English Literature

A Level Summer Assignment 2018

Using either the reading lists or your own choice of books, we want you to read some

different texts over the summer. You may want to choose some non-fiction such as

biography or autobiography, historical accounts, or hobby related interests but as you

are planning to study English Literature at A level, we want you to choose at least

TWO novels – ONE written before 1950 and ONE written after 1950.

Use the READING LOG and the list of book club-type questions to help you prepare

some answers which you will be discussing in your introduction to the course, in

September.

SUMMER READING LOG

AUTHOR: TITLE: GENRE:

OPENING:

CHARACTERS

PLOT

NARRATIVE VOICE / PERSPECTIVE

STRUCTURE

THEMES / SYMBOLS

CHOICE OF PASSAGE / WHY?

ENDING

EFFECT / RECOMMENDATION

AUTHOR: TITLE: GENRE:

OPENING:

CHARACTERS

PLOT

NARRATIVE VOICE / PERSPECTIVE

STRUCTURE

THEMES / SYMBOLS

CHOICE OF PASSAGE / WHY?

ENDING

EFFECT / RECOMMENDATION

AUTHOR: TITLE: GENRE:

OPENING:

CHARACTERS

PLOT

NARRATIVE VOICE / PERSPECTIVE

STRUCTURE

THEMES / SYMBOLS

CHOICE OF PASSAGE / WHY?

ENDING

EFFECT / RECOMMENDATION

QUESTIONS

How did you experience the book? Were you engaged immediately, or did it

take you a while to “get into it”? How did you feel reading it – amused, sad,

disturbed, confused, bored…? What did you think the book was about?

Describe the main characters – personality traits, motivations, inner qualities.

o Why do characters do what they do?

o Are their actions justified?

o Describe the dynamic between characters (in a marriage, family, or

friendship).

o How has the past shaped their lives?

o Do you admire or disapprove of them? How realistic was the

characterisation? Would you want to meet any of the characters? Did

you like them? Hate them?

Did the actions of the characters seem plausible? Why? Why not?

If one (or more) of the characters made a choice that had moral implications,

would you have made the same decision? Why? Why not?

Do the main characters change by the end of the book? Do they grow or

mature? Do they learn something about themselves and how the world

works?

How does the setting figure into the book?

Is the plot engaging – does they story interest you? Is this a plot-driven book:

a fast-paced page-turner? Or does the story unfold slowly with a focus on

character development? Were you surprised by the plot’s complications? Or

did you find it predictable, even formulaic?

How is the story told (Narrative Voice / Viewpoint) and who tells it?

Did the author seem to appear in the book? How? Why? Was the presence

of the author disruptive or did it seem appropriate/fitting?

Talk about the book’s structure. Is it a continuous story… or interlocking short

stories? Does the time-line move forward chronologically...or back and forth

between past and present? Does the author use a single viewpoint or shifting

viewpoints?

Why might the author have chosen to tell the story the way he or she did –

and what difference does it make in the way you read or understand it?

What main ideas – themes – does the author explore? (Consider the title,

often a clue to the theme.) Does the author use symbols to reinforce the

main ideas? How are the book’s images symbolically significant? What are

some of the book’s themes? How important were they?

Do the images help to develop the plot, or help define characters?

Which passages strike you as insightful, even profound? Perhaps a bit of

dialogue that’s funny or poignant or that encapsulates a character? Maybe

there’s a particular comment that states the book’s thematic concerns?

CHOOSE ONE PASSAGE, no more than half a page, to share with others, that

gives a good example of why you would recommend the book to others.

Is the ending satisfying? If so, why is it? If not, why not… and how would you

change it? Did you feel that the book fulfilled your expectations?

If you could ask the author a question, what would you ask? Have you read

other books by the same author? If so how does this book compare. If not,

does this book inspire you to read others?

Has this novel changed you – broadened your perspective? Have you learned

something new or been exposed to different ideas about people or a certain

part of the world? Would you recommend this book to other readers? To

your close friend?

TIME TO GET READING OVER THE SUMMER………..

Most of these authors have written other really good books which you would enjoy. Look out for

them in the library.

