Summer Reading List
AP Literature 2012-2013
Contact information:
All assignments and information are posted electronically on the blog: http://mrgiorgi.blogspot.com
I can also be reached by email: [email protected], [email protected] (in case there is problem with school email)
Required Books—your responsibility
You should read each of the following six (6) books during summer vacation. This year we are doing six because some of the novels are very
short. You should take notes on each in a journal, on note cards, or in a computer file you can easily reference when you return to school.
Read the Thomas Foster book first
For this book make notes on each chapter as he always gives you something to look for.
Read the novels in any order you like
For each of the five novels, it is suggested that you keep a record of the following:
Basic plot points
Main characters and brief description of each
Important symbols and explanations
At least two important themes from each book with appropriate commentary on each
Any additional information that will help you in class.
Required Writing—your responsibility
Write your College Essay
From the Common App: “Please write an essay (250 words minimum) on a topic of your choice or on one of the options listed below, and
attach it to your application before submission. Please indicate your topic by checking the appropriate box. This personal essay helps us
become acquainted with you as a person and student, apart from courses, grades, test scores, and other objective data. It will also
demonstrate your ability to organize your thoughts and express yourself.”
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.
Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you,
and explain that influence.
A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal
background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter
that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
Topic of your choice.
When you return to school: There will be a comprehensive assessment when you return, including a 50 question multiple choice exam
related to the 6 required books as well as essays and class work on each of the books. The first 4-5 weeks will depend on the summer
reading. Be ready on day one. No, I will not be collecting your notes, but will be happy to go over them with you if you like.
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
Hate symbols? Haven’t read the Bible? Can’t recognize a poetic form when you see one? Think water is just
something you swim in? Think your English teacher is constantly making stuff up in class? Well, read Thomas
Foster’s book on the art of reading and it will change the way you will read forever…and make the course one of
the most enjoyable experiences ever.
White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Winner of the Man Booker Prize and written by a former Financial Times writer from Mumbai who has a bird’s
eye view of both globalization and daily life for the majority of Indians, this is perhaps the most penetrating look at
modern India yet offered by a contemporary novelist. Framed as a series of letters by Balram to Wen Jiabao,
Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, this novel also looks at the relationship between the
rising powers of India and China and a vision of the future. Connects to The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin
Hamid and Cosmopolis by Don Delillo.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Short listed for the Man Book Prize by the author of Moth Smoke, this is A novel about 9/11 told through the eyes
of a Pakistani living, studying, and working in the United States. The novel is by a Pakistani expatriate living in
London; the author was short-listed for the Pen-Hemingway award for Moth Smoke. This book connects to
Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo and The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.
Boy21 by Matthew Quick
Matthew Quick has earned a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention and his first novel, The Silver Linings
Playbook is now a major motion picture starring Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. In his
latest novel, is about a friendship between two high school basketball players. For Finley, basketball has always
been an escape from his life in Bellmont, a Philadelphia town ruled by the Irish Mob, drugs and violence.
He’s always dreamed of getting out somehow with his girlfriend, Erin. Russ has just moved to the
neighborhood. A former teen basketball phenom from a privileged home, his life has been turned upside
down by tragedy. Cut off from everyone he knows, he now answers only to the name Boy21—his former
jersey number—and has an unusual obsession with outer space. As their final year of high school brings
these two boys together, “Boy21” may turn out to be the answer they both need.
Cosmopolis by Don Delillo
National Book Award winner Don DeLillo skates through a day in the life of a brilliant and precocious
New Economy billionaire in this monotone 13th novel, a study in big money and affectlessness. As one
character remarks, 28-year-old Eric Packer "wants to be one civilization ahead of this one." But on an
April day in the year 2000, Eric's fortune and life fall apart. The story tracks him as he traverses
Manhattan in his stretch limo. His goal: a haircut at Anthony's, his father's old barber. Though this novel
was published in 2004, it seems to have anticipated our contemporary times and has been turned into a
motion picture by David Cronenberg. This book connects to White Tiger by Aravind Adiga and The
Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. (Special Note: Avoid the movie as it is different from the
novel.)
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The story of John Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany. It is a story of faith and a tale of love, war, and
family told in a grand style that captures the last half century of America’s history and reflects on the country’s
roots.
Suggested Books for Self Selected Reading
Codes: “Blank”= reasonable; “SS”=short and sweet; “C”=challenging; “RC”=Really Challenging; “L”=Long; “RL”=Really Long
My Antonia by Willa Cather
The Rise of Silas Lapham, William Dean Howells
Remains of the Day, An Artist of the Floating World, The Unconsoled, A Pale
Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Pudd’nhead
View of Hills, When We Were Orphans, Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
Wilson, Mark Twain
Ethan Frome; Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
Sister Carrie (L), Theodore Dreiser
Beloved, Song of Soloman, Toni Morrison
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Bellefleur, We were the Mulvaneys Joyce Carol Oates
McTeague, Frank Norris
Mile Zero, The Zoot Suit Murders, Thomas Sanchez
The Country of the Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett
A Thousand Acres, Age of Grief, Jane Smiley
Moby Dick (LC), Herman Melville
Point Omega (F), Running Dog, Players, Libra (JFK), Mao II, Underworld
A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The First 49 Short Stories, To
(LC), The Body Artist (SC), Don DeLillo
Have and Have Not, The Garden of Eden Ernest Hemingway
House on Mango Street (SS), Sandra Cisneros
Where I’m Calling From, Cathedral, Raymond Carver
In the Time of the Butterflies (H), Julia Alvarez
Nostromo (LC), Lord Jim Joseph Conrad
The Sweet Hereafter, Continental Drift, Affliction, Rule of the Bone, Russell
The Metamorphosis, Kafka
Banks
The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (SS), Luis Sepulveda
Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee
Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
Anna Karenina (LC), Leo Tolstoy
The Crying of Lot 49 (SS), Gravity’s Rainbow (RLRC), Thomas Pynchon
The Recognitions (RLRC), A Frolic of His Own (RLRC), William Gaddis
Turn of the Screw (SS), Daisy Miller(SS), What Maisie Knew (C), Henry
A Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
James
The Brothers Karamazov (L), Fyodor Dostoyevsky
As I Lay Dying(C), Absalom Absalom!! (C), The Sound & The Fury(C),
Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
William Faulkner
To The Lighthouse, Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf
Dubliners (SS), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses (RLRC), James
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
Joyce
House of Meetings, Time’s Arrow, Money, The Information, Heavy Water
The Eye, Pale Fire (RC), Vladimir Nabokov
and Other Stories, Martin Amis
Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, Crucible, Arthur Miller
Straight Man, Richard Russo
Flaubert’s Parrot, Arthur and George, A Sense of Ending Julian Barnes
The Millstone, Margaret Drabble
The Marrow of Tradition, Charles Chesnutt
The Bonfire of the Vanities, Thomas Wolfe
The Robber Bride, Wilderness Tips, Margaret Atwood
The Silver Linings Playbook Matt Quick
Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens.
Mary & O’Neil, The Summer Guest Justin Cronin
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Hygiene and the Assassin, The Character of Rain Amelie Nothomb
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle(RLRC) Haruki Murakami
The Cider House Rules, The World According to Garp, John Irving
The Magus, The French Lieutenant’s Woman John Fowles
Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Persuasion, Jane Austen