English 3 & AP Lit
English 3 & APLit Suggested/Recommended Titles for Summer Reading
This is by no means an exhaustive list of titles; it's merely a starting point for those that feel overwhelmed.
It is strongly recommended that you read both fiction titles and poetry in anticipation for AP English Literature
Additional titles for your consideration
The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell)
The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead)
The Adventures of Cavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon)
The Killer Angels (Michael Shaara)
The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga)
The Flaming of Bones (Edwidge Danticat)
A Lesson before Dying (Ernest Gaines)
The Heretic’s Daughter (Kathleen Kent)
The Bean Trees (Barbara Kingsolver)
The Historian (Barbara Kostova)
The Surrendered (Chang-rae Lee)
Motherless Brooklyn (Jonathan Lethem)
The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
The Paris Wife (Paula McLain)
Black Swan Green (David Mitchell)
Them (Joyce Carol Oates)
The Tiger’s Wife (Téa Obreht)
In the Shadow of the Banyan (Vaddey Ratner)
The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
Shanghai Girls (Lisa See)
The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield)
The Kitchen God’s Wife and/or The Bonesetter’s Daughter (Amy Tan)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Digging to America (Anne Tyler)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz)
A Passage to India (E.M. Forster)
The French Lieutenant’s Woman (John Fowles)
And the Mountains Echoed and/or A Thousand Splendid Suns and/or The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
A Special Note about APLit (seniors)
AP English Literature and Composition is an introductory college-level literary analysis course. Students cultivate their understanding of literature through reading and analyzing texts as they explore concepts like character, setting, structure, perspective, figurative language, and literary analysis in the context of literary works.
Students who are interested in reading, studying, an analyzing fiction (including novels, plays, short stories, and poetry) are encouraged to take APLit during their senior year at IHS.
We will be working with How to Read Literature Like a Professor (Thomas C. Foster) during the school year. You are encouraged to find your own copy over the summer (look for used bookstores or your local public library) and read it on your own because it is a great resource for students who wish to understand how to approach level texts (such as we will be reading throughout the year).
Poetry: One-third of our exam and our class is on poetry. If you are unsure of how to even begin reading and thinking about poetry on an AP-level, here are some good starting points:
Crash Course Poetry (model example with Emily Dickinson): https://youtu.be/R4WwhOdk_Eg
Poetry Podcasts: https://discoverpods.com/poetry-podcasts-2019/
Literature: The other two-thirds of the course and exam is prose. There is a whole world of amazing books out there, but you will want to focus your reading on fiction at the high-school and college-level. Use How to Read Literature like a Professor to reinforce your ability to analyze literature. Remember, it's not about the what; it's about the why.
Intro to Literature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSYw502dJNY
IF YOU DID NOT READ IT in English 3/APLang, read The Great Gatsby (F.Scott Fitzgerald) and The Scarlet Letter (Nathanial Hawthorne).
Highly recommended: Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)
Authors typically covered in APLit (if you want to read anything by these authors): Margaret Atwood, Khaled Hosseini, Toni Morrison, William Shakespeare, Sophocles, Amy Tan, Alice Walker.
Another suggestion: Read books written by women and people of color (you've probably read enough dead white men to last you a lifetime), as well as literature that you feel are of "academic weight and merit" (aka avoid the children's and young adult genres). Consider, also, reading a second book by an author you read for one of your classes.
One last suggestion: Ignore everything: just read what you want this summer.