ADAMS, Douglas Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

ALI, Monica Brick Road

ALMOND, David Clay

ASHLEY, Bernard Little Soldier

ATKINSON, Kate Behind the Scenes at the Museum

AUSTEN, Jane Pride and Prejudice

BALLARD, J G Empire of the Sun

BANKS, Iain The Crow Road

BLACKMAN, Malorie Noughts and Crosses

CASSIDY, Anne Looking for JJ

CHEVALIER, Tracy The Girl with the Pearl Earring

CHRISTIE, Agatha Murder on the Orient Express

CHRISTOPHER, John Tripods Trilogy

CLARK, S Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrall

CORMIER, Robert Chocolate War

DICKENS, Charles Great Expectations/ Oliver Twist/ A Christmas Carol

DONOHUE, Emma Room

DU MAURIER, Daphne The Birds

DURRELL, Gerald My Family and Other Animals

EXTENSE, Gavin The Universe verus Alex Woods

FARMER, Nancy House of the Scorpion

FAULKNER, J Meade Moonfleet

FITZGERALD, Penelope The Gate of Angels

FLAKE, S. G. The Skin I’m In

GERAS, Adele Coram Boy/Troy/Ithaka

GIBBONS, Alan Caught in the Crossfire/Shadow of the Minotaur

HADDON, Mark The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night-time

HANLEY, Victoria Light of the Oracle

HARRIS, Joanne Chocolat

HICYILMAZ, Gaye Girl in Red

HILL, Susan I’m the King of the Castle

The Various Haunts of Men

HORNBY, Nick About a Boy

HUNTINGTON, Geoffrey Hellhole

ISHIGURO, K The Remains of the Day

JARMAN, Julia Peace Weavers

JONES, L Mr Pip

LAIRD, Elizabeth Garbage King

LAWRENCE, Louise Children of the Dust

LEE, Harper To Kill a Mocking Bird

LONDON, Jack Call of the Wild

LOWRY, Lois Gathering Blue

MARK, Jan Useful Idiots

MCCALL SMITH, Alexander No.1 Ladies Detective Agency

MCCAUGHREAN, Geraldine Not the End of the World

MORPURGO, Michael Private Peaceful

NAIDOO, Beverley No Turning Back

NAPOLI, Donna Jo Daughter of Venice

ONDAATJE, Michael The English Patient

ORWELL, George Animal Farm

PATTERSON, James Maximum Ride series

PEET, Mal Tamar/Keeper

POE, Edgar Alan Tales of Mystery and Imagination

PRATCHETT, Terry Discworld series

PULLMAN, Philip His Dark Materials Trilogy / Sally Lockhart series

RAI, Bali (Un) Arranged Marriage

REES, Celia Witch Child

RIORDAN, James When the Guns Fall Silent

ROSE, Malcolm Clone /Transplant

SALINGER J. D The Catcher in the Rye

SEBOLD Alice The Lovely Bones

SHAN, Darren Demonata series

SHAW, Ali The Girl with Glass Feet

SMITH, Dodie I Capture the Castle

STRATTON, Allan Chanda’s secrets

SWINDELLS, Robert Brother in the Land / Stone Cold

SYAL, Meena Anita and Me

TOLKIEN, J R R Lord of the Rings

TRIGELL, Jonathan Boy A

VICKERS, Salley The Cleaner of Chatres

VOIGT, Cynthia The Tillerman series The Homecoming etc.

WALLACE, Karen Raspberries on the Yangtze

WALSH, Jill Paton A Parcel of Patterns

WATSON, James Talking in Whispers

WELLS, H. G. The Time Machine

WESTALL, Robert Gulf/ The Scarecrows

WOODING, Chris The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

WYNDHAM, John The Chrysalids / The Midwich Cuckoos

ZEPHANIAH, Benjamin Face / Refugee Boy

ZINDEL, Paul Begonia for Miss Applebaum/The

Pigman

ZAFON, Carlos R Shadow of the Wind

Ask Miss Cowley for even more suggestions or look in :-

The Ultimate Teen Book edited by Daniel Hahn and Leonie Flynn

Books for Keeps – review magazine - both in the school library.

NB. Many of the ‘classics’ will be free to download on your Kindle or iPad.

The Telegraph’s best 100 novels of all time, from Tolkien to Proust and Middlemarch

100 to 91

100 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein

WH Auden thought this tale of fantastic creatures looking for lost jewellery was a “masterpiece”.

99 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A child’s-eye view of racial prejudice and freaky neighbours in Thirties Alabama.

98 The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore

A rich Bengali noble lives happily until a radical revolutionary appears.

97 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Earth is demolished to make way for a Hyperspatial Express Route. Don’t panic.

96 One Thousand and One Nights Anon

A Persian king’s new bride tells tales to stall post-coital execution.

95 The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Werther loves Charlotte, but she’s already engaged. Woe is he!

94 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

The children of poor Hindus and wealthy Muslims are switched at birth.

93 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

Nursery rhyme provides the code names for British spies suspected of treason.

92 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Hilarious satire on doom-laden rural romances. “Something nasty” has been observed in the woodshed.

91 The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki

The life and loves of an emperor’s son. And the world’s first novel?

