Summer Reading 2023
Dover-Sherborn High School
Summer Reading Assignment
The DS Summer Reading Program intends to foster a lifelong love of reading in our students; to that end, we are providing a list of rich, thought-provoking, and challenging fiction and nonfiction texts for students to choose from.
Students are not limited by our list: we invite students to choose any book(s) to read over the summer in a personal area of interest. Current research in reading emphasizes the importance of student choice in creating strong, empathetic and engaged readers.
FICTION
Flight by Sherman Alexie
In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Great Santini by Pat Conroy
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Kindred by Octavia Butler
My Sister’s Keeper by Jody Picoult
Black Boy/White School by Brian F. Walker
The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas
Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley
Salvage the Bones Jesmyn Ward
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
The Sun is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon
The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Where’d You Go, Bernadette? Maria Semple
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez
There, There by Tommy Orange
Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks By Jason Reynolds
SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY
Scythe by Neal Shusterman
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
HISTORICAL FICTION
March by Geraldine Brooks
House Girl by Tara Conklin
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Dodger by Terry Pratchett
Jubilee by Margaret Walker
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
FICTION for the Ambitious Reader
Sense and Sensibility and Emma by Jane Austen
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur C. Doyle
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Room With a View by E.M. Forster
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
RECENT AWARD WINNERS
Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
Dig by A.S. King
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
We Are Not Free by Traci Chee
1919 The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler
Patron Saint of Nothing by Randy Ribay
Kiss Number 8 by Colleen AF Venable
Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka
SOCIAL JUSTICE and EQUITY
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Behind the Beautiful Forevers Katherine Boo
The 57 Bus by Dashka Slate
Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism and You by Jason Reynolds
How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
HISTORY
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
Out of Order by Sandra Day O’Connor
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement by Dennis Banks
SPORTS
The Education of a Coach by David Halberstam
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
Basketball Junkie by Chris Herren and Bill Reynolds
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
A Different Kind of Daughter: The Girl Who Hid from the Taliban in Plain Sight by Maria Toorpakai
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael
Lewis
HEALTH AND WELLNESS
Being Mortal: Medicine & What Matters by Atul Gawande
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson
The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity by Steven Strogatz
The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life by Helen Czerski
HUMOR
America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t by Stephen Colbert
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
Bossypants by Tina Fey
Sick in the Head by Judd Apatow
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Mindy Kaling
MEMOIRS
American Sniper by Chris Kyle
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s by John Elder Robison
Tomorrow Will Be Different- Love, Loss and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride
How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
Educated by Tara Westover
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
The Color of Water by James McBride
Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Becoming by Michelle Obama
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Sklooot
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (Graphic Memoir)
Maus by Art Spiegelman (Graphic Memoir)
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (Graphic Memoir)
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (Graphic Memoir)
The Yellow House By Sarah M. Broom
One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty
Crazy Brave: A Memoir by Joy Harjo
MISCELLANEOUS
The Gospel According to Larry by Janet Tashjian
The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay
Word-by-Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper
On Writing by Stephen King
The Abundance: Narrative Essays by Annie Dillard
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
Incoming Freshman
Incoming Sophomores
Incoming Juniors
AP Language and Composition:
First text - Choose one of the following memoirs to actively read:
Educated by Tara Westover
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner
Second text - In addition to reading your above chosen memoir, please choose and read at least one additional NON-FICTION book; this book can be chosen from the DS English summer recommended nonfiction lists above or a nonfiction book in a personal area of interest.
US History: Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle
Honors US History: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Incoming Seniors
First- Please actively read How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster and note some of his major ideas and concepts. Then take notes in which you apply the contents in this text to the other two required novels. You should note at least three places in each novel where you see Forster ideas apply.