Parents and Students | Slides Literature

Parents and Students,

(Scroll to the end of this document for the assignment). Choose at least one of the following selections (there are

many!) to read prior to the school year. Other than recommendations from people you know who have studied or read

the works, an easy option for choosing a book is to look up an excerpt of the novel/drama. That way, you know the level

of difficulty as well as the author’s style and language. Almost all good literature contains less-than-savory elements --

language, sinful behavior, sometimes even an overt or subtly-skewed world view. With that disclaimer comes the fact

that most, if not all good literature that I have read doesn’t glorify sin but punishes it in some way. Christian family

review sites also exist, including the following: Redeemed Reader, Focus on the Family, Plugged In, and Common

Sense Media. Below is a lengthy article by Bob Jones University that deals with potentially objectionable material from

a biblical worldview in a thorough manner.

Bob Jones article

Most Frequently Cited Books in AP Lit Exam 1970-2014

At the end of this list, I will comment on some of these I have read and recommend a few that I

have read in the past few months.(They are in order of most to least cited - which DOES NOT

mean that the ones that are higher on the list are the ones you should read/have more merit)

* Choose ONE of these works from the “Most Frequently Cited Books” List.It is fine if you pick one

that is highlighted, yet we have either read these in my classroom or will -- hopefully -- at some

point).

26 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

20 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

18 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

17 King Lear by William Shakespeare

16 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski

16 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

16 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

15 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

15 Moby Dick by Herman Melville

14 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James

Joyce

13 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

13 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zorah Neale

Hurston

12 The Awakening by Kate Chopin

12 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

12 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

11 Billy Budd by Herman Melville

11 Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

11 Light in August by William Faulkner

10 Antigone by Sophocles

10 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

10 Beloved by Toni Morrison

10 The Color Purple by Alice Walker

10 The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

10 Native Son by Richard Wright

10 Othello by William Shakespeare

10 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

10 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

9Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

9A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

9A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

8All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

8Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

8Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya

8Candide by Voltaire

8The Crucible by Arthur Miller

8The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

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Parents and Students, (Scroll to the end of this document for the assignment). Choose at least one of the following selections (there are many!) to read prior to the school year. Other than recommendations from people you know who have studied or read the works, an easy option for choosing a book is to look up an excerpt of the novel/drama. That way, you know the level of difficulty as well as the author’s style and language. Almost all good literature contains less-than-savory elements -- language, sinful behavior, sometimes even an overt or subtly-skewed world view. With that disclaimer comes the fact that most, if not all good literature that I have read doesn’t glorify sin but punishes it in some way. Christian family review sites also exist, including the following: Redeemed Reader, Focus on the Family, Plugged In, and Common Sense Media. Below is a lengthy article by Bob Jones University that deals with potentially objectionable material from a biblical worldview in a thorough manner. Bob Jones article Most Frequently Cited Books in AP Lit Exam 1970- At the end of this list, I will comment on some of these I have read and recommend a few that I have read in the past few months. (They are in order of most to least cited - which DOES NOT mean that the ones that are higher on the list are the ones you should read/have more merit)

Choose ONE of these works from the “Most Frequently Cited Books” List.It is fine if you pick one that is highlighted, yet we have either read these in my classroom or will -- hopefully -- at some point). 26 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 20 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 18 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 17 King Lear by William Shakespeare 16 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski 16 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 16 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte 15 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 15 Moby Dick by Herman Melville 14 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce 13 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 13 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zorah Neale Hurston 12 The Awakening by Kate Chopin 12 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 12 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 11 Billy Budd by Herman Melville 11 Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko 11 Light in August by William Faulkner 10 Antigone by Sophocles 10 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 10 Beloved by Toni Morrison 10 The Color Purple by Alice Walker 10 The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams 10 Native Son by Richard Wright 10 Othello by William Shakespeare 10 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison 10 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams 9 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 9 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster 9 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry 8 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy 8 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 8 Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya 8 Candide by Voltaire 8 The Crucible by Arthur Miller 8 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

