<p>Most Frequently Cited 1970-2010 (AP Literature & Composition)</p>
<p>23 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
18 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
16 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
15 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski
15 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
15 Moby Dick by Herman Melville
13 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
13 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
12 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
12 King Lear by William Shakespeare
11 Billy Budd by Herman Melville
11 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
11 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
10 The Awakening by Kate Chopin
10 Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
10 Light in August by William Faulkner
10 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
10 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zorah Neale Hurston
9 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
9 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
8 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
8 Antigone by Sophocles
8 Beloved by Toni Morrison
8 Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
8 Candide by Voltaire
8 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
8 The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
8 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
8 Native Son by Richard Wright
8 Othello by William Shakespeare
8 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
7 The Crucible by Arthur Miller
7 Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
7 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
7 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
7 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
7 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
7 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
7 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
7 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
7 Sula by Toni Morrison
7 Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
6 All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
6 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
6 A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
6 An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
6 Equus by Peter Shaffer
6 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
6 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
6 Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
6 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
6 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
6 Obasan by Joy Kogawa
6 Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
6 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
6 Sula by Toni Morrison
6 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
6 The Tempest by William Shakespeare
6 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
5 Bleak House by Charles Dickens
5 The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chkhov
5 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
5 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
5 Hamlet by William Shakespeare
5 Macbeth by William Shakespeare
5 Medea by Euripides
5 The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
5 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
5 Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw
5 Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot
5 The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
5 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
5 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
5 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
5 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
5 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
5 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
5 Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor</p>
<p>For my AP Lit class, we read the following, though I think I’m forgetting a few:</p>
<p>Wuthering Heights (I’m sure readers want to shoot people who write about that over and over though)
Memoirs of a Geisha, Catch-22, Kite Runner, In the Time of the Butterflies (our choice)
As I Lay Dying (Faulkner, TONS of themes in that and not as common, which is a plus)
Frankenstein (I wrote about it for Open Question, straightforward)
Dr Faustus (also a good choice, if you can keep the demons’ names straight)
Hamlet
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Ethan Frome and The Awakening
1984 and BNW
choice between Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse 5, Beloved, and Cuckoo’s nest (We did literary analysis research papers on these)</p>
<p>Outside reading:
Bell Jar
Invisible Man (one of my least favorite books, but tons of themes there)
Scarlet Letter (junior year and reviewed)
Gatsby (which I think is WAY overrated)</p>
<p>As far as choosing the book goes, I think any book you’re positively or negatively passionate about is one that you can analyze best if you give yourself the time (you don’t have to write in order, so work the strengths first). I made the mistake of spending too much time on poetry and had to write about Frankenstein because I could make the argument quickest. If you have a book you’re passionate about though, you can argue it for anything. With me, for example, I could have written really unique arguments about As I Lay Dying, Catcher, or Bell Jar and solidified a 5, but I had exactly 30 minutes left for the last essay and hadn’t closed my prose one well.</p>
<p>Hope that helps. :)</p>
<p>For AP Language, we read:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas
Huck Finn
In Cold Blood
Gatsby
Things they Carried
Their Eyes were Watching God
and a LOOOOOT of short stories!</p>
<p>
That’s really true. I wrote a spectacular essay about the baseball in A Prayer for Owen Meany as a representation of John’s search for meaning in death and Owen’s fear of letting go, as well as a symbol of death itself (death of a person, death of a childhood, death of an idea, etc.) even though the prompt was just begging me to use Ethan Frome or Scarlet Letter, haha.</p>
<p>I guess it’s not all that bad if I go on topic in my own thread, right? Haha well I have some opinions on these books, too! I read Gatsby and thought that it was alright. I fell in love with the ending and Gatsby himself by the time the book was through, though. Huck Finn was okay; I enjoyed mostly the parts about being on the river and when Jim was scolded by Huck, I think it was. Jim made a small little speech that touched my heart. I couldn’t stand the Duke and the other guy and their antics, though. Fahrenheit 451 was one of my favorite books that I’ve ever read, although I read it from purely a non-analytical standpoint. I read it maybe one or two years ago and then read it again, I enjoyed it so much. I just thought it was a good story, and I enjoyed how it was written. </p>
<p>All of this talk about reading books because they offer so many themes to use gives me a headache. I want to just read books that seem interesting, and forget about if they’re overdone or simplistic or themes involved or any of that. I have a feeling that I’m going to have a problem in this class, haha.</p>
<p>Just be passionate about whatever it is you choose to read, and you’ll be fine. :)</p>
<p>I love TGG because every sentence is so intricately woven together. Plus its themes are solidly expressed. I can see how someone wouldn’t like it though. It’s a bit dry.</p>
<p>Hemingway > Fitzgerald x 10 billion. The Great Gatsby is good, but not amazing.</p>
<p>For AP Lang our class read:
Gulliver’s Travels
Kaffir Boy (Mark Mathabane)- It was really cool, he came to our school and signed our books. Good book about overcoming adversity.
1984 (very useful)
Mountains Beyond Mountains
In Cold Blood
Hamlet
Nickel and Dimed
Wuthering Heights/The Return of the Native
- Some shorter pieces (A Modest Proposal, Black Men in Public Spaces, etc.)</p>
<p>Reading more books will definitely help with the AP (the persuasive essay in particular) as well as improving your writing (obviously). Also, just general knowledgeable-ness will help–you can’t really study for the English Comp AP, IMO.</p>
<p>We read the following books in AP Lang
Scarlet Letter-Nathanial Hawthorne
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (if you have an open mind about racial politics and such this book will be phenomenal for you)
Macbeth-Shakespeare
The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini
The Things They Carry (excellent book on Vietnam!)</p>
<p>We also read assorted pieces of non-fiction by various American authors such as Thoreau and Hemingway. </p>
<p>For AP Lit’s summer assignment we have to read
The Sun Also Rises- Earnest Hemingway (The diction is great but it seems like an endless plot to nowhere)
Candide-Voltaire (Personally love Volaire [definite read])
The Awakening- Kate Chopin</p>
<p>If you still need books I recommend the book Devil in the White City. It was assigned reading for APUSH but it will certainly help you in various English classes</p>