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The Langley Read committee is just days away from making its final selection of the book that everybody will read over the summer. Ms. Pamela Douglas, the math department chair, led the Langley Read Committee in choosing eight finalists out of 250 suggestions. The suggestions ranged from Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James to Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
At the first meeting, the students and teachers were responsible for eliminating any of the 250 suggestions that they deemed as unsuitable for the Langley community.
“We went through the books and we just immediately said ‘this is not good.’ So afterwards we ended up with 140 books,” said Ms. Douglas. After deciding which books were unfitting, another meeting was set to assign students to read four books to read and review. The books were finally narrowed down to the following eight:
1. Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell (258 pages) – Nonfiction/ Travel Writing
Amazon rating: 4.1/5
Summary: Sarah Vowell, the voice of Violet Parr in the Incredibles, describes her vacation, in which she travels the monuments and historic sites related to Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, the assassinated Presidents of the United States. Her writing is humorous and rich in historic tales, reaching deep to find the politics behind the assassinations.
2. Lost City of Z by David Grann (448 pages) – Narrative nonfiction
Amazon rating: 4.2/5
Summary: In 1925, British explorer Percy Fawcett made a journey into the Amazon Jungle in search of a lost ancient city. He did not return, and neither did the people who explored in vain for him and the city.
3. The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens by Brooke Hauser (336 pages) – Narrative nonfiction
Amazon rating: 4.8/5
Summary: From more than 45 nations and speaking 25 to 30 different languages, the students at Brooklyn’s International High School are new to America. Hauser chronicles their stories, from the first day of their school to the relationship between students from warring nations.
4. The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore (272 pages) – Memoir
Amazon rating: 4.3/5
Summary: Two boys named Wes Moore grow up without fathers in a Baltimore neighborhood in harsh situations, including encounters with the police. One of the boys ended up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated veteran, White House fellow and business leader, while the other became a convicted murderer serving life in jail. Through alternating narratives, the book entails the story of a generation of boys trying to find their pathways in a hostile world.
5. Until Tuesday by Luis Carlos Montalvan (288 pages) – Memoir
Amazon rating: 4.8/5
Summary: Captain Montalvan suffers from physical wounds and post traumatic stress disorder after his service at Iraq. However, Tuesday, a golden retriever, a service dog, comes into his life. Tuesday, like Montalvan, has a hurt soul. This book is about how two lives convene to heal each other, and how much a true friendship can change attitudes towards living.
6. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (368 pages) – Memoir
Amazon rating: 4.2/5
Summary: Upon the approaching of Hurricane Katrina, a wife evacuates her house with her four children, leaving her husband to work on their family business. The husband travels the city in a canoe after the storm, helping animals and the elderly. Then, he is arrested with police armed with M-16’s, accused of being part of Al Queda. This is a story of a real American family, torn apart due to two key issues of Bush administration: Hurricane Katrina and War on Terror.
7. The Cardturner by Louis Sachar (352 pages) – Fiction
Amazon rating: 4.3/5
Summary: Alton Richards, a rising senior in high school, has a bleak future ahead of him. His girlfriend dumped him, he has no money and his parents demand that he drive his rich grandfather, Lester, to his bridge game four times a week to be his cardturner. In this realistic fiction novel, Alton learns that being a cardturner for his grandfather is actually an amazing experience.
8. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (192 pages) – Fiction
Amazon rating: 4.4/5
Summary: Ever since a traumatic brain injury, “the Professor” (his real name is never given) has only eight minutes of short-term memory every day. And all of a sudden, a young housekeeper with a ten year-old son is sent to care for the professor. Every day, due to the lack of memory, the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced “for the first time” as if they’ve never seen each other before.
Reporting by Neeka Eghbali, Katherine Rohloff, Daniel Levetown, Brandon Arcari, Sabir Hathiramani and Bijan Todd