<p>Any of the Harry Potters would be wonderful.</p>
<p>much ado about nothing! (my personal Shakespeare favorite :))</p>
<p>The Magic School Bus Series.</p>
<p>^seriously. My friend wrote his essay on it and got a 5. He's really good at literature, though.</p>
<p>How does your friend know that he got a perfect score on the essay? He probably just got a five because of his other essays/multiple choice.
Anyways, I second Beloved--it's an excellent book.</p>
<p>how about a separate peace? i really liked that book</p>
<p>I've always been kind of partial to Brave New World. Great satire.</p>
<p>vtoodler, he wouldn't have gotten a 5 if he got a bad or mediocre score on that essay, plus he sucks at multiple choice somehow. It had to be somewhat high to get a 5.</p>
<p>1984 is awesome</p>
<p>my approach was to use some less popular books. i've always been into literature, so it gave me time to read good literature out of the mainstream high school curriculum. I'm persuaded that there must be higher standards for essays done on frequently chosen books (1984, anything shakespeare, death of salesman, scarlet letter, invisible man, heart of darkness etc...). After the ten zillionth scarlet letter essay, a grader will be tempted to award higher scores to only the most original ones. </p>
<p>If you choose to speak knowledgeably of something out of the norm, that the grader has perhaps not even read, he/she will likely be more easily impressed. </p>
<p>go for something by Woolf, Mann, Nietzsche, Nabokov (not Lolita), Hesse (not Siddhartha), Sartre, Camus (not Plague or Stranger), Doestoevsky (not C&P), Beckett, Joyce, Wilde (not Dorian Gray or IobE), Hamsun, Kafka (not Metamorphosis), Gide, or Chekhov.
these would all be AWESOME for the AP.</p>
<p>"The Crying of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon (and much shorter than his monsterous "The Gravity's Rainbow"!) is good choice. I wish I could take the AP French Lit. (or have time to prepare for it). I am a French Lit. obsessive.</p>
<p>Books I am considering:</p>
<ol>
<li>"Diary of a Madman" by N. Gogol</li>
<li>"Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann</li>
<li>"Mist" by Miguel De Unamuno (under-rated existentionalist writer)</li>
<li>anything by E.M. Cioran (Nihlist philosopher but wonderful writer)</li>
<li>"Swann's Way" by Marcel Proust- I have read The Remberance of Times Past series way too many times. </li>
</ol>
<p>Then again, I am doing self-study AP English Lit.</p>
<p>another literature freak!! :D if you liked diary of a madman, try Dead Souls-- little bit more insight into pre S.U. Russia. if you're into all sorts of Russian lit, check out the more recent Bulgakov (master and margarita), wierdest yet. it was written during the Soviet regime, published as soon as it collapsed. Amazing work.</p>
<p>Turgenev (fathers and sons) is a pretty easy and interesting read if you want to find out about the rumblings of nihilism in Russia. Gorky is interesting, but offensive, considering the true nature of communism in the S.U. </p>
<p>Faust would be an impressive classic for the AP as well, but a bit more challenging. Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther is far more doable, short, and would probably be quite impressive if handled correctly.</p>
<p>Pynchon is pretty challenging too. I wouldn't do Gravity's Rainbow or Finnegan's Wake or anything that crazy for the AP. You should probably even stay away from some of Beckett's stuff. If you have the time for Proust, god bless you....</p>
<p>it'd be brilliant if anybody did Michael Ende's Neverending Story :) it has such potential.</p>
<p>read much ontolome?</p>
<p>I recommend heart of darkness because conrad writes figurative language all over the place and the book could be analyzed like crazy. An interesting book would be one flew over the cookoo's nest its a book that dives into the human mind(and thats a big topic in ap lit) and it takes place in a nut house. I would stay away from gatsby or the scarlett letter, I think they're a overated and read multiple times my the ap test graders.</p>
<p>Thank you, Ontolome. I refused to my school's AP Lit class because they are reading the most over-rated material. I am anti-AP class. I have a respect for the AP test (at times) and what kids (I speak like I am so old) do to prepare for it. However, I find the classes lack serious discussion. It is true discussion that what seperates a "college class" and a high school class. The discussion in the AP classes is based more on "passing the AP exam" and saying what the AP people want to hear than developing a love and (gasp) respect for literature. </p>
<p>I read "The Sorrows of a Young Werther", " The Master and Margarita", and "Dead Souls" already. I love them all! I think I could pull off the essay for Proust because I am very familiar with him and his writing style. The extended metaphors are nothing short of breathtaking. Do you like J.K. Huysmans? I read "Against the Grain" and it changed my literary changes and lifestyle. Oh my god! Writing an essay on Nietzche's "The Anti-Christ" is also very tempting.</p>
<p>I liked Kate Chopin's "The Awakening."</p>
<p>Huckleberry Finn ( compares well with Catcher in theRye)</p>
<p>Pride and Prejudice ( and you can also see the film!)</p>
<p>The Heart is a Lonely Hunter-- Carson Mccullers</p>
<p>Jude the Obscure --Thomas Hardy</p>
<p>Agh I absolutely hated reading Heart of Darkness</p>
<p>I'd recommend 1984 or Brave New World. Or Beckett's Waiting for Godot if you'd prefer a play.</p>
<p>Im partial to Hamlet personally.</p>
<p>Tim O'Brien The Things They Carried... I read it last year for English... amazing book. It's been compared with Heart of Darkness in some reviews that I've read. Hopefully I'll be able to make the comparison someday when I get a chance to read Conrad's novel, heh.</p>