AP Literature and Composition 2012-2013 (AP 12)
Summer Reading Project
Congratulations on your decision to take Advanced Placement Literature and Composition! This is a collegelevel class that will require commitment and hard work. You will take an AP exam at the end of the year that
could potentially grant you college English credit. Students study a variety of writers but concentrate more on
British literature.
Teachers prepare students for the AP Exam administered in May by the College Board. A student earning
a passing grade on this exam may obtain college credit and/or higher placement in a college freshman
composition course. This course covers a broad range of materials usually associated with the reading
analysis, and writing expected in college freshman composition. Through frequent timed-writing practices—an
average of three papers a week—students prepare to express themselves quickly and efficiently. The course
includes a study of rhetorical devices, figures of speech, and frequent practice with AP prompts themselves. In
addition, literature exams include practice with AP multiple choice questions.
The books on the summer reading list are important books in literature, but do not let their designation as
classics frighten you. They were not written for English students to study but for people to read and enjoy. A
summer reading list is found on the next page in addition to the two required novels: Anna Karenina and Les
Misérables. It is possible to buy Cliff’s/Spark Notes for each of these books but not necessary. If you do decide
to refer to notes, please read the books in their entirety first. The author needs to speak to you directly, not
through an interpreter. If you must depend on Spark or Cliff Notes for understanding, you are probably not
going to do well in this class.
All of the books on the next page are available in local libraries and bookstores (I will give you a copy of
Anna Karenina and Les Misérables if you are a student in Penang. Be sure to bring these book back with you
when you return in August!) If possible, I suggest you purchase your own copy of these books so you can
highlight and make notes in them. Please note: I have not read all of the books on the list on the next page and
therefore cannot vouch for their content—these books are suggested by other AP high school teachers and
have not been screened by me or anyone at Dalat International School.
There are two parts to the summer reading requirements. Be sure to read each the instructions to these parts
carefully. I look forward to working with you next year. If you have any questions between now and the start of
school, you may e-mail me at <tommyt@dalat.org>.
Additionally, two books you may want to purchase are On Writing Well by William Zinsser and The Elements
of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. The first book is fairly self-explanatory: it is a common-sense guide
to—guess what?—writing well. It is very informative, yet fun to read (and it is a quick read). You can skip, for
purposes of the AP Literature class, the chapters on Science and Technology, Business Writing, and Sports.
But if you are personally interested in any of those kinds of writing, by all means read those chapters! If there
are any areas of grammar or mechanics where you feel that you are on shaky ground, consult The Elements of
Style. This is really a reference handbook for writers and will help you in this course—as well as in your senior
and college courses.
Everyone must complete reading Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables before the semester begins. In addition, each student will choose one other book, for a total of three books, to be read before the school year begins in August.
You do not necessarily need to purchase these books; you may check them out of a library or even read some
of them on-line at <www.online-literature.com>.
PART 1: You will need to keep a vocabulary section in a notebook. For each book, you must find fifty words
that you are not familiar with the meaning. Write (i.e., using a PEN, not computer) the word and definition, the
sentence and page # where the word is found, and then make up your own original sentence using the word
correctly (Note: Don’t use any “to be” verbs in your made-up sentence—no “am, is, are, was, were, be, been,
being.” Your made-up sentence should make clear the definition of the word.
For example, here’s an entry from The Poisonwood Bible; the new word is “calico.”
CALICO: cotton cloth imported from India
“I looked as he commanded: Mama Mwanza with her disfigured legs and her small, noble head both
wrapped in bright yellow calico” (230). My sentence: The wet calico T-shirt clung to his body in the downpour; he
knew he didn’t have to worry as the cotton cloth would dry quickly once the sun came out.
PART II: A “Book Talk.” You might want to keep some kind of reading journal or write some notes when you finish
reading the book as during the first few weeks of school, each student will have to give a 3-5 minute “Book Talk”
to the rest of the class. Here’s what you may include in this “Talk”:
• Introduce yourself as the author (for example, if you read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, you will speak as if you are Barbara Kingsolver herself).
• Give some background information about yourself, including characteristics, personality traits, events, and personal relationships. Please be brief here!
• Why did you, the author, write this book? What was the “message” or “theme” you were trying to communi-
cate through your book?
• What rhetorical devices did you, the author, use to communicate your argument, values, or beliefs?
• Five Extra Credit points if you dress up as the author.
The purpose of this book talk is to recommend titles of good books for your peers to read and enjoy. It should be
a fun experience, hopefully not something that will burden you. (Note: The “Book Talk” will not be on Les Miserables or Anna Karenina, but the “other” book you choose from the list below.)
ADVANCED PLACEMENT LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION SUMMER READING BOOK
LIST, 2012-2013
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolfe
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
Sister Carrie by Theodore Drieser
Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
Where I Was From by Joan Didion
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Black Boy by Richard Wright
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Change Me into Zeus’s Daughter by Barbara Moss
Roots by Alex Haley
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Andromeda Strain by Chris Crichton
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Exodus by Leon Uris
Papillon by Henri Charriere
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Advise and Consent by Allen Dury
Room with a View by E.M. Forster
Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Shadow of the Moon by M.M. Kaye
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy
Burmese Days by George Orwell
Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? by Edward Albee
Emma by Jane Austen
The Captains and the Kings by Taylor Caldwell
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Iliad by Homer
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Quo Vadis by Henryk Seinkiewicz
The Red and the Black by Marie-Henri Stendhal
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
These major works are taught in grades 9,10 and 11 at
Dalat. Be sure you have read them! (You could “count”
one of these as your third book if you haven’t read it
before.)
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora N. Hurston
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
A Death in the Family by James Agee
Animal Farm by George Orwell
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare
The Miracle Worker by Helen Keller
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Cane
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis