BACKBLOG

Challenge Reading List by Title

The following books were selected based upon the frequency of their use on past Advanced Placement exams, the frequency with which they are assigned and recommended by American universities, the awards received, and recommendations by our school librarian.  (Updated January 2009)

1. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Alexie
2. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
3. The Aeneid – Virgil
4. All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
5. All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
6. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon
7. American Pastoral – Philip Roth
8. Angle of Repose – Wallace Earle Stegner
9. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
10. The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Malcolm X
11. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
12. Beloved – Toni Morrison
13. Bee Season – Myla Goldberg
14. Black Hawk Down – Bowden
15. The Body of Christopher Creed – Plum-Ucci
16. Bonesetter’s Daughter – Tan
17. The Book Thief – Zuzack
18. Breath, Eyes, Memory – Danticat
19. Breathing Lessons – Anne Tyler
20. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
21. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevski
22. Candide – Voltaire
23. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
24. Cat’s Cradle – Vonnegut
25. Cold Mountain – Charles Frazier
26. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
27. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
28. The Confessions of Nat Turner – William  Styron
29. Copper Sun – Draper
30. Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
31. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Haddon
32. David Copperfield – Chalres Dickens
33. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
34. East of Eden – John Steinbeck
35. Empire Falls – Richard Russo
36. The Executioner’s Song – Norman Mailer
37. Fat Kid Rules the World – Going
38. Fast Food Nation – Schlosser
39. Feed – Anderson, M.T.
40. Foreign Affairs – Alison Lurie
41. Freewill – Lynch, C.
42. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
43. Friday Night Lights – Bissinger
44. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
45. Gilead – Marilynne Robinson
46. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
47. Going After Cacciato – Tim O’Brien
48. The Golden Compass – Pullman
49. The Good Earth – Pearl S. Buck
50. A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain – Robert Olen Butler
51. A Great and Terrible Beauty – Bray
52. Griffin and Sabine – Bantock
53. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
54. Gurtrude and Claudius – John Updike
55. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
56. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
57. Heavier Than Heaven – Cross
58. The Highest Tide – Lynch, J.
59. Hole in My Life – Gantos
60. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
61. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
62. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
63. The House of Scorpion – Farmer
64. How I Live Now – Rosoff
65. Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
66. In the Time of the Butterflies – Julia Alvarez
67. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
68. In the Shadow of the Wind – Zafon
69. Independence Day – Richard Ford
70. Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri
71. The Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
72. Ironweed – William Kennedy
73. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
74. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
75. The Killer Angels – Michael Shaara
76. King Dork – Portman
77. The Known World – Edward P. Jones
78. A Lesson Before Dying – Ernest Gaines
79. The Life of Pi – Martel
80. The Life All Around Me – Gibbon
81. Lonesome Dove – Larry Mcmurtry
82. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
83. A Map of the World – Jane Hamilton
84. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
85. March – Geraldine Brooks
86. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
87. The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
88. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
89. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
90. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love – Oscar Hijuelos
91. March Toward Thunder – Bruchac
92. Middle Passage – Johnson
93. The Mother Tongue – Bryson
94. My Antonia – Willa Cather
95. My Forbidden Face:  Growing Up Under the Taliban – Latifa
96. Native Son – Richard Wright
97. A Northern Light – Donnelly
98. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
99. Obasan – Joy Kogawa
100. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
101.  The Optimist’s Daughter – Eudora Welty
102. Out of Africa – Isaak Dinesen
103. O Pioneers! – Willa Cather
104. Parable of the Sower – Butler
105. The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Chbosky
106. Persepolis – Satrapi
107. The Plague – Albert Camus
108. The Power of One – Courtenay
109. The Pox Party – M.T. Anderson
110. Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
111. Prep – Sittenfeld
112. The Professor and the Madman – Winchester
113. Rabbit Is Rich – John Updike
114. Ragtime – E. L. Doctorow
115. The Red Tent – Diamant
116. Rebecca – DuMaureir
117. The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
118. Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
119. The Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
120. The Right Stuff – Wolfe
121. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
122. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
123. Rabbit, Run – John Updike
124. Salt:  A World History – Kurlansky
125. The Secret Life of Bees – Kidd
126. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
127. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
128. Shopgirl – Martin
129. Speak – Anderson
130. A Spot of Bother – Haddon
131. The Stone Angel – Margaret Laurence
132. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
133. A Summons To Memphis – Peter Taylor

134.    The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

135.    A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

136.    Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker

137.    Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

138.    Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

139.    Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

140.    This Boy’s Life – Wolff

141.    A Thousand Acres – Jane Smiley

142.    To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf

143.    Tom Jones – Henry Fielding

144.    Touching The Void – Simpson

145.    The Trial – Franz Kafka

146.    The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera

147.    Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

148.    Whale Talk – Crutcher

149.    The Woman Warrior – Maxine Hong Kingston

150.    Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte