My HSC Reading List

HSC English Reading:

I do Anvanced English for my HSC so I have so many books I need to read for my exams! Some are required and some are related texts.

Area of Study: Belonging

 

A selection of poems by Emily Dickenson. This being our related text we have to read and analyse her poems. We also have to pick our own related texts. I choose 3 Willows by Ann Brashares and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

summer is a time to grow

seeds
Polly has an idea that she can't stop thinking about, one that involves changing a few things about herself. She's setting her sights on a more glamorous life, but it's going to take all of her focus. At least that way she won't have to watch her friends moving so far ahead.

roots
Jo is spending the summer at her family's beach house, working as a busgirl and bonding with the older, cooler girls she'll see at high school come September. She didn't count on a brief fling with a cute boy changing her entire summer. Or feeling embarrassed by her middle school friends. And she didn't count on her family at all. . .

leaves
Ama is not an outdoorsy girl. She wanted to be at an academic camp, doing research in an air-conditioned library, earning A's. Instead her summer scholarship lands her on a wilderness trip full of flirting teenagers, blisters, impossible hiking trails, and a sad lack of hair products.
It is a new summer. And a new sisterhood. Come grow with them.

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery.

So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jewish fist-fighter in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time

Module A: Texts in Time

Texts in time is the comparative study. We had Frankenstein and Blade Runner.

Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature's hideousness. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge against his creator, Frankenstein.

Frankenstein, an instant bestseller and an important ancestor of both the horror and science fiction genres, not only tells a terrifying story, but also raises rofound, disturbing questions about the very nature of life and the place of humankind within the cosmos: What does it mean to be human? What responsibilities do we have to each other? How far can we go in tampering with Nature? In our age, filled with news of organ donation genetic engineering, and bio-terrorism, these questions are more relevant than ever.

Blade Runner is a dystopic movie directed by Ridley Scott. Check out IMDB for reviews.

Module C: History and Memory

Module C has us view different ways real events, real people and real situations may be represented in different modes and media. I am currently studing The Fiftieth Gate and for my related texts, The book thief and The diary of a young girl.

A love story and a detective story, a study of history and of memory, this spellbinding new work explores a son′s confrontation with the terror of his parents′ childhood.

Moving from Poland and Germany to Jerusalem and Melbourne, Mark Raphael Baker travels across the silence of fifty years, through the gates of Auschwitz, and into a dark bunker where a little girl hides in fear. As he returns to scenes of his parents′ captivity, he struggles to unveil the mystery of their survival.

The Fiftieth Gate is a journey from despair and death towards hope and life; the story of a son who enters his parents′ memories and, inside the darkness, finds light.

The Diary of a Young Girl remains the single most poignant true-life story to emerge from the Second World War.

In July 1942 Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the horrors of Nazi occupation, hid in the back of an Amsterdam warehouse. Anne was thirteen when the family went into the Secret Annexe and, over the next two years, she vividly describes in her diary the frustrations of living in such confined quarters, the constant threat of discovery, the hunger and fear. Her diary ends abruptly when, in August 1944, she and her family were finally discovered by Nazis.

This book provides a deeply moving and unforgettable portrait of Anne Frank - an ordinary and yet an extraordinary teenage girl.

And finally.

Module B: Critical Study

We haven't done this one yet, it is going to be our last module. We will be reading Hamlet.

I hope this has helped all those students who are about to start their HSC and what Advanced English holds in store for you!

Stay tuned! Keely x