A Little Summer Reading

Hello, past and future AP Lit students who are looking for a little reading recommendations for the summer. AP Lit is my book club class, in which every day we are doing something regarding literature: close reading, finding lit strategies (if you like juxtaposition, well, just you wait), discussing minutia that you find in texts, performing some of the great characters of all time, creating during third quarter poems, stories, and peregrinations. Additionally, there is a reading community advanced, as each person find his/her niche in literary analysis and continues to indicate those patterns throughout the year. If you have not signed up for AP Lit and would like to be part of the class, you still can over the summer, during registration, or, if you are really waiting until the last minute, the first week of school.

Over the summer, I will be updating my blog with some reading ideas for you and for anyone who would like to do reading - that's right, you don't have to be part of AP Lit to partake in these suggested readings.

Currently, I am reading Colm Toibin's The Master, which is a fictionalized account of the great writer Henry James. I'll tell you - the man knows how to write with polysyndeton and asyndeton and often juxtaposes these strategies together! I've already plotted a new syndetons activity for Lang next year with quotes from his novel.

Overall, I would look over 101 Books to Read Before College and see if any of the authors and titles are of interest to you. Many of these novels are part of what is known as cultural literacy, or the shared reading experiences of books in a culture. For instance, most high schoolers read Romeo & Juliet (yeah, sorry, King Lear is so much better to do in AP Lit) and To Kill a Mockingbird, know and can make allusions to the texts, and be part of a greater conversation. This list is also helpful for those of you taking AP Lit as one of the essay prompts allows you to choose what novel/play you would like to write about.

I highly recommend reading Brave New World over the summer. The first chapter is really science-y, so if that is not your cup of tea, just keep going until you run into the characters and their salacious behavior. This is a dystopian novel - and written in 1932, which you will be amazed to find since it feels like it was written this week. This used to be part of AP Lit, but every year it is pushed back and back and back until we don't have time to read it.

One of the disappointments of ending AP Lang from home is that we did not partake in American Literature, so my next blog will examine some of the texts that would have been part of the class, especially the ones that would have involved acting by my students and myself. I will then move into my bookshelf, which you can see the top two rows here:

I hope you all do a lot of reading this summer - you learn so much from books that actually makes you understand and empathize with the world around you, whether it be comprehending the past, partaking in the present, or figuring out the future.