8 books that America's most prestigious private schools love to assign for summer reading
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Business Insider recently reached out to the most prestigious private schools in the US to obtain their summer reading lists, and we got hundreds of titles.
The works spanned centuries, genres, and continents, to appeal to a wide array of students' personal reading tastes.
However, of the hundreds of books we pored through, eight works kept showing up on multiple schools' lists.
"Catch-22," by Joseph Heller — 1961
AmazonRecommended at The College Preparatory School, Trinity School, and Choate Rosemary Hall.
From the book cover:
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy — it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service.
Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.
"The Catcher in the Rye," by J.D. Salinger — 1951
http://www.amazon.com/The-Catcher-Rye-J-D-Salinger/dp/0316769487Recommended at The Harker School and The Lawrenceville School.
From Barnes & Noble:
Ever since it was first published in 1951, this novel has been the coming-of-age story against which all others are judged. Read and cherished by generations, the story of Holden Caulfield is truly one of America's literary treasures.
"Cutting for Stone," Abraham Verghese — 2009
AmazonRecommended at The Lawrenceville School and Deerfield Academy.
From the book cover:
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.
Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, "Cutting for Stone" is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles--and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.
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