Please keep in mind that, because there are so many titiles, the themes and subject matter of your novel choice is vast. There is, therefore, no reason you should not find a novel you enjoy. Additionally, several of the titles deal with sensitive issues, and may use language you do not prefer. Since you are given a choice of your title selection, please do not feel obligated to continue reading a novel you do not enjoy or that makes you uncomfortable.
It will be much easier for you to present your novel in class (a required portion of the summer assignment, which will be specifically assigned on the first day of school) if you find valuable elements in the work.
THE LIST
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen
Daughter of My People by James Kilgo
Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines
Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Go Tell it On the Mountain by James Baldwin
Graceland by Chris Abani
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Caron McCullers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
I by Stephen Dixon
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
In America by Susan Sontag
In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien
Into Thin Air by John Krakauer
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
My Antonia by Willa Cather
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Native Son by Richard Wright
Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee
The New Life by Orhan Pamuk
No-No Boy by John Okada
Northern Lights by Tim O'Brien
Nuclear Age by Tim O'Brien
Obasan by Joy Kogawa
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Play it as it Lies by Joan Didion
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Snow by Orhan Pamuk
The Suitors by Ben Ehrenreich
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Typical American by Gish Jen
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
What is the What by Dave Eggers
The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk
Please keep in mind that, because there are so many titiles, the themes and subject matter of your novel choice is vast. There is, therefore, no reason you should not find a novel you enjoy. Additionally, several of the titles deal with sensitive issues, and may use language you do not prefer. Since you are given a choice of your title selection, please do not feel obligated to continue reading a novel you do not enjoy or that makes you uncomfortable.
It will be much easier for you to present your novel in class (a required portion of the summer assignment, which will be specifically assigned on the first day of school) if you find valuable elements in the work.