Book Reports



You are required to do one book report due the last day of class. Select a book of about 150 to 300 pages which you have not read before. The book may be fiction, non-fiction or whatever. Find something that you are interested in and that you are likely to finish in time. You will have only about five weeks to finish. You should carry the book with you in class and be prepared to do some assignments based on the book.

First, select a book from these suggested authors:



The listed authors are merely suggestions, with the listed books only their best-known:
Tan The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife
Erdrich Love Medicine
Crichton Jurrasic Park, Terminal Man
Kingston The Woman Warrior
Walker The Color Purple
Terkel Working, Hard Times
Bradbury The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451
Christy Easy to Kill, Mysterious Affair of Style
Clark 2001 a Space Odyssey, The Sentinel
Clavel Shogun, Noble House
Crane The Red Badge of Courage
Hesse Siddhartha, Magister Ludi
Huxley Brave New World
Katzanzakis Zorba the Greek, Francis, The Last Temptation
Lee To Kill a Mockingbird
L'Engle A Wrinkle in Time
Lewis Suprised by Joy, Chronicles of Narnia
London The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf
McCaffrey Dragonquest, Dragonsong
Miller Canticle for Leibowitz
Orwell 1984, Animal Farm
Potok The Chosen, My Name is Asher Lev
Salinger Catcher in the Rye
Dickens A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol
Doyle The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Golding Lord of the Flies
Graves I, Claudius, Claudius the God
Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land
Heller Catch 22
Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
Saroyan Plays and Short Stories
Solzhenitsyn A Day in the Life of....., Gulag Archipelago
Steinbeck The Red Pony, the Grapes of Wrath
Swift Gulliver's Travels
Tolkien The Hobbit
Twain Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn
Uris Trinity, Exodus
Vonnegut God Bless You Mr.Rosewater, Slaughterhouse Five
Wambaugh The Blue Knight, The Choirboys
White Once and Future King


Next, do Internet Research Project #1:
Before you start your first book, you should do some research about the book. Look up biographical information on the Internet about the author of the book that you selected for your book report. If you can't find anything about the author, look for information about the book . If you can't find anything about the author, or the book, look for information about the subject. When you find some information, carefully screen the web pages to see if it is helpful and relevant. The idea is to find a little background about your author. This should help give you some insight into the book itself.

When you find a good page, record the URL (which means Universal Resource Locator) which is the Internet address which is in the Location box at the top of the page, for example "http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us" and print out a few pages from the material .

How to do it:

Go to google.com. Type the name of your author in the box. You'll get better results if you put the name between quote marks, i.e. "Mark Twain".

It may take a little time while the program searches the Internet for the information. It will let you know if it finds any information. If you were successful, scroll down the page and look at the various "hits" that the program has found. Tap on any of the underlined links to the hits. The program will bring you to that Internet site. Scan the material carefully to see if the information is relevant to your book. If so, write down the URL address (it should be in the "Location" box
above the buttons), and press the "Print" button and have the computer print the first few pages of the Internet site.

Either write the URL address on the print-out, or when you do the print page set-up, set it to print the location of the page on the top of the page. Put your name on the paper and turn it in to Mr.Doyle.

Next, read the book and write the report, using these
questions as your guide:

Use this format for the book report.

You may use the program "Microsoft Word" to write your report.

The book report should be about 4 to 6 pages long and be written in a simple, concise, clear style. It may be shorter if your ideas are complete and longer if you are not too wordy. Don't simply copy pages out of the book or quotes from the cover or pages from an internet web page, as some students have in the past. I prefer the work to be typed, double-spaced with writing on only one side of the paper, but your neat handwriting or printing in black or blue ink is acceptable.

You should thoroughly answer these questions:
1. What is the name of the book? Who is the author? Who is the publisher? How many pages are in the book? These questions should be answered in one or two complete sentences. You don't need to rewrite the question; simply number the answer.

2. What kind of book is it? Fiction? Non-fiction? Biography? Argumentation? This is a couple of sentences long. Say what makes it "fiction" or "non-fiction".

3. How many days did it take you to read this book? This is about one sentence.

4. Who are the top three or four characters? Tell me about them. Why are they important? List them and say a little about each one. This could be about a half a page to over a page long.


5. Tell me what the book is about. Summarize the plot . Use your own words and ideas to describe the story. If the book is a collection of short stories, pick the three best and explain their plots. If the book is not fiction, explain the main idea and the supporting details or arguments. If it is organized historically, give a list of the important events in the text. This could run from one and a half page to several pages. Don't make it too long or too short; you don't need to explain every little detail in the plot).

6. Now give me some analysis of the book. Tell me why you liked or did not like it. Was it too hard or easy to understand? Was the vocabulary too hard? Would you recommend it to a friend. Did you see a movie or video of the book? How is it different from the real book? How would you judge the author? Was the story something you could relate to or was it not connected to your real life? This could be one to several pages. Don't forget this part. Most students do well on the summary of the book (question#5) but only write a few sentences for this question. Do a good analysis.