<p>Which book is the best book to read, in terms of most intresting and easiest to understand, in terms of prep for the AP English lit test and class next year?</p>
<p>The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Beloved by Toni Morrison
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>All of them, of course. Read. Read. Read.</p>
<p>Well…I only need to read one of them for now lol. So I’m asking which one is best among all these?</p>
<p>Cold Mountain; you can watch the movie. In all seriousness, if this is for a summer assignment, don’t waste your time reading a book, watch a movie if you can, b/c none of those books listed there are really likely to cover the topic that you have to write about on the AP Lit exam.</p>
<p>A better choice would be Hamlet, Catch-22, Tale of Two Cities, from experience those relate better to the open ended question collegeboard is likely to throw at u.</p>
<p>faulkner’s sound and the fury. don’t even bother with the rest, for the book is bulletproof.</p>
<p>i can tell you which NOT to read, lol… All the Pretty Horses. it’s so boring. x_x it has some good themes, but you’d probably end up Sparknoting it in the end.</p>
<p>best book of all time for ap lit - moby dick. it has almost every theme you could possibly think of, and plus, it’s a really moving book (once you get past the middle 60 or so chapters rofl).</p>
<p>Crime and Punishment is GREAT for AP lit prep. I also think that Waiting for Godot is a good choice. this novel and play both are very diverse and fir into most open ended essay prompts on the AP exam</p>
<p>If I had to choose from your list, I would read Beloved (Toni Morrison). From my prior experiences, I found that Beloved worked well with many open-ended AP essay questions. Best of luck to you!</p>
<p>I recommend “The Puppy Who Lost His Way”</p>
<p>It has themes of redemption, and asks heart-wrenching questions such as, “Does absence really make the heart grow fonder?” All of this is perpetuated by an omniscient narrator who uses many literary devices such as vivid imagery and alliterations(big word, I know, but you need to know it-- it’s an AP class, remember!)</p>
<p>ROFL!! Billy Madison, such an incredible movie!!</p>
<p>Out of those, I like Beloved. It applies to a variety of FRQ #3 prompts. The books that I most benefited from are Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Stranger by Albert Camus and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (easy read, though I really didn’t like it.)
I ended up writing about Hamlet for FRQ #3, which would be cliche, but I had what my teacher and I considered more original analysis-- not your typical sparknotes version lol.
I recommend that you try reading Shakespeare on your own. It ends up helping in all genres.
Oh, and if you read one book this summer, make it How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster.</p>