Hi! I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for what book to use for the AP English Lit question 3! I was going to go with Pride and Prejudice or Invisible Man, but I figured a lot of people would chose those works, so I thought I would consider some other options! What books are of equal literary merit that aren’t commonly used!?
From which year?
Any of the prompts from 2000-2013! @skieurope
Oh, well any work of literary merit can be used, the specific prompt will dictate how well any one particular work will fit the given prompt. I don’t think you can go into the exam with one or two “go to” books and expect that they will fit all prompts successfully.
Having said that, my strategy was to have options from several Shakespearean plays, which did work out for me, fortunately.
Ok thanks for the advice!! So what your saying is that I should have several different selections in my lineup? @skieuope
That would be my advice.
That’s the right advice. I recommend knowing 4-6 books very well if you want to cover all the bases.
Ok! Thanks @marvin100 @skieurope
Again, one is not locked into any of the works suggested on Q3; the CB allows one to choose a work of “comparable literary merit.” However, as a starting point for choosing your 4-6 works, [url=<a href=“http://mseffie.com/AP/APtitles.html%5Dhere%5B/url”>http://mseffie.com/AP/APtitles.html]here[/url] are all the works that have been cited on Q3 since 1971.
Good point and thanks for the list of works!
@skieurope
Our ap literature teachers suggests Heart of Darkness and Catcher in the Rye because they can be applied to most of the open ended questions in some way.
Those are both great, but there have been many prompts that HofD and Catcher wouldn’t suit very well. Like I said–know 4-6 works very well and you should have everything covered. If we’re making specific recommendations, I’d say at least one should be a Shakespeare tragedy. The Homeric epics are also super useful.
I’m relying on Antigone (really hoping it applies this year because I absolutely love it), The Great Gatsby (the class I taught for teacher cadet covered it extensively and I reread it), Fahrenheit 451 (self read for fun), or Brave New World. Honestly I could wing Invisible Man but I hate how it been used the most in the past years. I hate how my teacher constantly referred to it as “the safe book.” I hope they don’t do it this year just to spite her. I also can use A Tale of Two Cities. Over the year we were assigned to read One Foot in Eden, Brave New World, Heart of Darkness, A Farewell to Arms, and Invisible Man. Glad I read a few extras on my own time.
Antigone, TGG, F 451, and BNW is a pretty good batch. I’d probably prep for IM as well. If you know the details, characters, events, and proper nouns from all of those books, you should have your bases covered.
We have critical reading portfolios which detail theme, characters, plots, quotes, and so much more. I’ll review those and hope the question lists at least one of those books. Does anyone know of a novel that would work for the AP exam that can be read rather quickly? I read Fahrenheit 451 in a day, so a book of that length would be perfect.
@pathospablo If you haven’t read A Thousand Splendid Suns, that’s a quick one (I read it in a few hours) that can be used for a lot of theme questions.
I’m preparing Invisible Man, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Things Fall Apart, A Raisin in the Sun, and Frankenstein. I’ll review Death of a Salesman too, if I have time. Hoping that’ll be enough.
@evan241 Awesome, thank you! I’ll definitely read it!
My teacher had us read East of Eden. It was massive book and you probably couldn’t read it in four days but I feel that it’s enough to cover a far reaching number of prompts.
@stvincent I actually read that the summer before sophomore year. I read ten chapters a day. I still remember the descriptions of the mountains haha. I’m going to reread Great Gatsby, Antigone, and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Antigone is super fast so I’ll save it for Tuesday night. TGG can be read in a day and Monday I don’t have many classes so I’ll skim to remind myself of the highlights.
I know its a little late but I thought I’d put my 2 cents in.
My lit teacher made us do 5 “prose cards” where we picked novels and then wrote about the major characters, plot, setting, theme, significance, etc (which pretty much meant retyping sparknotes)
We had to do a Shakespearian tragedy, Shakespearian Comedy, British Novel, American novel, and contemporary novel- I did Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice (which I actually used), 1984, Huck Finn, and Anthem. It might have just been luck but I found this to be more than sufficient on the exam.