90 to 81

90 Under the Net by Iris Murdoch

A feckless writer has dealings with a canine movie star. Comedy and philosophy combined.

89 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Lessing considers communism and women’s liberation in what Margaret Drabble calls “inner space fiction”.

88 Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

Passion, poetry and pistols in this verse novel of thwarted love.

87 On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Beat generation boys aim to “burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles”.

86 Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

A disillusioning dose of Bourbon Restoration realism. The anti-hero “Rastingnac” became a byword for ruthless social

climbing.

85 The Red and the Black by Stendhal

Plebian hero struggles against the materialism and hypocrisy of French society with his “force d’ame”.

84 The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

“One for all and all for one”: the eponymous swashbucklers battle the mysterious Milady.

83 Germinal by Emile Zola

Written to “germinate” social change, Germinal unflinchingly documents the starvation of French miners.

82 The Stranger by Albert Camus

Frenchman kills an Arab friend in Algiers and accepts “the gentle indifference of the world”.

81 The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Illuminating historical whodunnit set in a 14th-century Italian monastry.

80 to 71

80 Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

An Australian heiress bets an Anglican priest he can’t move a glass church 400km.

79 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Prequel to Jane Eyre giving moving, human voice to the mad woman in the attic.

78 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Carroll’s ludic logic makes it possible to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

77 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Yossarian feels a homicidal impulse to machine gun total strangers. Isn’t that crazy?

76 The Trial by Franz Kafka

K proclaims he’s innocent when unexpectedly arrested. But “innocent of what”?

75 Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

Protagonist’s “first long secret drink of golden fire” is under a hay wagon.

74 Waiting for the Mahatma by RK Narayan

Gentle comedy in which a Gandhi-inspired Indian youth becomes an anti-British extremist.

73 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque

The horror of the Great War as seen by a teenage soldier.

72 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

Three siblings are differently affected by their parents’ unexplained separation.

71 The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin

Profound and panoramic insight into 18th-century Chinese society.

70 to 61

70 The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Garibaldi’s Redshirts sweep through Sicily, the “jackals” ousting the nobility, or “leopards”.

69 If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

International book fraud is exposed in this playful postmodernist puzzle.

68 Crash by JG Ballard

Former TV scientist preaches “a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology”.

67 A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul

East African Indian Salim travels to the heart of Africa and finds “The world is what it is.”

66 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Boy meets pawnbroker. Boy kills pawnbroker with an axe. Guilt, breakdown, Siberia, redemption.

65 Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Romantic young doctor’s idealism is trampled by the atrocities of the Russian Revolution.

64 The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz

Follows three generations of Cairenes from the First World War to the coup of 1952.

63 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson’s “bogey tale” came to him in a dream.

62 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Swift’s scribulous satire on travellers’ tall tales (the Lilliputian Court is really George I’s).

61 My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

A painter is murdered in Istanbul in 1591. Unusually, we hear from the corpse.

60 to 51

60 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Myth and reality melt magically together in this Colombian family saga.

59 London Fields by Martin Amis

A failed novelist steals a woman’s trashed diaries which reveal she’s plotting her own murder.

58 The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

Gang of South American poets travel the world, sleep around, challenge critics to duels.

57 The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse

Intellectuals withdraw from life to play a game of musical and mathematical rules.

56 The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

Madhouse memories of the Second World War. Key text of European magic realism.

55 Austerlitz by WG Sebald

Paragraph-less novel in which a Czech-born historian traces his own history back to the Holocaust.

54 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Scholar’s sexual obsession with a prepubescent “nymphet” is complicated by her mother’s passion for him.

53 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

After nuclear war has rendered most sterile, fertile women are enslaved for breeding.

52 The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Expelled from a “phony” prep school, adolescent anti-hero goes through a difficult phase.

51 Underworld by Don DeLillo

From baseball to nuclear waste, all late-20th-century American life is here.

50 to 41

50 Beloved by Toni Morrison

Brutal, haunting, jazz-inflected journey down the darkest narrative rivers of American slavery.

49 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

“Okies” set out from the Depression dustbowl seeking decent wages and dignity.

48 Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin

Explores the role of the Christian Church in Harlem’s African-American community.

47 The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

A doctor’s infidelities distress his wife. But if life means nothing, it can’t matter.

46 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

A meddling teacher is betrayed by a favourite pupil who becomes a nun.

45 The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Did the watch salesman kill the girl on the beach. If so, who heard?

44 Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

A historian becomes increasingly sickened by his existence, but decides to muddle on.

43 The Rabbit books by John Updike

A former high school basketball star is unsatisfied by marriage, fatherhood and sales jobs.

