<p>We read The Good Person of Szechwan and In Cold Blood for our summer assignment. This year, I know we're reading The Visit, 1984, The Great Gatsby, and maybe Death of a Salesman. What are you guys reading? Oh, is it good to have an arsenal of books under your belt that you can use for reference on the AP essays? If so, should I basically just read for class or do a lot of outside reading also? What books are generally good to use on AP essays?</p>
<p>Well, we have a brand new teacher this year so I'm not sure what all we'll be reading. Right now we're reading 1984 and A Brave New World. We read part of Death of a Salesman last year, but since we have a new teacher I'm really not sure what we'll do.</p>
<p>Last year when I took Language we read Fast Food Nation and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius for the summer assignment. We never had a novel assigned in class, but we read excerpts from a number of different sources (non fiction). The Language exam is different than the Literature one.. having an arsenal of books isn't necessarily going to help you (the essays do not require you to pull from literary sources.. check out the prompts of last year to better understand what I mean). If you are looking for material to read to better help you out, skip the novels and read formal, non-fic stuff from the 1600s-1900s (you'll see a lot of passages/references to this chunk of time). The AP website has a list of authors/works that are good to look at.. the list is pretty long though and your teacher should cover some of it. (btw sorry this is so disorganized)</p>
<p>Last year in my AP Eng Language we read:</p>
<p>The Scarlett Letter
The Great Gatsby
various short stories of Flannery O'Connor
As I Lay Dying
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Invisible Man
The Adventures of Huck Finn
How to Read Literature Like A Professor
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
The Old Man and the Sea</p>
<p>We read:
The Scarlet Letter
The Great Gatsby
The Crucible
1984</p>
<p>And books of our choosing (off a list). Lucky, huh?</p>
<p>our insane teacher forced us to read like 10 books and gave out ridiculous amounts of work. but then, 90% of the class got 5s so I guess it was worth it :).</p>
<p>Last year I had to read:</p>
<p>The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Fahrenheit 451
When the Emperor Was Divine
The Crucible
Everything that Rises Must Converge
The Great Gatsby
And various other stories from our textbook, mostly American Literature</p>