<p>Some say I'm indolent. Some say I'm self-motivated.</p>
<p>I say I'm downright crazy.</p>
<p>After flunking the AP Language exam last year (I got a 2), I decided that this year, I want to ace my AP English Literature exam. I went on a splurge that completely infuriated my mother and bought books which I have yet to read. However, I've compiled a list from October to April.</p>
<p>Oct 2006 - The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Nov 2006 - Silas Marner by George Eliot
Dec 2006 - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Jan 2007 - The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Feb 2007 - Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Mar 2007 - The Awakening by Kate Chopin / Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
April 2007 - Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy</p>
<p>In addition to these books, I have to read two "fat books" for class, one each semester, so I chose:</p>
<p>Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky and
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.</p>
<p>Please tell me what you think of my list, any suggestions based on any books that you've read, and / or any themes that I should be aware of while reading the books.</p>
<p>i read great expectations in 9th grade
it kinda annoyed me lol
the awakening is very deep. once we analyzed it in school, i liked it even more
the scarlet letter is very good too.
that list looks good and its nice how the genres are pretty spread apart</p>
<p>Thanks. I hoped my list would be as eclectic as possible in my effort to read at least one great work from different authors. Yeah, and I get what you mean with analyzing books in class. My AP Lit teacher just went over Ethan Frome with us, and I became savvy to the "dead cucumber vine" and "red pickle dish" - nice phallic symbols. lol.</p>
<p>Read The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka wrote it). My teacher said it can be used on almost ANY essay. It's also a short story with so much symbolism and stuff. You will spend a lot of time if on it if you read it.</p>
<p>Silas Marner -- Slow. Boring. Good luck with significance. The only thing I can think of that might make it worthwhile is time and setting.</p>
<p>I love/d Crime and Punishment, so definitely read it. Even though it's kinda large, it's worth it.. and there are a number of themes you could potentially write about.</p>
<p>Crime and punishment is amazing its one of the best books i've ever read, Saint_Paul is right there are soo many themes that one can potentially write about. Jane Eyre is fairly decent, I read it in 6th grade and then again for H.S. Frankstein is also an amazing book. I also second the reading of Kafka's Metamorphsis, you might also want to read the Great Gastby which is a lovely book as well and has many themes.</p>
<p>I didn't like Frankenstein, but it would definitely be helpful to read. The only other book on your list that I've read is the Awakening, which works for a lot.</p>
<p>I second/third the opinion for you to read the Great Gatsby and the Metamorphosis. Also, Hamlet by Shakespeare works for a lot (if you haven't read it already), as does Antigone. I recommend you read Antigone by both Oedipus and Jean Anouilh, and compare the two.</p>
<p>100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce</p>
<p>thank you guys, and it's amazing... I picked up "The Metamorphosis" while away at my bro's graduation from Columbia in May.... I read the first paragraph and fell in love with it... :D</p>
<p>I read Frankenstein and Great Expectations for AP LIT and Scarlet Letter another time. Frankenstein helps a LOT and was absolutely PERFECT for the big essay. Great expectations is a pretty good book. I used Scarlet Letter a ton for the SAT fake-exams lol. Good books..especially Frankenstein.</p>
<p>im self studying for ap lit. books: invisible man (ellison), 100 years of solitude (marquez), lord of the flies (golding), of mice and men (steinbeck), huckleberry finn (twain), anna karenina (tolstoy), the great gatsby and the picture of dorian gray (wilde), and macbeth (shakespeare). anyone know of any vital ones i missed? ie books that are 'carry-alls'?</p>
<p>first off i think that its great to want to enhance your reading knowledge but i think that granted the books are on the ap lit class recomendations book list books like huck fin , lord of the flies, and scarlet letter are to me pretty basic....</p>
<p>I liked reading plays a lot more than books. Its a bit weird at first getting used to their format, but they go by a lot faster and you can pick stuff up a lot better. For these, I read Equus, Amadeus, Death of a Salesman, and the Crucible. As for books, my favorite were All the Pretty Horses, The Plague, and The Color Purple, since they make for very good topics that can be exploited for lit devices easily. For summer reading, we had Brave New World.</p>
<p>Well, for my English Lang. AP class we are reading Scarlet Letter + The Great Gatsby, and the seniors (only seniors can take English Lit. at my school) are reading some of the same books, as well as Pride and Prejudice, the Crucible, and War and Peace.</p>
<p>I loved The Picture of Dorian Gray and Crime and Punishment. Great Expectations was sort of tainted for me, as my class had nearly daily essay tests which took much of the enjoyment out of reading, but it is still a well-crafted work. I would recommend: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, The Trial and The Castle, by Franz Kafka, anything by Tolstoi, Dostoevesky, and Paradise Lost by Milton, and Dante's Inferno, (try the new translation: The Inferno of Dante).</p>
<p>our AP literature class is reading
1st Semester
The Sun Also Rises (perfect, we are going so indepth its amazing)
Siddhartha
Hamlet
The Stranger</p>
<p>2ns Semester
The Oedipus Cycle
Pygmalion
The Canterbury Tales
The God of Small Things</p>
<p>our teacher also gave us a huge list of books to read, I can't bother to write the entire list but it included: Metamorphosis (by Ovid), the Bible, Dante's Inferno, Malarie's King Arthur, Dom Quixote, Milton, Defoe, Candide, Swift, Faust by Goethe, the Red Dragon by William Blake (+ check out the quotes from proverbs of hell), Superman by Nietsche, Huck Finn, The Castle, anything by Joyce, Joseph Conrad, and a bunch more. Oh and The Castle by Kafka
AND anything by Hemingway...</p>