42 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

A boy and a runaway slave set sail on the Mississippi, away from Antebellum “sivilisation”.

41 The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

A drug addict chases a ghostly dog across the midnight moors.

40 to 31

40 The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Lily Bart craves luxury too much to marry for love. Scandal and sleeping pills ensue.

39 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

A Nigerian yam farmer’s local leadership is shaken by accidental death and a missionary’s arrival.

38 The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

A mysterious millionaire’s love for a woman with “a voice full of money” gets him in trouble.

37 The Warden by Anthony Trollope

“Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money,” said W?H Auden.

36 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

An ex-convict struggles to become a force for good, but it ends badly.

35 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

An uncommitted history lecturer clashes with his pompous boss, gets drunk and gets the girl.

34 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts” in this hardboiled crime noir.

33 Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

Epistolary adventure whose heroine’s bodice is savagely unlaced by the brothel-keeping Robert Lovelace.

32 A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell

Twelve-book saga whose most celebrated character wears “the wrong kind of overcoat”.

31 Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky

Published 60 years after their author was gassed, these two novellas portray city and village life in Nazi-occupied

France.

30 to 21

30 Atonement by Ian McEwan

Puts the “c” word in the classic English country house novel.

29 Life: a User’s Manual by Georges Perec

The jigsaw puzzle of lives in a Parisian apartment block. Plus empty rooms.

28 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Thigh-thwacking yarn of a foundling boy sowing his wild oats before marrying the girl next door.

27 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Human endeavours “to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world” have tragic consequences.

26 Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Northern villagers turn their bonnets against the social changes accompanying the industrial revolution.

25 The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Hailed by TS Eliot as “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels”.

24 Ulysses by James Joyce

Modernist masterpiece reworking of Homer with humour. Contains one of the longest “sentences” in English

literature: 4,391 words.

23 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Buying the lies of romance novels leads a provincial doctor’s wife to an agonising end.

22 A Passage to India by EM Forster

A false accusation exposes the racist oppression of British rule in India.

21 1984 by George Orwell

In which Big Brother is even more sinister than the TV series it inspired.

20 to 11

20 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

Samuel Johnson thought Sterne’s bawdy, experimental novel was too odd to last. Pah!

19 The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

Bloodsucking Martian invaders are wiped out by a dose of the sniffles.

18 Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Waugh based the hapless junior reporter in this journalistic farce on former Telegraph editor Bill Deedes.

17 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Sexual double standards are held up to the cold, Wessex light in this rural tragedy.

16 Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

A seaside sociopath mucks up murder and marriage in Greene’s literary Punch and Judy show.

15 The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse

A scrape-prone toff and pals are suavely manipulated by his gentleman’s personal gentleman.

14 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Out on the winding, windy moors Cathy and Heathcliff become each other’s “souls”. Then he storms off.

13 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Debt and deception in Dickens’s semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman crammed with cads, creeps and capital fellows.

12 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

A slave trader is shipwrecked but finds God, and a native to convert, on a desert island.

11 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Every proud posh boy deserves a prejudiced girl. And a stately pile.

10 to 1

10 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Picaresque tale about quinquagenarian gent on a skinny horse tilting at windmills.

9 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Septimus’s suicide doesn’t spoil our heroine’s stream-of-consciousness party.

8 Disgrace by JM Coetzee

An English professor in post-apartheid South Africa loses everything after seducing a student.

7 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Poor and obscure and plain as she is, Mr Rochester wants to marry her. Illegally.

6 In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

Seven-volume meditation on memory, featuring literature’s most celebrated lemony cake.

5 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

“The conquest of the earth,” said Conrad, “is not a pretty thing.”

4 The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

An American heiress in Europe “affronts her destiny” by marrying an adulterous egoist.

3 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy’s doomed adulteress grew from a daydream of “a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow”.

2 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Monomaniacal Captain Ahab seeks vengeance on the white whale which ate his leg.

1 Middlemarch by George Eliot

“One of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” said Virginia Woolf.

Top 10 books for teens

1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

2. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

4. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

5. 1984 by George Orwell

6. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

7. A Streetcat Named Bob by James Bowen

8. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

9. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Top 50 books that will …

Change the way you think

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A Streetcat Named Bob by James Bowen

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

Wonder by RJ Palacio

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Help you understand you

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

The Outsiders by SE Hinton

Make you cry

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

Before I Die by Jenny Downham

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Make you laugh

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend

Geek Girl by Holly Smale

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Angus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

Scare you

1984 by George Orwell

Lord Loss by Darren Shan

The Rats by James Herbert

The Shining by Stephen King

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Teach you about love

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Forever by Judy Blume

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Thrill you

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Gone by Michael Grant

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Transport you

Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald