Summer Reading Book Club List - The Kiski School

2013 Summer Book Club list ­­ Kiski School
Title/author Description Discussion leader
1 Emperor Mollusk versus
the Sinister Brain
by A. Lee Martinez
Intergalactic Menace. Destroyer of Worlds. Conqueror of
Other Worlds. Mad Genius. Ex­Warlord of Earth. Not bad
for a guy without a spine.
But what's a villain to do after he's done . . . everything.
With no new ambitions, he's happy to pitch in and solve
the energy crisis or repel alien invaders should the need
arise, but if he had his way, he'd prefer to be left alone to
explore the boundaries of dangerous science. Just as a
hobby, of course.
Retirement isn't easy. But Mollusk isn't about to let the
Earth slip out of his own tentacles and into the less
capable clutches of another. So it's time to dust off the old
death ray and come out of retirement. Except this time,
he's not out to rule the world. He's out to save it from the
peril of THE SINISTER BRAIN!
Mr. Vince Kwiatek
2 Francona: The Red Sox
Years
by Terry Francona and
Don Shaughnessy
In Francona: The Red Sox Years, the decorated manager
opens up for the first time about his tenure in Boston,
unspooling the narrative of how this world­class
organization reached such incredible highs and dipped to
equally incredible lows. But through it all, there was
always baseball, that beautiful game of which Francona
never lost sight.
Mr. Chris Spahn
3 Maze Runner
by James Dashner
Thomas wakes up in an elevator, remembering nothing
but his own name. He emerges into a world of about 60
teen boys who have learned to survive in a completely
enclosed environment, subsisting on their own
agriculture and supplies from below. They are trying to
find a way to escape through a maze that surrounds their
living space and have begun to give up hope. Then a
comatose girl arrives with a strange note, and their world
begins to change.
Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins
4 Yellow Birds A novel written by a veteran of the war in Iraq, The Yellow Mrs. Judy McAtee

2013 Summer Book Club list ­­ Kiski School
by Kevin Powers
Birds is the harrowing story of two young soldiers trying
to stay alive.
5 Perks of Being a
Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky
Charlie is a freshman. And while he's not the biggest geek
in the school, he is by no means popular. He's a
wallflower­­shy and introspective, and intelligent beyond
his years, if not very savvy in the social arts. We learn
about Charlie through the letters he writes to someone of
undisclosed name, age, and gender. Charlie encounters
the same struggles that many kids face in high
school­­how to make friends, the intensity of a crush,
family tensions, a first relationship, exploring sexuality,
experimenting with drugs­­but he must also deal with his
best friend's recent suicide.
Mr. Brad Kwiatek
6 Why I Write
by George Orwell
Whether puncturing the lies of politicians, wittily
dissecting the English character or telling unpalatable
truths about war, Orwell's timeless, uncompromising
essays are more relevant, entertaining and essential than
ever in today's era of spin.
Mr. Rob Howard
7 A Sorrow in Our Hearts After more than 25 years of research, the author felt free Mr. Charles Moore

2013 Summer Book Club list ­­ Kiski School
by Allan Eckert
to recreate Shawnee Chief Tecumseh's conversations
and thoughts in what proves to be an entertaining blend of
fact and fiction.
8 Uncommon Carriers
by John McPhee
This is a book about people who drive trucks, captain
ships, pilot towboats, drive coal trains, and carry lobsters
through the air: people who work in freight transportation.
John McPhee rides from Atlanta to Tacoma alongside Don
Ainsworth, owner and operator of a sixty­five­foot,
five­axle, eighteen­wheel chemical tanker carrying
hazmats­­in Ainsworth's opinion "the world's most
beautiful truck," so highly polished you could part your
hair while looking at it.
Mr. Charles Shepard
9 Jasper Jones
by Craig Silvey
Charlie Bucktin, a bookish thirteen year old, is startled
one summer night by an urgent knock on his bedroom
window. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in their
small mining town, and he has come to ask for Charlie's
help. Terribly afraid but desperate to impress, Charlie
follows Jasper into the night, and witnesses Jasper's
horrible discovery.
Ms. Sandy Acquard
10 Run or Die
by Kilian Jornet
An exceptional athlete. A hero. An extraordinary person.
Kilian Jornet is a world champion ultra­runner, and before
Mr. Peter Buckland

