Which Of These Books Should I Choose?

Question

This is the list of choices my teacher gave us. We have to pick four books to read throughout the year. Any opinions on book I defianatley should or should not read? By the way, I'm a freshmen in honors english and I hate reading.. if that matters. Thanks!

Bradbury, Ray Something Wicked This Way Comes
Steinbeck, John East of Eden
Chevalier, Tracy. Girl With a Pearl Earring.
Alvarez, Julia. In the Time of Butterflies.
Kingsolver, Barbara. The Bean Trees.
Kingsolver, Barbara. The Posionwood Bible
Hosseini, Khalad A Thousand Splendid Suns
Hosseini, Khalad Kite Runner
Tan, Amy The Joy Luck Club
Zinn, Howard A People’s History of the United States
Pynchon, Thomas The Crying of Lot 49
Nabokov, Vladimir
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia One Hundred Years of Solitude
Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment
Kerouac, Jack On the Road
Dostoevsky Brothers Karamozov
Wharton, Edith Age of Innocence

Tolsky Anna Karina
Paton Cry the Beloved Country
Stoker, Bram Dracula
Atwood, M The Handsmaid Tale
Morrison, Toni Beloved
Plath The Bell Jar
Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo
Salinger Franny and Zooey
Alverez How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls

Atlas Shrugged Rand
Bastard Out of Carolina Allison
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Adams
The Sun Also Rises Hemingway
Dubliners Joyce
The Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter McCullers
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

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

Chopin, Kate The Awakening
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
Dreiser, Theodore An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man
Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying

Fielding, Henry Tom Jones
Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust
Hardy, Thomas Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Heller, Joseph Catch 22
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
Kingston, Maxine Hong The Woman Warrior
Lewis, Sinclair Babbitt

Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain
Heinlein, Robert Stranger in a Strange Land.
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
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
Kuralt, Charles Charles Kuralt's America.
Shelley, Mary Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Stevenson, Robert Louis Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travel
Tan, Amy The Joy Luck Club
Thackeray, William Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David Walden
Alex Kotlowitz There Are No Children Here
Turgenev, Ivan Fathers and Sons
Yusunari Kawabata Thousand Cranes
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
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner Freakonomics
Woolf, Virginia To the Lighthouse
Cather, Willa My Antonia
Shepard, Alan Moon Shot: The Inside Story
Potok, Chaim The Chosen
Delany, Sarah and Elizabeth Having Our Say

Answer 1

My favorites from your list:
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Crying of Lot 49
Dracula
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Pride and Prejudice
The Awakening
As I Lay Dying
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Slaughterhouse-Five
My Antonia

If I had to pick 4 that I think might be the most enjoyable to read, I would go with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books of all time and I highly recommend it, but some people do find the style a bit boring.

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Answer 2

Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Kite Runner by Hosseini
Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas
The Color Purple by Alice Walker

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Answer 3

This is a long and varied list. Here are some suggestions:

Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. -- This is an anti-war/time travel existential novel. It is not too long, but is packed with irony, humor and meaning.

Animal Farm by George Orwell -- The animals of Manor Farm attempt to create a utopian community where everyone is equal and work is shared by all. Well-written and interesting.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas -- adventure, wrongful imprisonment, love, revenge, duels, etc. Exciting and, though long, it's a quick and eventful read.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan -- an immigrant story of mothers and daughters. Shows the old world vs. the new world.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson -- adventure, pirates, desert islands, etc. Exciting and quick read.

Hope this helps.

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Answer 4

LOL, this list made me so nostalgic.
The following are all written in more-or-less modern language and you might like them:
Definitely the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: I can't believe you get to read that for school!
Franny and Zooey's pretty interesting and emotional.
I kind of liked "The Crying of Lot 49", entertaining but a little weird.
"Strangers in a Strange Land" is kind of beautiful, in a hippie-ish way. I love Robert Heinlein so much.
"Brave New World" really makes you think.

DON'T EVER READ:
Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Unbelievably depressing.
Dubliners is really hard to analyze: everything's a metaphor for the church or how Ireland is hopeless.
The Awakening. Unpleasant.
Anything by Virginia Woolf: she's a headcase.

The rest that I've read are just okay. And don't be tempted to thinking "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" will be fun and action-y just because the movies are.

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Answer 5

Tell Her **** it your not a gofer n your reading way of the shadows by brent weeks its a very very very good book especially if you like action/fantasy

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