Living Books List Read in High School

Living Books List

This post shows the list of living books that my son read while in high school. (For living books for the younger crowd, see this post on living picture books and starting a home library.)

Living books engage the reader and bring the subject to life. While often fiction, the subjects can include history, science, math, geography, and biographies – really, any subject CAN be a living book. Then again, almost any subject can be a dull, tedious textbook too.

Keep track of your book lists

If you love to read, try some living books of a different genre than you are used to. If you are homeschooling, be sure to keep track of the books read in high school – it becomes important if your child is considering college for transcript purposes. Believe me, if you don’t write it down, you won’t remember it later!

Actual list of living books read in high school

What follows is my voracious reader’s list of living books that he read while in high school, grouped into genres. Remember: many of these are classic books which you can find free on Kindle.

* Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, meaning that if you make a purchase after clicking through, SelfEducatingFamily will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Biographies

My older sons took a class in 9^th grade from the Ron Paul Curriculum which was called Classic Autobiographies. Many of the texts are available for free on Project Gutenburg. You can see our review of the Ron Paul Curriculum here.

Books

12 Years a Slave – Solomon Northup
A Bus of My Own – Jim Lehrer
My Life – Geronimo
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass – Frederick Douglass
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall – George Washington Plunkitt
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
The Autobiography of Mark Twain
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African
The Life of John Thompson, a Fugitive Slave: Containing His History of 25 Years in Bondage, and His Providential Escape
The Persecutor – Sergei Kourdakov,
The Story of My Life – Helen Keller
Up From Slavery – Booker T. Washington
Walden – Henry David Thoreau

Shakespeare

We use Charlotte Mason’s methods of homeschooling, so we studied between 2 and 4 Shakespeare plays per year. In addition, Shakespeare gets covered again in World Literature, so my son enjoyed a few bonus plays. Shakespeare is important to study for many reasons, including being able to use witticisms properly.

Shakespeare plays

For Shakespeare, we like to use the No Fear versions with modern English translations. Be careful though, since they will translate the bawdy parts which can be obscure in Shakespearean English, but are rather direct in modern English. We also have a Complete Works of Shakespeare on hand for the lesser available plays and other works.

Hamlet
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet
1st Henriad “Tetralogy”: Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 & 3 and Richard III
2nd “Tetralogy”: Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry V
Much Ado About Nothing
The Winter’s Tale
Midsummer’s Night Dream
The Taming of the Shrew
Comedy of Errors
Julius Caesar

By the way, we always enjoy watching these plays since they are, well… plays. When you get to the histories, you may want to try The Hollow Crown, a fantastic rendition of the tetralogy with superb performances. As always, preview for your family since there is much bloodshed in these histories.

Western Literature

We studied history and literature for the same time periods. It helps to reinforce the content. For instance, these were the classic literature books that my son read while studying Western Civilization.

Books

The Iliad and Odyssey – Homer
Oresteia – Aeschylus
The Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer
Paradise Lost – John Milton
The Faerie Queen – Spenser
Doctor Faustus – Christopher Marlow
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Three Musketeers / The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
1984 / Animal Farm– George Orwell
In the Penal Colony / Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
Treasure Island / Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarq

American Literature

So likewise, when studying American history, we read classic American authors.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Selected Tales – Edgar Allan Poe
Call of the Wild – London, Jack
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

Other Genres

Since my son was an avid reader, he read a large number of other books during his high school years. I told him to keep a list, and he would narrate the stories of the ones he liked best. Please note, high school books sometimes have language and situations which may not be appropriate for your youngest readers. Always do what works for your family.

Alexis de Tocqueville: On Democracy, Revolution and Society – edited by John Stone and Stephen Mennell
And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
Common Sense / The Rights of Man – Thomas Paine
The Road to Serfdom – F. A. Hayek
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie
Lord of the Rings Trilogy – JRR Tolkien
Origin of Species – Charles Darwin
Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Art of War – Sun Tzu
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
The Road / No Country for Old Men – Cormac McCarthy
The Social Contract – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Also (long) Excerpts

Some reading had to be shortened to keep up with the coursework. We filled out his reading list with very long excerpts to get a feel for the author and book or style if it was important to the era or genre, and if he wanted to finish the book later, that was up to him.