2013 Summer Book Club list ­­ Kiski School
age 25 had conquered some of the toughest physical
tests on the planet. He has gone up and down Kilimanjaro
faster than any other human being, and struck down
world records in every challenge that has been proposed.
11 Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
"A story that will make you believe in God," as one
character says. Pi Patel spends a beguiling boyhood in
Pondicherry, India, as the son of a zookeeper. In his 16th
year, Pi sets sail with his family and some of their
menagerie to start a new life in Canada. Halfway to
Midway Island, the ship sinks into the Pacific, leaving Pi
stranded on a life raft with a hyena, an orangutan, an
injured zebra and a 450­pound Bengal tiger named
Richard Parker.
Mr. Andy Scott
12 Bottom of the 33rd: hope,
redemption and
baseball’s longest game
by Dan Barry
From Pulitzer Prize­winning New York Times columnist
Dan Barry comes the beautifully recounted story of the
longest game in baseball history—a tale celebrating not
only the robust intensity of baseball, but the aspirational
ideal epitomized by the hard­fighting players of the minor
leagues.
Mr. Jaye Beebe
13 Outliers: The Story of
Success
by Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey
through the world of "outliers"­­the best and the brightest,
the most famous and the most successful. He asks the
Mr. and Mrs. Kokozska

2013 Summer Book Club list ­­ Kiski School
question: what makes high­achievers different? His
answer is that we pay too much attention to what
successful people are like, and too little attention to
where they are from: that is, their culture, their family,
their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of
their upbringing.
14 Defending Jacob
by William Landay
Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his
suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty
years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the
courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and
son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their
New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens
next: His fourteen­year­old son is charged with the
murder of a fellow student.
Mr. and Mrs. Lombardo
15 Clemente
by David Maraniss
Anyone who saw Clemente, as he played with a beautiful
fury, will never forget him. He was a work of art in a game
too often defined by statistics. During his career with the
Pittsburgh Pirates, he won four batting titles and led his
team to championships in 1960 and 1971, getting a hit in
all fourteen World Series games in which he played. His
career ended with three­thousand hits, and he and the
immortal Lou Gehrig are the only players to have the
five­year waiting period waived so they could be
enshrined in the Hall of Fame immediately after their
deaths.
Mr. Mark Orsatti
16 Death’s Acre by Dr. Bill
Bass and Jon Jefferson
Dr. Bill Bass, one of the world's leading forensic
anthropologists, gained international attention when he
built a forensic lab like no other: The Body Farm. Now, this
master scientist unlocks the gates of his lab to reveal his
Mrs. Amy Perry

2013 Summer Book Club list ­­ Kiski School
most intriguing cases­and to revisit the Lindbergh
kidnapping and murder, fifty years after the fact.
17 The Plague Year by
Edward Bloor
It starts small, with petty thefts of cleaning supplies and
Sudafed from the supermarket where Tom works. But the
plague picks up speed, tearing through his town with a
ferocity and velocity that surprises everyone. By year's
end there will be ruined, hollow people on every street
corner. Meth will unmake the lives of friends and teachers
and parents. It will fill the prisons, and the morgues.
Mr. and Mrs. Muster
18 No Easy Day: The first
hand account of the
mission that Killed Osama
Bin Laden
by Mark Owen and Kevin
Maurer
From the streets of Iraq, and from the mountaintops of
Afghanistan to the third floor of Osama Bin Laden’s
compound, operator Mark Owen of the U.S. Naval Special
Warfare Development Group­­commonly known as SEAL
Team Six­­ has been a part of some of the most
memorable special operations in history, as well as
countless missions that never made headlines.
Mrs. Leslie Poston
19 Dear Marcus: A Letter to
the Man who Shot Me
by Jerry McGill
Jerry McGill was thirteen years old, walking home through
the projects of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, when he
was shot in the back by a stranger. Jerry survived,
Mr. Andy Muffley

