Hear from four English teachers and our contributor about some fall book recommendations.
English teacher Ms. Reagan Lattari recommends:
“Beartown” by Fredrik Backman (Simon & Schuster)
“It is a book that is very character driven. It tells a heartbreaking, beautiful story about a group of kids that want to get out of a town where they don’t have many options, and their only way out is through hockey. But the neighboring town also has a dominating hockey presence as well, and right at the beginning of the book, something awful happens with one of the boys on the better hockey team, and it tears the entire community apart,” Lattari said. “It’s the start of a trilogy, but you can absolutely read it as a standalone. People fall in love with the characters and will want to just continue to read about them.”
English teacher Mr. Chris McMahon recommends:
“The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles (Penguin Random House)
“The book is about a group of young people, roughly in their late teens and some a little bit younger,” McMahon said. “They travel from California all the way to New York, and the premise for this traveling is part of it involves leaving a past behind that they would like to keep behind them and start a new life. Part of it is trying to recapture part of a past that they long for, and part of it is also just about learning life and having adventures.”
English teacher Mr. Dan Peterson recommends:
“The Three-Body Problem” by Cixin Liu (Tor Publishing Group)
“It is about a scientist who kind of finds himself involved in an intergalactic conversation with aliens,” Peterson said. “The reason I like this book is because it stretches my mind to think about things in a totally different way. When I read this book for the first time, I just never really thought about some of the concepts in it, and it really just made me think differently about human beings and aliens and the universe and things like that.”
English teacher Mr. Kevin Haney recommends:
“Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson” by Mitch Albom (Doubleday)
“It’s the story of an ESPN writer who finds out that his favorite college professor is dying of ALS,” Haney said. “He called him up, asked if he could visit, figured it was going to be a one time visit, just to say goodbye and thank you for everything you did for me when I was younger. And that one visit turned into a series of visits every single Tuesday until the professor passed away.”
I recommend:
“The Inheritance Games” by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
This book is about a teenage girl named Avery who inherits billions of dollars from Tobias Hawthorne, someone she had never met before. However, to keep the money she must stay in his mansion for a year. This is difficult because the billionaire’s family are confused why she got the money and want it for themselves. Avery, who is shocked and confused, must work to discover why the money was left to her. I love this book because the plot and mysteries in it really captivated me.
