Showing posts with label Adult/high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adult/high school. Show all posts

Jane Eyre

Title: Jane Eyre
Author: Charlotte Bronte
ISBN: 0451526554


Plot Summary: Jane Eyre, an intelligent, headstrong girl, is orphaned at a young age. After living with unsympathetic relatives for a while, she is shunted off to an even worse girl's boarding school, where living conditions only improve after a fellow student dies. When Jane comes of age, she seeks employment as a governess, ending up in the employ of the mysterious yet oddly compelling Mr. Rochester. Although she initially develops romantic feelings for her employer, she comes to realize that there are some extremely dark secrets in his past. It is only after a great deal of soul-searching, life decisions, and various personal tragedies that Jane and Mr. Rochester are reunited - but if they are to remain together, Jane must be able to do so on her own terms.

The Lovely Bones

Title: The Lovely Bones
Author: Alice Sebold
ISBN: 1600240682 (Audio Book)
Narrator: Alice Sebold

Plot Summary: Susie Salmon is a teenager living in a suburb of Philadelphia. When she is brutally raped and murdered by a neighbor, her family must cope with their grief, loss, and determination to find Susie's killer and bring him to justice. Susie is not her killer's first victim, but he has evaded capture for many years, and this time is no exception, although he is eventually met with a form of justice. While all this is taking place, Susie watches her family's goings-on from heaven, eventually witnessing their slow rebirth as a functional family unit, and the continuation of life in the form of her sister's child.


The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Author: Mark Haddon
ISBN: 0385512104


Plot Summary: An autistic English teenage boy discovers his neighbor's dog dead in his yard. The boy, Christopher, is the initial suspect in the case, but decides to figure out for himself who actually killed the dog. During his investigation, he uncovers secrets about his family, neighbors, and surrounding world, and comes to a new understanding of himself and his place in the world.

The Kite Runner

Title: The Kite Runner
Author: Khaled Hosseini
ISBN: 1594480001

Plot Summary: Amir led a privileged life in Afghanistan prior to the Communist revolution: he and his father lived in a spacious villa with servants, and his father was a well-respected man in his community. Amir had an unequal yet genuine friendship with Hassan, the son of his father's servant. Yet when Hassan is brutally attacked by a group of boys, Amir stands by and does nothing, and later falsely accuses his friend of stealing, causing both him and his father to leave the estate, so that he will not have to feel guilty anymore. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Amir and his father have to leave the country, eventually moving to Fremont, California, where Amir meets and falls in love with a young woman from the local Afghan community. After his father's death, Amir gets a telephone call from an old family friend, asking him to come back to Afghanistan to rescue Hassan's son. In the process, Amir comes face to face with parts of his past that he would rather forget, and slowly tries to help his best friend's son begin the healing process.


Forever

Title: Forever
Author: Judy Blume
ISBN: 0671695304

Plot Summary: Katherine, a teenage girl, meets and falls in love with Michael, who is slightly older and more experienced. She has her first sexual experiences with him, as well as her first serious relationship, but when they are separated for the summer, she starts having feelings for Theo, an older tennis pro at her summer job. What impact will this have on Katherine and Michael's relationship - and will it really last forever?



Maus 1 & 2

Title: Maus 1 and 2
Author: Art Spiegelman
ISBN: B001G50SCS

Plot Summary: Art Spiegelman, a professional cartoonist, decides to record his aging father, Vladek's, stories about surviving the Holocaust. He intersperses his father's stories with scenes from the present of how his father is today, and Art's relationship with him. Throughout the book, the characters are anthropomorphized by nationality and ethnicity: Jewish characters are portrayed as mice; Germans as cats; Americans as dogs, and so forth. Although Vladek's stories "end" with his escape and survival, the fallout from the trauma he and his wife suffered reverberates long after they leave Auschwitz.


The Complete Persepolis

Title: The Complete Persepolis
Author: Marjane Satrapi
ISBN: 0375714839


Plot Summary: The first half of the book deal's with the author's life as a young girl in pre- and post-Revolution Iran, during the Iran-Iraq War, and as a student at a time when there were many restrictions on what female students could and could not do. Her parents, initially in favor of the Revolution, become disillusioned when the result is not the socialist government they had hoped for, and eventually send Marjane to Europe, as they feel it is too dangerous for her in Iran. The second half deals with Marjane struggling to adjust to life, love and school in Europe at a time when few people truly understood what was happening in her home country. When she returns home after a disastrous romance, she finds that she too has changed, and Iran is no longer the home she remembers. She still loves her parents and they her, but ultimately departs again for Europe, this time for good.