2013 Summer Book Club list ­­ Kiski School
wheelchair­bound for life; his assailant was never caught.
Thirty years later, Jerry wants to say something to the
man who shot him.
20 Finish This Book
by Keri Smith
One dark and stormy night, author Keri Smith found some
strange scattered pages abandoned in a park. She
collected and assembled them, trying to solve the
mystery of this unexpected discovery, and now she's
passing the task on to you, her readers.
Your mission is to become the new author of this work.
Mr. and Mrs. Kapustik
21 Guns, Germs and Steel
by Jared Diamond
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Diamond’s writes a brilliant
work answering the question of why the peoples of
certain continents succeeded in invading other continents
and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition
includes a new chapter on Japan and all­new illustrations
drawn from the television series.
Mr. T.J. Stock
22 Ender’s Game
by Orson Scott Card
In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile
alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child
geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy,
Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant
Mr. Josh Sunday

2013 Summer Book Club list ­­ Kiski School
parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he
loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter
and Valentine were candidates for the soldier­training
program but didn't make the cut­­young Ender is the
Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous
military training.
23 Neverwhere
by Neil Gaiman
Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an
ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to
help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His
small act of kindness propels him into a world he never
dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the
cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he
must learn to survive in this city of shadows and
darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if
he is ever to return to the London that he knew.
Mr. Patrick Link
24 The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman
It takes a graveyard to raise a child.
Nobody Owens, known as Bod, is a normal boy. He would
be completely normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being
raised by ghosts, with a guardian who belongs to neither
the world of the living nor the dead. There are adventures
in the graveyard for a boy.
Ms. Kim Conover­Loar
25 Proof of Heaven: A
Neurosurgeon’s Journey
into the Afterlife
by Dr. Even Alexander
Thousands of people have had near­death experiences,
but scientists have argued that they are impossible. Dr.
Eben Alexander was one of those scientists. A highly
trained neurosurgeon, Alexander knew that NDEs feel
real, but are simply fantasies produced by brains under
Mr. Adam Schapiro

2013 Summer Book Club list ­­ Kiski School
extreme stress. Then, Dr. Alexander’s own brain was
attacked by a rare illness. While his body lay in coma,
Alexander journeyed beyond this world into the deepest
realms of super­physical existence. Today Alexander is a
doctor who believes that true health can be achieved only
when we realize that God and the soul are real and that
death is not the end of personal existence but only a
transition.
26 Stiff
by Mary Roach
Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of
the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. In this
fascinating, ennobling account, Mary Roach visits the
good deeds of cadavers over the centuries—from the
anatomy labs and human­sourced pharmacies of
medieval and nineteenth­century Europe to a human
decay research facility in Tennessee, to a plastic surgery
practice lab, to a Scandinavian funeral directors'
conference on human composting. In her droll, inimitable
voice, Roach tells the engrossing story of our bodies
when we are no longer with them.
Mrs. Megan Neumeister
27 What Makes You Tic?
by Marc Elliot
"What Makes You Tic?" chronicles Marc's incredible
journey growing up with two major health defects: an
intestinal disease and Tourette syndrome. Through his
raw openness, candid stories and hilarious anecdotes,
Marc reveals what it was like growing up as the boy who
always stood out, who never fit in, and who always
annoyed people, despite wanting more than anything else
to be normal. Drawing on his experiences of being so
different, he shares his lessons on tolerance, which have
made him a wildly popular inspirational speaker. His
message is sure to help us all take a deep breath, relax
and have a good laugh. The peace of mind he has
discovered is infectious.
Mrs. Carla Ross
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