Reading
No.
1
2
Title
Author
Year
Written
The Jilting of
Granny
Weatherall
Katherine
Anne
Porter
1935
Lenny Loves
Eunice (excerpt
from SSTLS)
Gary
Shteyngart
2010
A Rose For
Emily
William
Faulkner
1930
Diary of a
Madman
Lu Xun
1918
How to Tell a
True War Story
Tim
O’Brien
1990
The Looking
Glass
Anton
Chekhov
1885
The Ice Man
Haruki
Murakami
2006
“Repent,
Harlequin!”
Said the
Ticktockman
Harlan
Ellison
1965
Happy Endings
Margaret
Atwood
1983
August 2026:
There Will
Come Soft
Rains
Ray
Bradbury
1950
The Machine
Stops
E.M.
Forster
1906
A Good Man is
Hard to Find
Signs and
Flannery
O’Connor
Vladimir
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
English IV Independent Reading List (Suggested)
Summary
The story takes place in Granny Weatherall's bedroom, but most of the action occurs in her head. It is the
story of the last day for the eighty year old woman, and she ponders her children and her life in her head
while she lays in bed. As she nears death, she recollects important events in her life including the jilting
that took place when she was young and about to marry a man named George.
The novel takes place in a near-future dystopian New York where life is dominated by media and retail.
The story opens with a brief first-person account of the funeral of Emily Grierson, an elderly Southern
spinster. It then proceeds in a nonlinear fashion to the narrator's recollections of Emily's archaic and
increasingly insane behavior throughout the years. Emily is a member of a family in the antebellum
Southern aristocracy; after the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times.
Diary of a Madman centers on the life of Poprishchin, a low-ranking civil servant and titular counsellor
who yearns to be noticed by a beautiful woman, the daughter of a senior official, with whom he has fallen
in love. His diary records his gradual slide into insanity. As his madness deepens, he begins to suspect
two dogs of having a love affair and believes he has discovered letters sent between them.
O’Brien uses examples of tales from his fellow soldiers to illustrate the fact that truth is a delicate and
malleable thing when it comes to telling war stories. After all, anything can be faked... but generally, only
the worst events can be proven real. He concludes that in the end, the truth of a story doesn’t matter so
much as what the story is trying to say.
A marriage-obsessed young woman begins to see her future life being played out in her looking glass in
this short tale.
In "The Ice Man," a young woman, naturally enough, falls in love with a man of ice much to her family's
dismay, "And listen, they went on, he's an Ice Man, so what happens if he melts. ... How can an Ice Man
possibly fulfill his responsibilities as a husband?"
The story is a satirical look at a dystopian future in which time is strictly regulated and everyone must do
everything according to an extremely precise time schedule. In this future, being late is not merely an
inconvenience, but a crime. The crime carries a hefty penalty in that a proportionate amount of time is
"revoked" from one's life. The ultimate consequence is to run out of time and be "turned off".
'Happy Endings' is one of Margaret Atwood's most frequently-anthologized stories because it is so
unusual. In content, it is a powerful observation on life. The story is broken up into six possible life
scenarios plus some concluding remarks. In scenario A, John meets Mary and they have a perfect life,
living together devotedly until they die.
What happens to humanity and society after a nuclear detonation?
1953
1948
Anybody who uses the Internet should read E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops. It is a chilling, short story
masterpiece about the role of technology in our lives. Written in 1909, it's as relevant today as the day it
was published.
A manipulative grandmother is at the center of this tragic and shocking story about coming to terms with
who you really are.
First published in The New Yorker, this short story tells the sad tale of an elderly couple and their
14
15
16
17
Symbols
A Sound of
Thunder
When It
Snowed in
Kitabamba
Nabokov
Ray
Bradbury
Americo
Paredes
1994
Woman
Hollering Creek
Sandra
Cisneros
1991
The Lone
Ranger and
Tonto Fistfight
in Heaven
Sherman
Alexie
1952
1993
18
19
20
Sonny’s Blues
James
Baldwin
1957
This Way for
the Gas, Ladies
and Gentleman
Tadeusz
Borowski
1948
Cathedral
Raymond
Carver
1981
Battle Royal
Ralph
Ellison
1952
Babylon
Revisted
F. Scott
Fitzgerald
1931
Look on the
Bright Side
Dagoberto
Gilb
1993
21
22
23
24
25
26
Interpreter of
Maladies
Where Are You
Going, Where
Have You
Been?
