AP Literature and Composition
Summer Assignment
Welcome to AP Lit! I’m excited that you’ve all chosen to challenge yourself, and I hope that we’ll all have a fantastic year together. The first key to a successful year is to ensure you guys all keep practicing your critical reading skills over the summer. I would hate for your brains to atrophy! =) It is vital that you complete all parts of this summer assignment as our first few weeks of class (and therefore a large chunk of your first quarter grade) will be dealing with the books you read this summer and the notes you take over them. You’ve all earned a well-deserved break, and I sincerely hope you enjoy your summer. Just do yourself a favor and don’t put this all off until August. You’ll want to kick yourself if you have to spend the last two weeks of break doing homework instead of enjoying your last summer hurrahs.
The Assignment:
Choose a book (actually, two): I have attached a reading list taken from previous AP Lit and Comp tests. Your assignment for this summer is to read two of these works. You have many titles and authors to choose from, some of which may be unfamiliar to you. Reading some reviews (Amazon’s a great source) may help you narrow down your options to something you’ll find interesting. The books on this list are probably not the type of books you would typically choose for some light, vacation reading. However, they serve a few important purposes:
- They are a sampling of the types of texts we’ll be reading, discussing, and writing about next year.
- They provide you with enough depth and complexity to get you thinking about theme and the elements used to express it.
- They begin/add to your literary storehouse of knowledge which you’ll need to pull from if you take the AP exam next spring.
Complete a reading journal for each: In order to get the most out of your reading (and make your fall assignments much easier), make sure you’re an active reader of these books. As you read, complete a formal reading journal for each book with the following categories: character development and function, motifs, rhetorical devices/word choice, setting significance, and form/structure. I would recommend a couple of pages of notes for each category. Track important details that relate to each category (be sure to mark page numbers!), pose questions you have as you read, and reflect and synthesize your understanding of the function and significance of these details once you’ve finished the book. Basically, do the same thing you did for The Sound and the Fury but with my categories rather than the ones you chose on your own. These notes should be ample proof that you have carefully read the work. Do not summarize the plot!
Write a final response: Write a one-page response as soon as possible after you finish each book. This is just an informal, first person reaction to the novel. Did you like it? Why or why not? What did you find to be interesting in the text as a whole? There are really no rules for a response; it’s just a chance for you to collect your thoughts on the entire piece and vent your excitement, frustration, or questions. I would also like to see your beginning thoughts about the author’s point (theme).
Your reading journal and responses will be due the first day of class—make sure to bring them with you! Structured writing assignments and an oral presentation will follow.
Other Important Information:
Textbook: Next year' textbook will hopefully be a new one. We have been using the RED 6th edition of The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing edited by Michael Meyer. If you already have a copy of it (from a sibling or friend), don't get rid of it! But also, don't buy a copy from someone as we should be getting an upgrade to the new 10th edition. You are not required to purchase your own textbook, but many AP students find it valuable and convenient to do so because it allows them to annotate the texts we read. If you decide that you'd like to own your own copy of our textbook for next year, please wait until AFTER SCHOOL starts in the FALL before doing so. That way you'll be assured of getting the correct edition.
Summer Contact Info: If you have questions over the summer about the course, your books, or the assignments, please feel free to check the AP Lit blog: grissomaplang.blogspot.com or you can email me at ms.kim.grissom@gmail.com
AP Book List
Wise Blood—Flannery O’Conner
King Lear—William Shakespeare
Catch 22—Joseph Heller
Notes from the Underground—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Invisible Man—Ralph Ellison
Moby Dick—Herman Melville
Great Expectations—Charles Dickens
Gulliver’s Travels—Jonathan Swift
Frankenstein—Mary Shelley
The Trial—Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis—Franz Kafka
The Loved One—Evelyn Waugh
Benito Cereno—Hermann Melville
Miss Lonelyhearts—Nathanael West
The Winter’s Tale—William Shakespeare
The House of Seven Gables—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Brave New World—Aldous Huxley
Wide Sargasso Sea—Jean Rhys
All the Pretty Horses—Cormac McCarthy
Bless Me, Ultima—Ruldolfo A. Anaya
Ceremony—Leslie Marmon Silko
The Color Purple—Alice Walker
Crime and Punishment—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Cry, the Beloved Country—Alan Paton
Emma—Jane Austen
Heart of Darkness—Joseph Conrad
The Piano Lesson—August Wilson
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man—James Joyce
The Portrait of a Lady—Henry James
A Raisin in the Sun—Lorraine Hansberry
Song of Solomon—Toni Morrison
The Stone Angel—Margaret Laurence
The Tempest—William Shakespeare
Their Eyes Were Watching God—Zora Neale Hurston
Twelfth Night—William Shakespeare
As I Lay Dying—William Faulkner
Bleak House—Charles Dickens
Cat’s Cradle—Kurt Vonnegut
Jane Eyre—Charlotte Bronte
The Optimist’s Daughter—Eudora Welty
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead—Tom Stoppard
The Turn of the Screw—Henry James
Waiting for Godot—Samuel Beckett
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—Edward Albee
An American Tragedy—Theodore Dreiser
Another Country—James Baldwin
The Awakening—Kate Chopin
The Bluest Eye—Toni Morrison
The Diviners—Margaret Laurence
The Grapes of Wrath—John Steinbeck
House Made of Dawn—N. Scott Momaday
Light in August—William Faulkner
M. Butterfly—David Henry Hwang
Medea—Euripides
The Merchant of Venice—William Shakespeare
Middlemarch—George Eliot
Moll Flanders—Daniel Defoe
Murder in the Cathedral—T.S. Eliot
Native Son—Richard Wright
The Sun Also Rises—Ernest Hemingway
Winter in the Blood—James Welch
A Passage to India—E.M. Forster
As You Like It—William Shakespeare
O Pioneers!—Willa Cather
Antony and Cleopatra—William Shakespeare
A Tale of Two Cities—Charles Dickens
The Woman Warrior—Maxine Hong Kingston
Anna Karenina—Leo Tolstoy
Things Fall Apart—Chinua Achebe
A Streetcar Named Desire—Tennessee Williams
The Great Gatsby—F. Scott Fitzgerald
Mansfield Park—Jane Austen
The Scarlett Letter—Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Farewell to Arms—Ernest Hemingway
The Age of Innocence—Edith Wharton
Alias Grace—Margaret Atwood
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man—James Weldon Johnson
Daisy Miller—Henry James
Ethan Frome—Edith Wharton
A Gathering of Old Men—Ernest J. Gaines
Go Tell It On the Mountain—James Baldwin
The Handmaid’s Tale—Margaret Atwood
Hedda Gabler—Henrik Ibsen
The Joy Luck Club—Amy Tan
Much Ado About Nothing—William Shakespeare
Our Town—Thornton Wilder
Pride and Prejudice—Jane Austen
Ragtime—E. L. Doctorow
The Scarlet Letter—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Sister Carrie—Theodore Dreiser
Slaughterhouse Five—Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Falling on Cedars—David Guterson
Sula—Toni Morrison
The Things They Carried—Tim O’Brien
