<p>Hi everyone!</p>
<p>I am a rising senior and will take AP English Literature and Composition next year. I have heard that the best way to prepare for the exam is to read classics outside of the class required reading. Does anyone have any recceomendations?</p>
<p>* The Stranger * by Albert Camus
<p>For the AP English Literature exam you need to read one or two classics and get to know them really well for the writing portion. I would recommend the Great Gatsby, because Fitzgerald is awesome, and maybe Jane Eyre (or, you know, something else if Jane Eyre isn’t quite your style). Read up on a few fun plays, too, maybe the Taming of the Shrew, since the graders probably don’t see that one as often. The Grapes of Wrath is a longer, slightly more difficult book that others, but it can be used for almost any prompt and should really improve your reading (and, as a result, writing) skills.</p>
<p>One thing you might want to consider in addition is looking into the reading schedule of introductory college composition classes. The essays studied in those classes are the same essays that pop on the multiple choice section of the AP. You might even get lucky and recognize a few of the essays–at the very least you’ll be familiar with their style and difficulty.</p>
<p>And I second Brave New World. That book is awesome. :D</p>
<p>Thanks so much! I read The Great Gatsby in AP English Language, and I have to read Jane Eyre for summer reading anyway. I think I’ll make study guides for each novel so I can remember all of the important points. But I’ll definitely take your suggestions to heart!</p>
<p>Jane Eyre is a good one if you enjoy the book, too. I just felt that it was unbearable so I didn’t remember too much when I sat down to write the third essay this year (for Lit).</p>
<p>Don Quixote
Pride and Prejudice
Wuthering Heights
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Robinson Crusoe
David Copperfield
The Brothers Karamazov
Middlemarch
Madame Bovary
Dead Souls
Tess of D’Urbervilles
Les Miserables
A Hero of Our Time
Moby Dick
Swann’s Way
Ivanhoe
Treasure Island
Anna Karenina
Fathers and Sons
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Candide
L’Assommoir
The Jungle Book
Paradise Lost
Steppenwolf
Catch-22
Naked Lunch
The Stranger
The Magus
The Grapes of Wrath
1984
To the Lighthouse
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Lolita
On the Road
The Magic Mountain
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Ulysses
Sons and Lovers
The Great Gatsby
The Immoralist
Life with Jeeves
Slaughterhouse 5</p>
<p>All of these are classics that have the literary quality the AP graders are looking for in your essays. Some of them might be more useful thematically than others, but you never know which prompt you’re going to get so it’s best to read wildly different ones.</p>
<p>Most people read it in school at some point, but on the off chance you haven’t, To Kill a Mockingbird is really good for using in papers (and for examples on the SAT essays and the like) because you can connect it to so many different themes and literary devices. It’s a fun, easy read too. </p>
<p>Dickens is another good bet; try A Tale of Two Cities, it’s usually well liked. </p>
<p>If you don’t mind somewhat tricky prose, Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur is great. You’ll find lots and lots of references in later literature to Mallory, but it doesn’t get taught in school much. </p>
<p>The CB loves to test on irony and satire and the like. Fielding’s Tom Jones is a good read that gives you a look at the genre as well as familiarity with 18th century literary style. </p>
<p>To round it out, if you’re not going to have read a Hemmingway in class, that’s pretty much a must. Try Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls.</p>
<p>OMG. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Sherlock Holmes. YES. So awesome. :D</p>
<p>The College Board does not like To Kill a Mockingbird; they don’t view it as a college level novel. If you write about it, you’re asking for a bad mark.</p>
<p>Summer is a good time to attempt the titans (Ulysses, War and Peace, Remembrance of Things Past, Gravity’s Rainbow, etc), so go for those if you want to. Hemingway is always an easy and fun read (A Farewell to Arms + The Sun Also Rises are my favourites), and Shakespeare is much better when it’s not in a class setting. Try finding a local production; it can really help.</p>
<p>I have to beg to differ on TKAM, I have seen it on several College Board reading lists.</p>
<p>TKAM is generally a substandard book for the AP exams; unless the writer is brilliant in his observations, the material that TKAM offers is superficial and lacking in my opinion.
But this is literary analysis…we could go on all day.</p>
<p>Here is the 2009 Form B exam, TKAM is offered by the CB as a choice for the third question. </p>
<p><a href=“Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board”>Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board;
<p>TKAM is simple (which is why it is often read in middle school) but literature doesn’t necessarily have to be complicated to have merit. Just sayin’ ;)</p>
<p>Merit does not equate college-level difficulty. The AP markers will mark you down heavily unless you write a brilliant essay on TKAM. Really, it’s best to just avoid it.</p>
<p>Here is the list of authors college board offers:</p>
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</p>
<p>Harper Lee is not on this list, so I’d assume it would be better, just to be on the safe side, to avoid To Kill A Mockingbird.</p>
<p>jakebarnes do you work for the College Board? How do you know they would mark a person down for using a specific work as an example; especially a work that is actually listed in the prompt of a question?</p>
<p>
I think that I should clarify my previous point.
I have nothing against TKAM, it’s a fine book; it has its place in education, but, for most students, not on the AP exam.
The AP exam’s essay portion is about showing the readers that you are a well-read individual capable of writing cohesive and insightful prose. Why not use books that will help the typical AP English student do so?
Now, in order to avoid any misconstructions, TKAM is oft-considered a book of literary merit. Yes, but how it is interpreted by students (stemming from how it is taught in schools) is, most times, shallow and lacking of any critical thought. The book is much more than a good guy/bad guy tale, and it really has little to do with racial tensions.
In observing that many students fail to see this, I do not endorse using this book on the AP exam and, instead, recommend using a book whose plot line lends itself toward a more complex interpretation.
And, if I’m not being presumptuous, I think that this is what the previous poster was inferring too.</p>
<p>The AP markers are fickle; they read your essay quickly and then score it holistically. Unless you write an absolutely phenomenal and insightful essay - one that has instant impact on the markers - they will mark you down on the choice of text. The College Board gives a list of texts, but you can’t expect them all to be considered equal. A conceptual understanding of To the Lighthouse, or War and Peace, for example, gives the marker a good indication of whether you’re reading at a college level or not; the same can’t really be said of TKAM. This isn’t to say that you can’t score a 5 if you write about certain texts, but it becomes an uphill battle if you choose something simplistic. </p>
<p>The AP Lit + Comp reading lists are always very American-centric anyway; it wouldn’t be listed as comparable in any other country.</p>
<p>Anyone know if “A Voyage to Arcturus” by David Lindsay would be a decent book to use???</p>
<p>I would personally read Grapes of Wrath and The Great Gatsby. Kite Runner is also a good read, and it’s not as painfully boring as the aforementioned two.</p>