(This is just for Voight to show off and, hopefully, inspire you to read. These are not necessarily reading suggestions; some works include mature language and themes.) You can find me on goodreads.
Summer 2024
Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer
Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
The Bird Hotel by Joyce Maynard
The Company of Demons by Michael Jordan (not THAT MJ!). The author lives in Rocky River!
James by Percival Everett
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson
The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell
The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christina Uss
Count the Ways by Joyce Maynard
Ferris by Kate DiCamillo
Summer 2023
Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Seating Arrangements
Hester
The Catcher in the Rye
Covenant of Water
I Have Some Questions for You
Summer 2022: I swear I read a ton...I just didn't list it.
Summer 2021
The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan
The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson
The Siren by Katherine St. John
Formation: A Woman's Memoir of Stepping Out of Line by Ryan Leigh Dostie
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (A story within a story within a story.)
Klara and the Sun by Kazua Ishiguro (An AF (artificial friend) is purchased by a chronically ill 14-year-old to act as her companion.)
We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry (A high school field hockey team invents their own form of witchcraft involving an Emilio Estevez notebook.)
Summer 2020: I set a new PR of 15!
Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (I read this almost every year.)
A Burning by Megha Majumdar
Grading Smarter, Not Harder by Myron Dueck
Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado
Devolution by Max Brooks
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Parakeet by Marie-Helene Bertino
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
Spring 2020
Other than reading class tests along with my students and the New Yorker, I didn't do much reading. I thought I'd fly through books over the closure, but I couldn't motivate. I'm back with a vengeance this summer though!
Summer 2019
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Ohio by Stephen Markley
Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon
Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Bear Town by Fredrik Backman
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
About Grace by Anthony Doerr
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Good Talk by Mira Jacob
Small Fry by Lisa Job
Spring Break 2019
In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
Every Note Played by Lisa Genova
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Summer 2018 (I beat my personal record with a total of 14.)
Seven Ways to Lie by Riley Redgate
I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Discipline in the Secondary Classroom (clearly nonfiction)
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - currently reading a.k.a. ignoring
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DeCamillo (children's book)
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
The World According to Garp by John Irving
Educated by Tara Westover (memoir)
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (young adult)
(Green's main character shares many of the obsessive-compulsive traits he himself has. I had the pleasure of hearing Green speak at the Writers Center State series where he read an excerpt from his then unpublished Turtles.)
Fall 2017/Winter & Spring 2018:
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry Gabrille Zevin
Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
The Travelling Wallabys by RRHS teachers and staff
Summer 2017:
Being Henry David by Cal Armistead
Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple
Tribe by Sebastian Junger
Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey
Amy & Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout (1st novel by author of Olive Kitteridge)
Christina's World by Christina Baker Kline
Today Will be Different by Maria Semple
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
Spring 2017
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hanna Tinti
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
Winter 2017
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon
The Guinevers by Sarah Domet
Commonwealth by Anne Patchett
Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan
Fall 2016
Britt Marie Was Here by Fredrick Backman
Tribe by Sebastian Junger
Summer 2016: I kicked my goal's--10 books in a summer--butt!
First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (This is in my all time top 5.)
Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler (modern rewrite of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew)
Heroes of the Frontier by Dave Eggers
Our Souls at Nighttime by Ken Haruf (author of the trilogy Plainsong, Eventide and Benediction)
I am Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (author of Olive Kitteridge) (I need at least 200 more pages of this book. It was SUPER!)
So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson (non-fiction) (Be careful on Twitter...)
Smoke by Dan Vyleta (What if our sins made smoke?)
The Girls by Emma Cline (unhappy 14-year-old becomes involved in Manson like cult)
The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan (East of Eden + horses + race in America + class in America)
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (YA novel)
Raymie Nightengale by Kate DiCamillo (YA novel) (Voight is cuckoo about this book!)
Spring 2016
We Are Water by Wally Lamb
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Ready Player One by Ernie Cline
Fall 2015
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee (re-read)
What Alice Forgot (Liane Moriarty)
Summer 2015: Goal = 10 books...9 was the reality. So close!
The State We're In (short story collection) by Anne Beattie
The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
Catcher in the Rye by John Steinbeck (re-read of an old favorite)
The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
Delicious Foods by James Hannaham (One of the narrators is crack...as in the drug. What?!?)
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Spring 2015
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
At the Water's Edge by Sara Gruen
The Lovesong of Queenie Hennessey by Rachel Joyce ("sequel" to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye)
Winter 2015
Formative Assessment
Readicide
Fall 2014
The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (re-reading for Honors 10) (currently reading)
House Rules by Jodi Picoult
Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult
Summer 2014
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (If you loved The Fault in Our Stars, read this!)
Brain on Fire Susanna Cahalan (non-fiction account of a young woman's "month of madness")
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt...771 pages...whew! (Tartt's The Little Friend is one of my favorite books.)
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba (non-fiction)
Empty Mansions by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr. (non-fiction)
ALL OF MY SUMMER READING ASSIGNED BOOKS, OF COURSE: Ender's Game, Stuck in Neutral, and Fahrenheit 451.