Dark

1945: John Hersey A Bell for Adano

1946: No award

1947: Robert Penn Warren All the King's Men

1948: James A. Michener Tales of the South Pacific

1949: James Gould Cozzens Guard of Honor

1950: A.B. Guthrie The Way West

1951: Conrad Richter The Town

1952: Herman Wouk The Caine Mutiny

1953: Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea

1954: No award

1955: William Faulkner A Fable

1956: Mackinlay Kantor Andersonville

1957: No award

1958: James Agee A Death in the Family

1959: Robert Lewis TaylorThe Travels of Jamie McPheeters

1960: Allen Drury Advise and Consent

1961: Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird

1962: Edwin O'Connor The Edge of Sadness

1963: William Faulkner The Reivers

1964: No award

1965: Shirley Anne Grau The Keepers of the House

1966: Katherine Anne Porter Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter

1967: Bernard Malamud The Fixer

1968: William Styron The Confessions of Nat Turner

1969: N. Scott Momaday House Made of Dawn

1970: Jean Stafford Collected Stories

1971: No award

1972: Wallace Stegner The Angle of Repose

1973: Eudora Welty The Optimist's Daughter

1974: No award

1975: Michael Shaara The Killer Angels

1976: Saul Bellow Humboldt's Gift

1977: No award

1978: James Alan McPherson Elbow Room

1979: John Cheever The Stories of John Cheever

1980: Norman Mailer The Executioner's Song

1981: John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

1982: John Updike Rabbit is Rich

1983: Alice Walker The Color Purple

1984: William Kennedy Ironweed

1985: Alison Lurie Foreign Affairs

1986: Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove

1987: Peter Taylor A Summons to Memphis

1988: Toni Morrison Beloved

1989: Anne Tyler Breathing Lessons

1990: Oscar Hijuelos The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

1991: John Updike Rabbit at Rest

1992: Jane Smiley Thousand Acres

1993: Robert Olen Butler A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

1994: E. Annie Proulx The Shipping News

1995: Carol Shields Stone Diaries

1996: Richard Ford Independence Day

1997: Steven Millhauser Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

1998: Philip Roth American Pastoral

1999: Michael Cunningham The Hours

2000: Jhumpa Lahiri Interpreter of Maladies

2001: Michael Chabon The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

2002: Richard Russo Empire Falls

2003: Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex

2004: Edward P. Jones The Known World

2005: Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Book Movement’s List of 100 Best-Selling Book Club Books

This list is also available online at . If you go to the website, there are descriptions of each book.

