<p>The AP Eng Language exam does not test you on particular books; however, you may reference any book you want in the argument essay as long as it’s relevant to the topic.
The exam consists of two parts: a multiple choice section and an FRQ section. The essay section is broken up into three parts: a synthesis essay (which requires you to synthesize a few sources to illustrate your argument), a rhetorical essay, and an argument essay. For the argument essay, you can chose to reference any kind of book you want. For example, the argument question for this year’s AP exam asked us to analyze the relationship between between the ownership of goods and self-esteem. I wrote about The Great Gatsby for this one.
Anyways, if you want a list of recommended books for AP English, these are some of the books I read for my class (I can’t remember all of them):
- Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Crucible by Arthur Miller
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Self Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
- The Norton Anthology
- The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America by Philip Dray
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger</p>