The following books were highly recommended by Woodbury High School juniors and seniors in AP English classes during the school years of 2008-'09, '09-'10, '10-'11, 2011-'12.
See also, Mr. Bratnober's 2013-'14 APPENDIX -- it's at the end of this post, following the various book lists.
FICTION:
DETECTIVE NOVELS// CRIME NOVELS
The Spenser books, by Robert Parker (classic series, all set in Boston)
The Sherlock Holmes series, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Agatha Christie series.
Mary Higgins Clark books
The Odd Thomas series, by Dean Koontz
Who Killed Olive Souffle?, by Margaret Benoit
James Patterson series – Mutations
John Grisham novels
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series (Stieg Larsson)
FANTASY
The Harry Potter books, by J.K. Rowling
The entire Lord of the Rings series, also The Silmarillion, by J.R. Tolkien
The Wheel of Time series, by Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson
His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman – also, The Golden Compass
The Hunger Games series, by Suzanne Collins.
A Game of Thrones, and the Song of Fire & Ice series, by George R.R. Martin
Percy Jackson series. (prequel and sequel series)
The Kane Chronicles
The Candy Rock.
The Sight
The Host, by Stephanie Meyer
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll.
The King-Killer Chronicles (including The Name of the Wind).
Eragon, and the Inheritance Cycle series, by Christopher Paoliniby
The Magic Treehouse, by
Fablehaven series, by Brandon Mull
Beastly, by Alex Flinn
I Am Number Four, by __________
Pathfinder series and The Lost Gate series, by Orson Scott Card
The Immortal Instrument series, by __________
Maximum Ride, by James Patterson (Xinh loves these)
NeverWhere, by __________
House of the Scorpion, by _________ (young readers)
The Sea of Trolls series, by _____________ (young readers)
A Great and Terrible Beauty, by ______________
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
HISTORICAL FICTION
Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
Revolution, by Jennifer Donnelly
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
Milkweed, by Jerry Spinelli
Slum Dog Millionaire, by __________
YOUNG ADULTS / YOUNG READERS
Tangerine, by William Bloor
The Wave, by Morton Rhue (aka Todd Strasser)
Take Me There and Watch Me, by Susane Colasanti
The Nancy Drew series.
The Vampire Academy, by ____________
Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Heist Society, by Ally Carter
Ginger Pye, by _____________
Junie B. Jones, by __________
Maniac McGee
Judy Moody
The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch
Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snickett
The Book Thief, by M.Z. (source of: "Pimples were gathered in peer groups on his face." ~ Ed.)
RECENT AWARD-WINNERS & LITERARY BESTSELLERS
The English Patient, Anil’s Ghost, and Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
The Things They Carried, and others by Tim O’Brien
The Poisonwood Bible, and others by Barbara Kingsolver
Song of Solomon, Jazz, Beloved, Paradise, Home, and others by Toni Morrison
The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
P.U.S.H., by Sapphire
Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson
The Kite-Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
The Handmaiden’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood
Atonement, by Ian McEwan
Looking for Alaska, and other books by John Green.
The Mission, by Jason Myers
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon.
Crank and Glass, by (TBA)
Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
The Power of One, by Bryce Courtnay
Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn
Persepolis, (graphic novel), by Marjane Satrapi
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs
Ophelia
EUROPEAN CLASSICS
Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka
Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abby, and others by Jane Austen
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula, by Bram Stoker
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Dafoe
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
1984 and Animal Farm, by George Orwell
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster
Beowulf (epic poem – Seamus Heaney translation)
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
Crime and Punishment, and others by Dostoevsky.
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess.
Middlemarch, and others by George Eliot
The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, by Victor Hugo.
The Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank
The Divine Comedy, by Dante
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce (PRB)
FINE AMERICAN STANDARDS
East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and many others by John Steinbeck
Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving
Moby-Dick, Billy Budd, and others by Herman Melville
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Abom
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
Anthem and Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Wise Blood, by ______________
Virtually anything you can find by Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Thomas Wolfe, rk Twain, William Styron, William Faulkner, John Updike, Joseph Heller, Eudora Welty, Willa Cather, Kurt Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth, Jack Kerouac, Louise Erdrich, Don DeLillo, Saul Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, Ralph Ellison, Tim O'Brien, Truman Capote, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, David Foster Wallace, Joan Didion, or Richard Wright. (PRB)
COMIC NOVELS
I Am the Messenger, by Markus Zusak
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
July, July, by Tim O’Brien
Barking, by Tom Holt
Middlesex, by Jeff Eugenides
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by _____________
SCIENCE FICTION
Books & stories by Isaac Asimov
Books & stories by Ray Bradbury
Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
Ender’s Shadow, by Orson Scott Card
Speaking for the Dead, Xenocide, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and Shadow of the Giant, Also by Orson Scott Card
The Nightside series, by Simon Green
Miles Borkosigan series, by ______________
Dragons of Pern, by _______________
The Giver, by Lois Lowry
1984, by George Orwell
The Halo series, by (various authors)
The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness (The Chaos Trilogy)
The Uplift series by David Brin.
