<p>middlesex. </p>
<p>greatest book i've ever read.</p>
<p>Huck Finn-easy read with humor and plenty of room for analysis. besides, its regarded as the best american book ever. (by many critics)</p>
<p>I'd say pick a few books from this list (you can't go wrong with more than one), but that's just my opinion. </p>
<p>Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde
The Crucible Arthur Miller
Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
Frankenstein Mary Shelley
Brave New World Aldous Huxley
Middlemarch George Eliot
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest Ken Kesey
A Separate Peace John Knowles
Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
Oedipus Rex Sophocles
The Inferno Dante
The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway
Tess of the DUrbervilles Thomas Hardy
Native Son Richard Wright
Ghosts Henrik Ibsen
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Tom Stoppard
The Awakening Kate Chopin
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf
Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston
The Frogs Aristophanes
1984 George Orwell
The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald</p>
<p>Don't let anyone convince you to read The Scarlet Letter or The Red Badge of Courage. They are awful, awful books and there are so many better books out there you could read!</p>
<p>If I were to pick five books to read, I'd pick The Awakening (this one's rather short), Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Great Gatsby, The Things They Carried (AMAZING) and Heart of Darkness.</p>
<p>Oh, and, don't forget that you should probably read a lot of poetry too.</p>
<p>As an English teacher, I would like to plead for The Scarlet Letter, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice. I admit that they may take more effort at first, but if you get through the first 20-30 pages and get into the the characters and plot , they are all capable of delighting, inspiring and amusing you. If you find them hard going, try the film versions first as a warm up</p>
<p>Oh, I forgot Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Those are all good. I loved Jane Eyre.</p>
<p>I still despise The Scarlet Letter, though.</p>
<p>What did you hate about The SL? I have always found it very moving to read about the struggle to accommodate romantic and sexul desire within the constraints of a repressive society and also to appreciate Hawthorne's sensitivity to the psychological states of his characters, particularly Hester Prynne as a young single mother facing her responsibilities. Admittedly, the moral climate is quite foreign to our own --but that's also true in Hardy's Tess.</p>
<p>I have never read Jane Eyre, but my AP English Comp. teacher says he would leave his wife for her if she were real.</p>
<p>1984 worked awesome for me on the exam sophmore year. The same goes with The Great Gatsby and One Flew over the Cuckoo's nest by Keasy</p>
<p>Books
1984
Animal Farm
Awakening
Beloved
Bluest Eye
Brave New World
Catch-22
Catcher in the Rye
Crime and Punishment
Crucible
Crying of Lot 49
Dead Souls
Death of a Salesman
Death in Venice
Diary of a Madman
Dracula
Farewell to Arms
Frankenstein
Frogs
Ghosts
Grapes of Wrath
Great Gatsby
Hamlet
Hard Times
Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Heart of Darkness
Huck Finn
Importance of Being Earnest
Inferno
Invisible Man
Jane Eyre
Jude the Obscure
Madame Bovary
Metamorphosis
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mist
Mrs. Dalloway
Much Ado About Nothing
Native Son
Oedipus Rex
Old Man and the Sea
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Separate Peace
Sound and the Fury
Slaughterhouse-Five
Stranger
Swann's Way
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Their Eyes were Watching God
Things Fall Apart
Things They Carried
Waiting for Godot
Wuthering Heights</p>
<p>Authors
Beckett
Chekhov<br>
Corian
Dostoyevsky
Faust
Gide
Hamsun
Hesse
Mann
Joyce<br>
Nietzsche
Nabokov
Pynchon
Turgenev
Woolf</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-131129.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-131129.html</a> </p>
<p>I find this insightful in regards to the choice of AP novels.</p>
<p>Invisible Man, Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, Crime and Punishment , Brave New World </p>
<p>None to difficult and these show up quite a lot.</p>
<p>Scarlet Letter is good if you can stand Hawthorne's page-long sentences and the -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --'s</p>
<p>Mystic Merlin, your English Comp. teacher sounds like a FABULOUS guy!!!! Jane Eyre is a very moral, upright woman who follows her ethics and faith as opposed to her heart. I have not read all of the works set forth on this thread, but Jane Eyre is absolutely fantastic. </p>
<p>Pride and Prejudice is also amazing, with Elizabeth Bennett being somewhat like Jane Eyre, except from a more wealthy background. Both P&P and JE are such amazing books that works like Middlesex (yes, yes, it was good and all but you don't come away from it feeling like the hero has any form of moral integrity whatsoever) pale in comparison. </p>
<p>Pyewacket.... let me just say that I would love to hear more from you regarding Wuthering Heights. I have tried so much to get into this work. I have even purchased the Cliff's Notes and such, but the allure of WH just eludes me. I can't get into it to save my life. JE and P&P appeal to me on so many levels but WH doesn't hold my attention at all. It seems so dark and bleak, with Heathcliff being an obnoxious hero that is selfish. Can you help someone who adores P&P and JE fall in love with WH??</p>
<p>1984...good to analyze, great book</p>
<p>I picked up Wuthering Heights and, although I had never thought of doing it, got through it in 4 days. I agree, it takes some willpower to acquaint yourself to the characters and the style of writing, but after a while, I found it so drawing that I could not resist reading it till 3 o'clock in the morning.</p>
<p>By the way, don't try to see Heathcliff as the protagonist. Have you ever seen so spiteful a hero? Try to pretend you're Lockwood, just listening to some interesting neighbourhood gossip, being as partial as you can. I think that's the best advice I can give... but if you don't like it still, then that's that. There are books I hate, and I'm sure there are those you can't get on with.</p>
<p>In a way, I think the bleak but wildly beautiful landscape is very central to WH. Catherine and Heathcliff have an outdoor "natural" love affair on the moors --all the other characters are civilized indoor people, conducting their lives in drawing rooms--more like Jane Austen characters. C. and H. are the embodiments of Romanticism--they have a passion that defies rationality.
H. is obnoxious and selfish, certainly Jane Austen would hate him, but he defies social conventions because he is ruled by the principle of passion. Maybe you could read WH as a Romantic response to Jane Austen--the other side of the coin in exploring the nature of love--JA celebrates self-control , practical economics, good manners and social convention as well as wit,intelligence and self-esteem. In WH you have unbridled passion and rebellion against "being nice". In Freudian terms, --JA is the Superego of the civilized world of southern England, while EB is the "rougher at the edges" northern Yorkshire free-spirit who cannot ignore the Id. If you feel dark and bleak,then you have understood the setting: it is the bleak recognition that we can't always get what we want and what we want is not always "good for us." Lockwood is the more civilized southern foreigner as outside observer in this wild northern world.</p>
<p>There are some similar moments of wildness and cruelty in JE--think about the implications of the mad wife in the attic. </p>
<p>I don't think literature could progress from Jane Austen to Modernism and beyond with out passing through books like Wuthering Heights.</p>
<p>Come to think of it, a similar wilderness of passion appears in its American variant in The Scarlet Letter. Interesting to compare the New England forest to the Yorkshire moors as places where passion takes over.</p>
<p>"being as partial as you can" - I meant to type as "impartial as you can". You know how these things slip when you're typing fast.</p>