What are some good classic books a high school guy would ENJOY reading over the summer?

Answer 1

"Brave new World" Aldous Huxley
"Farenhiet 451" Ray Bradbury
"Animal Farm" George Orwell
"1984" George Orwell

Answer 2

I notice nobody has mentioned "Two Years Before the Mast," by Charles Dana. It's a classic, contains some excellent adventure writing and a bit of authentic history thrown in. I guarantee you will feel you are personally experiencing the rounding of Cape Horn in a sailing ship in a winter storm and wondering if you are going to survive. You will learn what California was like 175 years ago (almost unpopulated except for a few towns; one shack where San Francisco is now), and that Boston was more important on the East Coast than New York. You will understand Mexicans and the Mexican heritage in America better than you could in any other way, and you will realize what you are reading is authentic. And you will learn where the leather for shoes came from and by what arduous means, a lesson in American entrepreneurship. It's fairly short and won't prevent you from reading other books over a summer.

Answer 3

If you want some really good classics to make you think introspectively about yourself and life, I have two book suggestions:

"Loon Lake" by E. L. Doctorowe: This is a story about a boy coming into manhood, learning about himself, and ultimately living a truly extraordinary life. It's a classic and is on most college reading lists.

"The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers: This is the story of a deaf-mute who becomes the receptacle for a town's worries, fears, secrets, and dreams. It is tragic, but exceptional. It, too, is considered a canonical classic.

If you are really ambitious, I would also suggest reading Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead." I don't recommend it to most high schoolers, because it is long and rather sophisticated. It deals with objectivism is follows the blooming career of a young man who dares to portray things the way he sees them, not as they are seen by other people.

Answer 4

The Three Musketeers (get a good translation)
Catcher in the Rye
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court is good, as is most other Twain (the Mysterious Stranger is a novella by Twain, but one of my favroites as a teeeager).

If your bent is to Science Fiction (or even if it isn't) you could do a lot worse than Robert A. Heinlein -- Stranger in a Strange Land, or Starship Troopers. The two have quite different philosophical biases, but are both exteremely well written stories that will make you think - and enjoy doing so.

Enjoy!

Answer 5

the Beatles: the biography-by Bob Spitz. this monster read came out last Sept., and tells you MORE than any fan would want to know about the Fab Four. The first couple of chapters are slow (family tree stuff), but once it enters the boys' early teen years it's got ya! 854 pages-thick as a dictionary-but a killer read.

Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend-by Stephen Davis, author of "Old Guys Almost Dead" (a Rolling Stones bio). this came out the same month the Beatles book did-325 pages and outstanding!
If you're into classic rock and these bands, this pair will stir your soul.

Answer 6

Christmas Carol by charles dickens is good.So is Count of Montecristo.The former is about a miser who is visited by 3 spirits of christmas who persuade him to change his ways.Frankly its the only dickens book that I enjoyed.The latter is about a young sailor who is unjustly imprisoned for 14 years before he escapes and how he ultimately takes his revenge.

Although not classics I think you would enjoy the following
Hunger, anger, and hatred are constants for young Vetch, rendered a brutally mistreated and overworked serf by the Tian conquest of his homeland. But everything improves when a Tian jouster requisitions Vetch to become the first serf ever to be a dragon boy. His training is intense, and his duty clear-cut: to tend his jouster, Ari, and his dragon, Kashet. He discovers that, because Ari himself had hatched Kashet, the dragon is different from others that have been captured live in the wild and must be drugged to be made tractable. Vetch finds he really likes and understands dragons, and soon he becomes the best dragon boy of all. He still harbors anger, however, toward the Tian invasion. Could he, perhaps, hatch a dragon, and then escape to help his people?

Take a thief by Mercedes Lackey is also good.
Mercedes Lackey's Take a Thief is the tale of Skif, a young orphan reminiscent of Oliver Twist, making his way in the knock-and-tumble neighborhood between two of Haven's outermost walls. Skif is intelligent, good-hearted and creative enough to forage up three meals a day in a place where food is scarce and kindness almost unheard of. After a chain of events leave him homeless, Skif lands in the lair of Bazie, an Faginish ex-mercenary who trains thieves...until he is "Chosen" by one of Valdemar's magical horses and becomes a Herald serving the Queen.

Reilly's Luck by Louis L'Amour.Its a western.A young boy is abandoned by his own mother(she tells her boyfriend to kill him)The boy ends up with a gambler and he brings him up.Turns out to be the best gamble he ever made.The boy grows up and later kills the people who murdered the gambler.

When his best friend, a young clergyman, is killed in a mockery of a duel by an arrogant noble, just to quiet his eloquent expressions of democratic ideals, Andre-Louis Moreau vows revenge. From that point, through meteoric careers as a consummate actor and scenario writer, then as a fencing master, and finally a politician, the brilliant Moreau keeps thwarting the aims of the aristocratic Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr. However, the nobleman causes pain to Moreau as well, and the time must come when the two will meet to settle their enmity once and for all. You are not likely to guess how their confrontation finally turns out. Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, this swashbuckling novel is exciting throughout, and it presents one of the most dashing heroes in fiction, a man who can fight equally well with his mind, his mouth, his pen, and his sword, a man who stirs up events wherever he goes.

Answer 7

The Three Musketeers! one of my favs. classic, violent, mysterious, full of sex, and 4 awesome guys that each have their own unique personality.
man, I love that book.

this summer I'm hoping to read Dracula. it's a gothic classic that I've never had the pleasure of picking up.

I also want to read something by hemingway. if I can build the reading and concentration skills, it'll be For Whom The Bell Tolls, but I doubt I got it in me to get through that monster of a book.

I love the classics. The Scarlet Pimpernel is another favorite of mine. classic superhero, if you ask me. he's like the 1800's batman.

hmmm, what else....
short stories are good.
I like the classic gothic short stories:
almost anything by Poe.
A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner
and The Adventure of the German Student by Washington Irving.
(I never read Sleepy Hollow, but i heard it's real boring)

ooo, if you want something american and slightly more contemporary, go for Of Mice and Men. that book made me cry. not that it's hard to make me cry. I cried while reading The Rats of Nim, but still, Of Mice and Men is definately an emotional book.
also, The Great Gatsby is stupendous. I love the characters and the time period. short book, easy read, you'll probably read it for high school anyway, so you might as well get a head start on it if you havn't already.

Answer 8

I grew up in an exceedingly small city and severe college became into have been all the interest became into different than for paying for drunk and making out. I even did a number of that for the period of faculty. LOL it is not situation-free to have confidence I survived severe college and that i became into an "A" pupil. college is have been ladies have been and have been I performed soccer so I had a blast. It did no longer injury that by the time i began out severe college my Dad had stop eating (He became into between the worst alcoholics I certainly have ever seen) . mom became into nonetheless a soreness yet Dad and that i became superb acquaintances, So i assume my view of my severe college years is a sprint biased. the college Dances have been super activities in a small city that had one action picture instruct with merely one reveal screen, no quickly meals eating places and no department shops. We did no longer get Rock stay shows coming interior one hundred fifty miles so i did no longer see my first stay stay overall performance till I went away to college except you count extensive sort interior reach bands enjoying on the Dances.

Answer 9

I'm neither a boy nor in high-school, but I really loved the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Also, if you haven't read it yet, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is amazing!

Answer 10

A Ct Yankee in King Arthurs Court.
Lord of the Flies.
The Water is Wide.