1. One Thousand White Women : The Journals of May Dodd: A Novel

by Jim Fergus

2. The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

3. The Cloister Walk

by Kathleen Norris

4. Eating Heaven

by Jennie Shortridge

5. Middlesex

by Jeffrey Eugenides

6. Gods in Alabama

by Joshilyn Jackson

7. The Time Traveler's Wife

by Audrey Niffenegger

8. The Memory Keeper's Daughter

by Kim Edwards

9. The Glass Castle : A Memoir (Alex Awards (Awards))

by Jeannette Walls

10. The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini

11. Moon Tide : A Novel

by Dawn Clifton Tripp

12. We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel (P.S.)

by Lionel Shriver

13. For One More Day

by Mitch Albom

14. First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

by Loung Ung

15. A Thread of Grace

by Mary Doria Russell

16. The Bright Forever : A Novel

by Lee Martin

17. Shantaram : A Novel

by Gregory David Roberts

18. I, Mona Lisa

by Jeanne Kalogridis

19. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

by Anne Fadiman

20. Peace Like a River

by Leif Enger

21. A.D. 62: Pompeii

by Rebecca M. East

22. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

by Jonathan Safran Foer

23. My Sister's Keeper : A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

24. Sins Of My Mother

by Terri Jones Salte

25. Gilead: A Novel

by Marilynne Robinson

26. Night (Oprah's Book Club)

by Elie Wiesel

27. Running with Scissors

by Augusten Burroughs

28. Affinity

by Sarah Waters

29. The Art of Mending

by Elizabeth Berg

30. The Tortilla Curtain

by T. Boyle

31. The Mermaid Chair: A Novel

by Sue Monk Kidd

32. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

by Michael Chabon

33. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan : A Novel

by Lisa See

34. Broken for You

by Stephanie Kallos

35. The Deception of the Emerald Ring

by Lauren Willig

36. The Glass Castle : A Memoir

by Jeannette Walls

37. The Shadow of the Wind

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

38. The Good Son: A Novel

by Craig Nova

39. Hoot : Movie Tie-In

by Carl Hiaasen

40. Moloka'i

by Alan Brennert

41. Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam

by Zainab Salbi, Laurie Becklund

42. The Meaning of Wife

by Anne Kingston

43. Cotton Song: A Novel

by Tom Bailey

44. Silent Lies

by M.L. Malcolm

45. The Other Boleyn Girl

by Philippa Gregory

46. The Lovely Bones

by Alice Sebold

47. The Grace That Keeps This World : A Novel

by Tom Bailey

48. An American Childhood

by Annie Dillard

49. A Million Little Pieces (Oprah's Book Club)

by James Frey

50. London Is the Best City in America

by Laura Dave

51. When Europa Rode The Bull

by Barbara Berot

52. 1776

by David McCullough

53. The Secret Life of Bees

by Sue Monk Kidd

54. The Known World

by Edward P. Jones

55. The Center of Everything

by Laura Moriarty

56. In the Time of the Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

57. O My Darling: A Novel

by Amity Gaige

58. Atonement

by Ian McEwan

59. Three Day Road

by Joseph Boyden

60. Being Mrs. Alcott

by Nancy Geary

61. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

by Mark Haddon

62. All This Heavenly Glory

by Elizabeth Crane

63. Harem: A Novel

by Dora Levy Mossanen

64. The Little Women

by Katharine Weber

65. Angela's Ashes

by Frank McCourt

66. Casino Royale

by Ian Fleming

67. The Hummingbird's Daughter : A Novel

by Luis Alberto Urrea

68. Snow Falling on Cedars : A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

by David Guterson

69. The Bonesetter's Daughter

by Amy Tan

70. The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

by James McBride

71. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

by Erik Larson

72. The House on Mango Street

by Sandra Cisneros

73. The Glass Castle (a memoir,THE GLASS CASTLE)

by Jeanette Walls

74. Life of Pi

by Yann Martel

75. The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel

by Diane Setterfield

76. In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote

77. Bel Canto

by Ann Patchett

78. The Five People You Meet in Heaven

by Mitch Albom

79. Hissy Fit : A Novel

by Mary Kay Andrews

80. Water for Elephants: A Novel

by Sara Gruen

81. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

by Gregory Maguire

82. The Samurai's Garden : A Novel

by Gail Tsukiyama

83. The House of the Spirits

by Isabel Allende

84. Dark Angels: A Novel

by Karleen Koen

85. The Alchemist's Daughter : A Novel

by Katharine McMahon

86. Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury

87. March: A Novel

by Geraldine Brooks

88. All the King's Men

by Robert Penn Warren

89. The Captive Queen of Scots: A Novel

by Jean Plaidy

90. Colors of the Mountain

by Da Chen

91. The Persian Pickle Club

by Sandra Dallas

92. Lipstick Jungle: A Novel

by Candace Bushnell

93. The Historian

by Elizabeth Kostova

94. All Over But the Shoutin'

by Rick Bragg

95. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

by Erik Larson

96. Tomorrow They Will Kiss : A Novel

by Eduardo Santiago

97. First Aid : A Novel

by Janet Davey

98. The Good Earth

by Pearl Buck

99. Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran

by Roya Hakakian

100. Lady Chatterley's Lover

by D.H. Lawrence

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