Welcome, Seniors, to the AP Literature and Composition course
for the 2015-2016 school year.
Below are your REQUIRED summer assignments—all due on the first day of
class:
1. Purchase and complete a close reading of How to Read Literature Like a
Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines
by Thomas C. Foster. (There is a 2014 revised edition, but you may
choose either the 2003 original edition or the revised edition.)
2. For EACH chapter in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, write at
least five bullet points that highlight effectively the chapter’s main points.
The bullet points do not have to be in complete sentences, but they do
need to communicate that you understand well the points that have been
made. (There are 27 chapters, so when you finish, you should have 27
sets of bullet points—about 135 bullet points in all.) Also, be prepared on
the first day to complete a short-answer quiz about the book’s main points.
3. Purchase one novel or play that you have selected from the list of 26 titles
below. Choose a selection that you truly want to read and study since it
will be your primary text for 1st quarter’s required literary analysis research
paper.
4. Read every word of your chosen novel or play before you come to class.
As you make notes in the margin about passages that interest you, add to
those notes any connections you make between the ideas discussed in
the “professor” book and the themes and motifs present in your selection.
5. Be prepared on the first day of class to respond to a writing prompt about
your selection.
6. Bring both of your purchased books to class on the first day.
Details about the two selections:
1. Selection 1:
How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading
Between the Lines
What the inside cover says about this handbook:


A lively and entertaining guide to making your reading experience more rewarding and
fun.
Focuses on literary basics: major themes and motifs (seasons, quests, food, politics,
geography, weather, vampires, violence, illness, and many more); literary models

(Shakespeare’s plays, Greek mythology, fairy tales, the Bible): and narrative devices
(form, irony, plot, and symbol, among others).
Draws on a huge variety of examples from all genres: novels, short stories, plays,
poems, movies, song lyrics, and cartoons.
2. Selection 2:
Any one novel or play from the following alphabetized list:
Again, keep in mind that you will use your chosen work as the basis for the required,
documented literary analysis research paper.
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Patpn
Emma by Jane Austen
Fences by August Wilson
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
King Lear by William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare
Native Son by Richard Wright
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Broughton’s AP Literature and Composition teachers:
Mary Gulledge
Tanya Merchant
Juliana Pattisall-Wiliams