8 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy 8 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair 8 Portrait of a Lady by Henry James 8 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Stoppard 8 Sula by Toni Morrison 8 Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett 7 All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren 7 Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton 7 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton 7 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad 7 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 7 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy 7 Oedipus Rex by Sophocles 7 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 7 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 7 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 7 The Tempest by William Shakespeare 7 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy 5 Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor 7 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 6 Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 6 A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen 6 An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen 6 Equus by Peter Shaffer 6 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift 6 Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen 6 Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw 6 Medea by Euripides 6 The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare 6 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe 6 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf 6 Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot 6 Obasan by Joy Kogawa 6 The Piano Lesson by August Wilson 6 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James 6 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee 5 Bleak House by Charles Dickens 5 The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chkhov 5 Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe 5 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 5 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin 5 Hamlet by William Shakespeare 5 Macbeth by William Shakespeare 5 Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw 5 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser 5 A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dicken Additional late-20th and early 21st-century novels Selected from 2015-2019 exams:

All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Kindred - Octavia Estelle Butler
- Mama Day - Gloria Naylor
- Man and Superman - George Bernard Shaw
  - The Power of One - Bryce Courtena
    - The Bonesetter’s Daughter - Amy Tan
    - The Burgess Boys - Elizabeth Strout
    - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Barbara Schultz
  - The Memory Keeper’s Daughter - Kim Edwards
  - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho Works from the May 2020 Exam ● Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Bronte (1822) ● The Gift of Rain – Tan Twan Eng (2007) ● HER LETTERS – KATE CHOPIN (1894) ● Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man - James Weldon Johnson (1912) ● BUNNER SISTERS – EDITH WHARTON (1916) ● THE VOYAGE OUT – VIRGINIA WOOLF (1915) ● THE SKETCH BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON – WASHINGTON IRVING (1912)

● ONE AMAZING THING – CHITRA

BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI (2010)

● THE AGE OF LIGHT - WHITNEY

SCHRARER (2019)

● SO BIG – EDNA FERBER (1924)

● “A THREAD WITHOUT A KNOT” (1916)

DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

● THE MILL ON THE FLOSS – GEORGE

ELIOT (1860)

students chose it last year because it was short but did not enjoy it!

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen is a great readable classic. (Some will not like the cookie cutter ending, but it is what it is. It’s worth the read.)
Gulliver’s Travels is a great adventure novel (I have only read excerpts).
For One More Day - Mitch Albom - Bittersweet yet hopeful.
A Better Man - Louise Penny - a series novel of a morally upright French detective solving a crime.
Dear Edward - Ann Napolitano - a moving account of a young boy who is the sole survivor of a plane crash.
The Clover Girls - Viola Shipman - A nostalgic novel about four adult women who are summoned back to their childhood summer camp.
Clock Dance - Anne Tyler - a hopeful, late-life coming-of-age novel.
Biloxi - Mary Miller - A Southern fiction novel about a man, his dog, and the strange turns life can take.
All Over but the Shoutin’ - Rick Bragg (non-fiction) - Alabama professor and Southern Living columnist shares his poverty-stricken childhood and his emerging literary career, paying homage to his mother.
The Awakening - by Kate Chopin - a short novel I read recently. It’s well-written and worth the read, but contains mature themes (a woman having an adulterous relationship, but the sin is not glorified but rather contains consequences that are biblically based).
Anything by C.S. Lewis is great.
I love Flannery O’Connor! She is Southern gothic, and her stories contain strong Christian themes (albeit many times exposing hypocrisy of false religion). It’s not light reading and usually contains an ironic twist.
The Glass Hotel - by Emily St. John Mandel (the same author as Station Eleven ). While I don’t like it as well as Station Eleven , the characters are believable, and the interweaving of characters’ lives is deftly written.
A Thousand Splendid Suns - by Khaled Hosseini is a beautiful but sometimes harsh story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years, so historical fiction. Again, much literary merit but not difficult to read (this is the author of The Kite Runner , which I have not read).
Where the Crawdads Sing - is a coming-of-age novel that has been very popular the last couple of years. I enjoyed it, but it does have some mature material (PG-13).
The Alchemist - A delightful read, almost allegorical, with biblical themes.
Middlemarch - by George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) - I have not read this but plan to at least begin it this summer (it’s 848 pages!). My uncles, one a public high school English teacher and the other a college English professor, both tell me that for any serious English scholar, this is a “must-read!”

Thank you, Mrs. Lewellyn Assignment :

During the first week of your English semester (August or January), you will give a 4- minute oral presentation consisting of a short summary (unless someone else has already summarized your book), an analysis, and a review. You may use notes if you’d like.
During the first week of your English semester (August or January), you will write a paragraph about the book that deals with its universal themes and the meaning of the work as a whole. (Do not do this during the summer; we will talk about it in class!)

Parents and Students, Slides of Literature

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