Summer Reading for the Boys

Over the summer the boys are expected to shift their brain’s gears toward the topics being discussed in the fall.  This fall we are looking at morals, cultural expectations, and meta-themes as cultures rise, fall, and merge. To this end we are looking at myths, rise of language (spoken and written), geological forms, archeologists, and historical texts. There are culturally important themes that were discussed last school year.  They are expected to be able to discuss them and realize their implications in literature and pop culture.

Summer reading list

HISTORY

Plato’s  Apology Crito and Phaedo or I. F. Stone’s The Trial of Socrates

Ovid or Tactius or Cicero  (Selections)

The Books of Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel, I and II Kings, I and II Chronicles (JV’s pick 1)

FICTION

John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress or John Milton’s Paradise Lost

Mary Renault’s  The King Must Die (AV’s pick 1)

Jane Walden’s  Favorite Folktales from Around the World (AV’s pick 2)

The Bhagavad Gita

NON-FICTION

Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth (JV’s pick 2)

Thor Heyerdahl’s  Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft

Thomas Lewis’  Lives of a Cell: Notes from a Biology Watcher (JV’s pick 3)

John McPhee’s  Rising from the PlanesAssembling California, and Basin and Range (AV’s pick 3)

Jeannine Davis-Kimball’s  Warrior Women: An Archeologist’s search for History’s Hidden Herroines

David Anthony’s  Horse, Wheel, Language:  How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

Andrew Robin’s The Story of Writing

You must also familiarize or review these works and mythologies and histories

Odyssey                                                           Homer
Romeo and Juliet                                          Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
Daedalus and Icarus                                   Bullfinch’s Greek Mythology
Prometheus
Eurydice and Orpheus
River Styx
Hercules
Persephone and Demeter
Theseus
Jason
The Journey of the Hero
Birth of Jesus                                                             Bible
Parable of the Prodigal Son
Lazarus
The temptation of Christ
Jesus in the desert
Sermon on the Mount
John the Baptist
Jordan River
Last Supper
Judas (the kiss)
The Creation
Adam and Eve
Cain and Abel
Noah’s Ark
David and Goliath
Moses
Ten Commandments
Exodus – the action
Abraham and Isaac
Jacob and Esau
The Tower of Babel
Samson and Delilah
Jonah and the Whale