Not Human
Jhumpa
Lahri
1999
Joyce
Carol
Oates
1966
Etgar
1994
mentally ill son.
This work is the most re-published sci-fi short story of all time, documenting with great aplomb the
devastating consequences of the "butterfly effect."
This story takes place in U.S. occupied Japan right after WWII. The main character is a young Mexican
American solider attemping to make sense out of his strict, but eccentric commander.
"Woman Hollering Creek", is about a Mexican woman, named Cleófilas, who marries Juan Pedro
Martínez Sánchez. After moving across the border to Seguín, Texas her hopes of having a happy
marriage, like the characters she watches in the telenovelas, are dashed.
Caught up in his daily frustration, Victor remembers the part of his life when he was married to a white
woman and living a life outside the reservation and his Indian self.
The story opens with the narrator, who reads about his younger brother named Sonny who has been
caught in a heroin bust. The narrator then goes about his day; he is a teacher at a school in Harlem.
However, he cannot get his mind off Sonny. He thinks about all the boys in his class, who don’t have
bright futures and are most likely doing drugs, just like Sonny. After school, he meets a friend of Sonny’s,
who tells him that they will lock him up and make him detox, but eventually he will be let out and be all
alone.
This story is part of a larger anthology. The book, as a whole, paints a dramatic picture of the way the
Jews who came to Auschwitz were treated. Short stories additionally address the way of life in these
concentration camps for both the prisoners and, to some extent, the leaders. Other stories tell the
struggles faced by those who survive the concentration camps once they return to life outside the camps.
“Cathedral” opens with the narrator telling the reader in a conversational tone that a blind friend of his
wife’s is coming to visit them. The narrator is clearly unhappy about the upcoming visit.
"Battle Royal", a short story by Ralph Ellison, written in 1952. It is a story about a young black man, who
has recently graduated high school. He lives in the south and is invited to give a speech at a gathering of
the towns leading white citizens. Where he was told to take part in a battle royal, with nine other black
men.
The story is set in the year after the stock market crash of 1929, just after what Fitzgerald called the
"Jazz Age". Brief flashbacks take place in the Jazz age itself. Much of it is based on the author's own
experiences
In Dagoberto Gilb’s short story entitled Look on the Bright Side, a Mexican immigrant and his family are
living in the “enlightened” city of Los Angles in a broken down apartment. The family rents from a
scrupulous landlord, Mrs. Kevovian, who despite faulty plumbing and cockroach infestation, decides to
illegally raise the rent.
The story covers Gilb’s humor and ability to capture life’s everyday hassles.
The Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of nine short stories that explore themes of identity, the
immigrant experience, cultural differences, love, and family. The characters are largely Indian or IndianAmerican and their stories together paint an evocative picture of India's diaspora.
This short story was inspired by the murders committed in Tucson, Arizona, by serial killer Charles
Schmid.
This story takes place during the second intifada between Isreal and Palestine.
27
Beings
The Ones Who
Walk Away
From Omelas
Keret
Invasion From
Outer Space
Steven
Milauser
2009
Shoeless Joe
Jackson
Comes to Iowa
W.P.
Kinsella
1979
Ursula
LeGuin
1973
28
29
30
Blood Burning
Moon
Jean
Toomer
1923
Paradise exists only because the suffering of one human being. This story presents the reader with the
ultimate moral dilemma…would you sacrifice everyone’s happiness for the sake of one human being?
So there’s this arrival from out of space. It turns out to be a dusting of single-celled organisms that
reproduce in sunlight at an amazing rate. The people are curious, of course, but are warned to stay away
from them. But they keep growing and the mounds rise “like bread”. The people are being lulled to sleep,
but there’s danger in the bread. What is it? It could be anything.
Kinsella mixes fictional characters, baseball legends, and historical characters to present the story of Joe
Jackson.
"Blood-Burning Moon" is exemplary of Toomer's theme of African-American identity and his setting of
rural Southern life during segregation. It tells the story of the conflict between Bob Stone, a white man,
and Tom Burwell, an African American, who are rivals for the affection of Louisa, a light-skinned AfricanAmerican woman. During the course of one evening, each man learns of the other's relationship with
Louisa.