AP English Literature Summer Reading and Assignments

Greetings and welcome to AP English Literature! This is a fun, yet challenging course designed to strengthen your writing skills and broaden your abilities in analyzing literature. In preparation for our study in the fall, you do have some work to complete over the summer. Please see below for more info. All readings and assignments are expected to be completed and ready to turn in on the first day of school. I may not ask for a submission right away, but in case I do, you should be ready! 

Assignment 1: Read Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, Annotate, and Complete Assignments

You will need your own personal copy of this book, because you will be annotating (e.g. writing) on the pages of the book.  Follow the instructions below for what I want you to annotate for while you are reading.

Below are required assignments which will be collected on the first day of class. 

Assignment #1: Text-Marking 

Show us how you annotate. 

A.  Circle unknown words 

B.  Squiggly-underline examples of figurative language (symbol, personification, irony, etc.) 

C.   Underline interesting uses of language (syntax, diction, rhetorical devices, etc.) 

D.  [Bracket] words, phrases, or sentences that relate to the larger meaning of the work. 

NOTE: It is possible—likely even—that you will have multiple marks on the same line(s). 

Assignment #2: Written Response 

You will need to write two typed essays. Please limit each response to no more than one page. Use MLA style and be concise (see http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resources/572/01). 

Semi-formal personal response (you may use “I”) 

Following are three thought provoking quotes from dystopian writers.  Select one and write a thoughtful reaction to it. You may choose to write this reaction either before or after you read Catcher in the Rye. However, reading Catcher in the Rye  first may influence your response...  

·         “If love dies, that’s when we’ve all truly died.” ~~ Keary Taylor 

•      “Hate looks like everybody else until it smiles.” ~~ Tahareh Mafi 

•      “Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?” ~~ Anthony Burgess 

These 2 assignments should be put in the order above and the Academic Honor Statement (pg 5) should be signed and stapled to the front.  Your written response for Assignment #3 should be put in the back of the packet. It will be collected as well as being used as the basis of our first major class discussion.

Assignment #3: Additional Reading

Finally, select one more title to read over the summer from the list provided. The titles on the list are considered novels of “literary merit” by those who write the AP Lit exam, but they never define what “literary merit” means.  While you are reading your chosen book, think about why the AP test writers think that your book has literary merit. Then, upon completion, write a 250+ word reflection explaining what that phrase (literary merit)means to you, and why this novel or play has literary merit. Please do not re-read something and explain your thinking in detail using support from the text. 

**Academic Honesty is required in my class. Turning in someone else’s work (from a classmate or the internet) as your own will result in a zero for an assignment. The point of an AP course is to challenge yourself.  If you don’t do your own work and learn from process, it will be impossible to pass the AP Literature and Composition exam this May.  If you need to ask questions of a classmate or Google a summary of a work to help you understand that is fine, but please make sure all responses are your own.  A signed Academic Honor Statement is required to be submitted with your summer work.**

Email me with any questions you may have at jsnape@rapelje.k12.mt.us  If you lose this packet you can find it on my website on the AP English page.

Novels to Choose From:

Ancient Texts

800 BC – The Iliad - Homer

800 BC – The Odyssey – Homer

Neoclassical

1759 – Candide – Voltaire

Romantic

1811 – Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

1813 – Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

1838 – Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

Victorian

1847 – Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontё 

1847 – Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontё

1850 – The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne

1861 – Silas Marner – George Eliot

1869 – Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

1884 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark

Twain

1897 – Dracula – Bram Stoker

1891 – The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

1899 – The Awakening – Kate Chopin

Naturalist

1902  – Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

1903  – The Call of the Wild – Jack London

1911 – Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton

Modern

1915 – The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka

1925 – The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

1925 – Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

1937 – Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

1939  – The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

1940  – The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene

1945 – Animal Farm – George Orwell

1949 – Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell

Post Modern

1951  – The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

1952  – East of Eden – John Steinbeck

1953  – Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger

1954  – Lord of the Flies – William Golding

1959  – A Separate Peace – John Knowles

1960  – To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

1967 – The Chosen – Chaim Potok

1969  – Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut

1970  – Grendel – John Gardner

1976 – A River Runs Through It – Norman Maclean

1984 – The House on Mango Street – Sandra

Cisneros

1987 – Beloved – Toni Morrison

1989  – A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving

1990  – The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien 1992 – The Secret History – Donna Tartt

1994 – In the Lake of the Woods – Tim O’Brien

1996  – Push – Sapphire*

1997  – Cold Mountain – Charles Frazier

1997 – The Red Tent – Anita Diamant

1997  – Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

1998  – The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver

1998 – The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

2001 – Atonement – Ian McEwan

2003 – The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

2001  – Life of Pi – Yann Martel

2002  – The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri

2005 – The Memory Keeper’s Daughter – Kim

Edwards*

2005 – The Glass Castle – Jeannette Walls

2005  – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close –

Jonathan Safran Foer

2006  – The Road – Cormac McCarthy

2008 – Serena – Ron Rash

2008 – Little Bee – Chris Cleave

2010 – Room – Emma Donaghue

2013  – The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt

2014  – All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr

2014  – A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman 

2015  – Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee

2015 – The Nightingale – Kristin Hannah

Suggested Plays: 

Antigone – Sophocles

Any Shakespearean play

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Tennessee Williams

The Crucible – Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller

A Doll’s House – Henrik Ibsen

An Enemy of the People – Henrik Ibsen

The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde

Our Town – Thornton Wilder

Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett

*Please note that some novels may contain content that some might consider offensive.  If you choose a novel that you find offensive, feel free to discontinue the reading of that book and chose another.