Unwind, by Neal Shusterman
PastWatch: the Redemption of Christopher Columbus
SPORTS-ACTION-ADVENTURE
The Natural, by Bernard Malamud
For the Love of the Game, by Michael Shaara
The Greatest Game Ever Played, by Mark Frost
The Match, by Mark Frost
The Long Ball, by Tom Baldwin
King Solomon’s Mines, by ___________
Rome 1960, by __________
Slam, by Walter D. Myers
Endurance, by Alfred Lansing
THRILLERS & SPY NOVELS
The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and Digital Fortress, by Dan Brown
Vince Flynn books
Something Wicked This Way Comes, and others by Ray Bradbury
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and others in this series, by Stieg Larsson
The Hunt for Red October, and others by Tom Clancy
The Gallagher Academy series, by Allie Carter
James Bond spy novels, by Ian Fleming
HORROR
All Stephen King books.
All Edgar Allen Poe stories.
The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty
Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane
ROMANCE NOVELS
The Twilight series.
All Nicholas Sparks books, including A Walk to Remember and The Last Song
Neon Pink
Kissed by an Angel, by Elizabeth Chandler
The Truth about Forever, by Sarah Dessan
The Five Hundred Kingdoms series, by Rosemary Flynn
UTOPIAN/DYSTOPIAN NOVELS
Population 485, by Michael Perry
Fahrenheit 451, and others, by Ray Bradbury
The Giver, (and the series), by Lois Lowry
The Host, by Stephanie Meyer
1984 and Animal Farm, by George Orwell
The Uglies series, by Scott _______
The Hunger Games, by Susanne Collins
The Unimatrix, by __________
SHORT-STORY ANTHOLOGIES
War Games and The Lone Ranger & Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, by Sherman Alexie
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and other short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Flannery O’Conner stories
PLAYS
Plays by Shakespeare (esp. Antony & Cleopatra, Hamlet, King Lear, 12th Night, Macbeth)
Plays by Tom Stoppard (esp. R & G Are Dead and The Real Inspector Hound)
Plays by Neil Simon
Plays by Tennessee Williams
Plays by George Bernard Shaw
Plays by Samuel Beckett
POETRY
Poems by: W.B. Yeats, Elizabeth Bishop, Rita Dove, Kelby Carlson, Wallace Stevens, Derek Mahon, Seamus Heaney, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman,
NON-FICTION
BIOGRAPHY and AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Smashed, by Koren Z.
The Autobiography of Anne Frank
Autobiography of a Face
Everybody Poops
Charles Lindbergh, by F. Scott Berg (Mr. Bratnober’s college classmate)
My Lobotomy, by ____________
Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Abom
HISTORY OF WAR
The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
The Battle Cry of Freedom, by James MacPherson
Band of Brothers, by Stephen Ambrose
D Day: the Greatest Adventure, by Stephen Ambrose
The Longest Day, by _____________
Flags of Our Fathers and Fly Boys, by James Bradley
The Supreme Commander, by Stephen Ambrose
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer
The Battle of Britain: the Summer of 1940, by __________ (some Brit)
Churchill’s Memoirs, by Winston Churchill
A Soldier’s Life, by Omar Bradley
A Boy in Striped Pajamas, by _____________
Schindler’s List, by Thomas Kenneally
Barbarossa, by ________
Monty, by _______________ (about Bernard Montgomery – WW II)
NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES
Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce, by Kent Nerburn
Comanches: a History of a People, by T.R. Fehrenbach
U.S. PRESIDENCIES
Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
All the President’s Men, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Profiles in Courage, by John F. Kennedy
RELIGION
The Bible
The Quran
The Book of Mormon
The Watch Tower
WAR // U.S. MILITARY
U.S. Naval Manual // Survival Manuals
OTHER NON-FICTION
The Outliers; Blink; The Tipping Point, and others by Malcolm Gladwell
Columbine, by _____________ (story of the school shootings).
Marley and Me, by John Grogan
Born on a Blue Day
OTHERS (not in categories yet)….
Let It Snow, by John Green
An Abundance of Katherines, by John Cooper
Pretty Little Liars, by Sarah Shephard
13 Reasons Why, by Jay Ascher
A Great and Terrible Beauty
Rebel Angels
Bloody Jack series
Physics books
Hatchet, (and the rest of the series), by Gary Paulson
The Historian
The Name of the Wind
The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown (Adventure)
The Time Traveler’s Wife (romance/science fiction)
All Men Die Alone
The Red Door
Still Alice
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Prophecy of the Sisters
The Time Machine, by George Orwell
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by William Styron (<- Great!! - ed.)
The Last Song, by Nicholas Sparks
Dear John, by Nicholas Sparks
The Late Homecomer, by Kao Kalia Yang
APPENDIX of Other Recent Titles to Consider (@ Dec. 25, 2013):
Hilary Mantel's record-setting series on Sir Thomas More -- historical, yes, but oh so much more... Consecutive winners of England's coveted Man Booker Award for the Best Fiction in 2011 and 2012, see Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.
This year's Man Booker Award winner also belongs on some of your lists: The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton (2013).
For more on the Man Booker Award, including past winners, see this link.
.Still more...
FICTION:
Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson.
My Name Is Red, by Orhan Pamuk
The Round House, by MINNEAPOLIS AUTHOR LOUISE ERDRICH (2012 National Book Award!)
Lincoln, (a screenplay), by Tony Kushner -- text of the Spielberg film.
The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman ( ~ brilliant & hilarious, PB)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz (winner of the Pulitzer Prize, 2007)
Blasphemy - new and selected stories by Sherman Alexie
Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Ngosi Adichie
NON-FICTION:
Big Burn, by Timothy Egan (rattling good story about deliberate forest fires in 1910)
The Lost City of Z, by David Grann (amazing true story of exploration in Brazil)
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, by David Sedaris
