A Memory of Summer Reading

Memorial Day weekend is the beginning of summer, as far as I'm concerned. And summer reading is just the best; I love it when the newspapers and magazines come out with their reading lists.
During the year between my junior and senior years of high school, I read more great books in a single summer than anyone has a right to. I was dreading an excruciatingly boring summer in rural Louisiana, away from all my overachieving, boarding school friends. (To give you an idea, our unofficial class motto was, "We're not arrogant! We're just superior!")
I believe it was my mother, smart woman that she is, who suggested I go to my favorite English teacher and ask for a list of books to while away the summer.
Now this particular teacher remains my most favorite teacher ever in my life. He was quiet and stoic, and he talked very slowly. But in his own way, he was very passionate about the subject matter. Once, some smart-ass suggested that John Donne's A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning ("'Twere profanation of our joys/To tell the laity our love.") was about vampires. My teacher's response was to storm out of the classroom in a rage. We were all freaked out by that, but also very impressed.
So he gave me a list of great books to read over the break. And of course I decided my new goal in life would be to read the whole list.
I don't remember if I actually finished the list. I know I must have gotten pretty darn close, because I read and read and read some more. It was a good summer. I wish so badly I had kept that list, I can still see it written in his cramped handwriting.
Well, here's a partial list, strictly from memory, of some of the books I read that long ago, sweet summer.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Meridian by Alice Walker
My Antonia by Willa Cather
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy