G.W. Hewlett High School
English Department
Summer Reading 2010
12th Grade

12R: Select at least one of the following texts and read it/them, and be prepared for a discussion in English class on the first day of school in September.  Teacher guided discussion will take place before a subsequent writing assignment is given in class.

SUPA English: See the separate sheet and complete the assignment, which is required for entrance to the course.

English 12AP: See the separate sheet and complete the assignment, which is required for entrance to the course.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Investigative reporter Erik Larson unearths the lost history of the 1893 World's Fair and of a madman who grimly parodied the fair's achievements. The "White City" was a magical creation constructed upon Chicago's swampy Jackson Park by a roster of architectural stars, including Daniel H. Burnham, Frederick Olmstead, and Louis Sullivan. Drawing 27 million visitors in six months, the fair gathered the era's brightest intellectual lights and launched innovations like Juicy Fruit gum, Cracker Jacks, and the Ferris wheel. Nearby, Dr. Henry Holmes built "the World's Fair Hotel," a torture palace to which he lured 27 victims, mostly young women. While the fair ushered in a new epoch in American history, Holmes marked the emergence of the serial killer, who thrived on the forces transforming the country.

Drown  by Junot Diaz

Growing Up by Russell Baker
This is Russel Baker's story of growing up in America between the world wars -- in the backwoods mountains of Virginia, in a New Jersey commuter town, and finally in the Depression-shadowed urban landscape of Baltimore.  It is a story of adversity and courage, of the poingnancy of love and the awkwardness of sex, of family bonds and family tensions.  We meet the people who influenced Baker's early life, and the everyday heroes and heroines of the Depression who faced disaster with good cheer and usually muddled through.

House of Sand and Fog  by Andre Dubus III

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

A young woman finds old papers which begin to reveal an ancient and evil plot concerning Vlad the Impaler and the legend of Dracula, which may still be continuing.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
On November 15, 1958, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces.  There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were no clues.  As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy.

King Lear  by William Shakespeare

Oryx and Crake  by Margaret Atwood

With the same stunning blend of prophecy and social satire she brought to her classic The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood gives us a keenly prescient novel about the future of humanity-and its present. Humanity here equals Snowman, and in Snowman's recollections Atwood re-creates a time much like our own, when a boy named Jimmy loved an elusive, damaged girl called Oryx and a sardonic genius called Crake. But now Snowman is alone, and as we learn why we also learn about a world that could become ours one day.

Wuthering Heights  by Emily Bronte
Perhaps the most haunting and tragic love story ever written, "Wuthering Heights" is the tale of Heathcliff, a brooding, troubled orphan, and his doomed love for Catherine Earnshaw. His desire for her leads him to madness when Catherine is made to marry a wealthy lord, sending Heathcliff on a lifelong quest to avenge himself upon those who stole his only love and his life.

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