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Tenth Grade Outside Reading Requirement
The goal of Nathan Hale’s Outside Reading Requirement is twofold:
1) Allow students to feel inspired by reading and make it a habitual activity.
2) Challenge students to push themselves with more demanding texts and glean essential thinking, reading and grammatical skills.
To achieve the tenth grade Outside Reading Requirement, please fulfill the following criteria:
For A-Level Credit:
· Read 400+ pages of age-appropriate, challenging reading
· Do one or more book talk(s) with a teacher of your choice.
For Honors Credit:
· Read 800+ pages of challenging, college-bound reading
· Read one book from the honors reading list (counts as part of 800).
· Do a book talk with your LA teacher for the novel on the honors reading list.
· Other book talks can be accomplished with a teacher of your choice.
Not Sure What to Read?
Ask your teacher – We can help you find something you might enjoy!!
Language Arts Honors Reading List
Fall, 2004
NOTE: “*” indicates a relation to 1st quarter books, “**” indicates 2nd quarter relations.
Anthem Ayn Rand **
Ayn Rand's Anthem is about a man who escapes a society from which all individuality has been squeezed. Its allegory is crudely transparent, and the ideas have lost their political urgency. (The book was published in 1938, a decade before Orwell's 1984.) But Anthem provides a good introduction to Rand's philosophy of "objectivism," which is built on individuality, freedom, and reason.
Frankenstein Mary Shelley **
Inspired by a "waking dream," Mary Shelley set out to write a story that kindled "the mysterious fears of our nature." The story of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist obsessed with the desire to create life, and the monster he reanimates with electricity, lays bare the frailties -- both good and evil -- of the human heart. Frankenstein deserts his creature in horror, and the monster -- frightful, dangerous, abandoned, and yet longing for acceptance -- seems all too human in his yearning and isolation
1984 George Orwell **
In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.
We the Living, Ayn Rand **
An exploration of the eternal human struggle between the human individual and the state offers the first installment of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. "We The Living" is about the human spirit struggling to preserve its dignity, honor and benevolence - in circumstances which break and pulverize, embitter and malign it. It is about both, the vulnerability, and the indestructibility of the human spirit.
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury **
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."
The Sparrow Maria Doria Russell **
In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet which will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it will lead them to question the meaning of being "human." When the lone survivor of the expedition, Emilio Sandoz, returns to Earth in 2059, he will try to explain what went wrong... Words like "provocative" and "compelling" will come to mind as you read this shocking novel about first contact with a race that creates music akin to both poetry and prayer.
Memoirs of a Survivor Doris Lessing *
In a beleaguered city where rats and roving gangs terrorize the streets, where government has broken down and meaningless violence holds sway, a woman -- middle-aged and middle-class -- is brought a twelve-year-old girl and told that it is her responsibility to raise the child. This book, which the author has called "an attempt at autobiography," is that woman's journal -- a glimpse of a future only slightly more horrendous than our present, and of the forces that alone can save us from total destruction.
The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood **
In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right Schlafly/Falwell-type ideals have been carried to extremes in the monotheocratic government. The resulting society is a feminist's nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids, who turn their offspring over to the "morally fit" Wives. The tale is told by Offred (read: "of Fred"), a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells how the chilling society came to be. This powerful, memorable novel is highly recommended for most libraries. BOMC featured alternate.
All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque *
Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other--if only he can come out of the war alive.
Animal Farm, George Orwell * / **
When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power.