Warm Reads for Cold Winter Days

With the freedom to read what they wanted over Winter Break, my senior AP Lit students hit the stacks.

Here's a sampling of the books they read:

Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini

Psychopathy of Everyday Life by Freud

River’s End by Nora Roberts

Brain on Fire

Al Franken books

Great Tales of Horror

A Purpose Driven Life

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Kingdom of Ash by Sarah Maas

The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

Everyday

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

P.S. I Still Love You

Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Blood Oath

Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Hollow City

Library of Souls

Everybody, Always by Bob Goff

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Scythe

Talk Like Ted

Emergency Contact

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Wizard’s First Rule

Supersystem by Doyle Brunson

The Wrath and the Dawn

Dune

Streets for People

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

If you are looking for a new book, maybe consider one of these.  They come highly recommended.  Happy reading!

Love at First Line

In an attempt to entice students to pick up new books, I had them complete a Love at First Line assignment.  They randomly selected books, read the first line, and when they found one they found particularly titillating, they emailed me with the:

1. Book title
2. Author
3. Line


It looked like this:

Title: Afterparty

By: Ann Redisch Stampler 

First sentence: "It is not the ending I expected." 

In the end, we have a bunch of lines that are compelling (and hopefully will draw more readers to the stacks).  I plan to make a display outside of our classroom that highlights the selected lines--and feels Valentiney in some way.  😍

Here are some of my favorites that they sent me:

My whole Life, I’ve never been brave.

"The world was smoke"

"Today I have made a major decision: I am never going to die."

"It is not the ending I expected." 

"Saving the human race is a frantic business."

I need to tell this story quickly, or we're all going to die.

I like to save things.

Sometimes you have to lie.

The calendar said early March, but the smell in the air said late October. 

“I liked hurting girls.”

"2031 doesn't seem that long ago to me."

When Michael woke up he had a not-so-pleasant taste of bile rising in his throat.