AP English Literature and Composition: Summer Reading Assignment Welcome to AP Literature! You are about to embark on a challenging yet fulfilling journey into the world of “Great Books.” These summer reading assignments are designed to prepare you for the level of critical reading and the depth of conversation required in our class. Canonical literature commands your full intellectual attention. Therefore, begin your reading early in the summer so that you have plenty of time to enjoy and carefully contemplate the complexities of the texts. Hard copies are available in limited supply at RHS (as noted below), but you can also access some of these titles on our library’s Overdrive catalog or procure your own copies at your local bookstore or library. Annotate all of the texts you read using sticky notes (or writing in the text if it is your own copy). The double entry journals (for Text #2 and #3) require you to cull these annotations and relate them to the development of the author’s central ideas. These journals will be graded and they will also aid you in completing an analysis essay assigned in the first quarter of the course. Please Note: Tasks 1 and 2 are both due on the first day of school. No late work accepted in AP Lit. Required Text #1: Ancient Epic The Odyssey by Homer (Available at RHS.) Required Text #2: Nineteenth-Century Novel Choose ONE from the following list: (A limited supply of these texts is available at RHS.) Persuasion by Jane Austen Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert Moby Dick by Herman Melville Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Required Text #3: Twentieth-Century and Twenty-First Century Novel Choose ONE from the following list: (*Titles with an asterisk are available in limited supply at RHS.) *Beloved by Toni Morrison *Native Son by Richard Wright *The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand *The Jungle by Upton Sinclair *The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger *Light in August by William Faulkner Siddhartha by Herman Hesse The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton Catch-22 by Joseph Heller A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Sophie’s Choice by William Styron The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wrobelewski Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan The Kite Runner by Kahled Hosseini A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest Gaines Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Saffron Foer Atonement by Ian McKewan Orlando by Virginia Woolf A Passage to India by E.M. Forster Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison Task I. Your Literary Odyssey Essay (due on the first day of school) Comme l'on serait savant si l'on connaissait bien seulement cinq à six livres. (What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books.) ― Gustave Flaubert Think of five or six books that have had an impact on you throughout your literate life. In a formal essay (of about 500 words), discuss your “literary odyssey,” tracing the impact a handful of books (6 including The Odyssey) have had on you as a literate person. Describe your journey as a reader from childhood to now, considering each text you include as a “stop” along the way. Just as Odysseus encounters new challenges and experiences on every island he visits on his journey, you have met new ideas and faced new challenges with every text you’ve read. How has your reading shaped you? Your writing should analyze your strengths and weaknesses as a reader and discuss specific challenges certain titles have presented to you. This essay will take different shape for different writers, but it should include answers to the some of the following questions: Why do you read? How do you read? Make some conclusions about the value of literature in your life. Organize your ideas in coherent, welldeveloped paragraphs. This essay should be a personal response but should also make references to details in the texts themselves. Please include The Odyssey as your final stop. How does this text fit into your history as a reader? Oral Presentation: Pick a format for presenting your Literary Odyssey (Google Slides, Prezi, Video, Poster). We will begin our class with these presentations on the first day of school. Your presentation should include the ideas outlined in your essay, naming approximately 5 books (6 including The Odyssey) that have had an impact on your understanding of the world, your personality, and/or your own writing. Include a visual and a very brief written reflection for each book. Task II. Double-Entry Journals (due on the first day of school) For each of the novels you read (one 19th Century novel, and one 20th /21st Century novel) please complete a double-entry journal, recording lines from the text on the left hand side and analyzing them in the space on the right hand side of the page. You will, therefore, need two copies of the template included here. Each journal should include nine quotations from the text, and these quotations should be drawn from the beginning, middle, and end of the texts. In other words, your journal should reflect a complete reading and understanding of the meaning of the work as a whole. Note: You do not have to complete a double-entry journal on The Odyssey. You are writing about that text in Task 1. Task III. Comparative Analysis Essay on Your Summer Reading (Novels) This essay will be due at the end of September. After being introduced to multiple critical perspectives in our first unit of study, you will apply one or two of these perspectives in an analysis of the two novels from the 19th and 20th /21st century that you read over the summer. Your double-entry journals will prove very useful, so take your time and complete them thoroughly. Strategies for Reader Response on your Double Entry Journal As you read, mark notable words, sentences, passages, etc. and thoughtfully explain why you selected the text. You can use sticky notes as you read, and then transfer key ideas to the double entry journal. You might respond to a passage that includes language that helps create the mood includes words that help to convey the character’s tone contains powerful figurative language evokes a memory or reminds you of yourself or someone you know reminds you of something else you have read is thought provoking and makes you question something utilizes a particular literary or persuasive technique raises social questions creates a connection for you (Text to Self, Text to Text, Text to World) Or, use any of the following sentence frames to help structure your responses: Predict (I think…will happen because…) Make Inferences (The theme must be…because…) Visualize (Based on the text, I picture…) Determine Importance (This supports the main idea because…) Ask Questions (Why did…? What does … mean?) Double Entry Journal Name________________________________ Title: _____________________________________________________________ Author:______________________________________ Text Response Copy the line(s) directly from the text or paraphrase longer portions. Include page numbers. Respond in neatly written, complete sentences. 1.__________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ * * 2.__________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ * * 3.__________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Central Idea What is the central idea (theme) of the text so far? How do the passages you identified support it? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Double Entry Journal Name________________________________ Title: _____________________________________________________________ Author:______________________________________ Text Response Copy the line(s) directly from the text or paraphrase longer portions. Include page numbers. Respond in neatly written, complete sentences. 4.__________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ * * 5.__________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ * * 6.__________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Central Idea What is the central idea (theme) of the text so far? How do the passages you identified support it? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Double Entry Journal Name________________________________ Title: _____________________________________________________________ Author:______________________________________ Text Response Copy the line(s) directly from the text or paraphrase longer portions. Include page numbers. Respond in neatly written, complete sentences. 7.__________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ * * 8.__________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ * * 9.__________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Central Idea What is the central idea (theme) of the text so far? How do the passages you identified support it? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
