AP Literature and Composition Mrs.

Renner Summer Reading 2012-2013 Dear Students, Congratulations on choosing AP Literature and Composition for your senior year! I am VERY excited to work with each of you next year. One of the goals of AP Lit is to read, well, a lot. This means that you need to get a head start over the summer. You will read two books and complete a 3 (and 1/2) part assignment, due on the first day of class. Please do not hesitate to CONTACT ME if you need help or have questions. E-mail me at anne.renner@mnps.org. All materials and instructions will also be posted on my class website: renneraplit.weebly.com

The Books
Book #1: How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster This book is a funny and entertaining way to enter the mindset of a master literary analyst. If youve always assumed your teachers were just making it up when they insist that everything is really a symbol for something else, Foster might persuade you otherwise. This book is available for purchase in hard cover, paperback, and e-book formats. Used copies are available for as little as $1.99 on Amazon.com. I highly recommend that you read this book FIRST. Book #2: Book of Choice. Choose any book from the attached list. You must choose a book that you have NOT read before. I have included some brief descriptors to help you choose based on your personal preferences; I want you to try to find a book that you will enjoy reading. Use the internet to look up summaries and reviews before choosing.

The Assignments
Assignment Part 0.5: ANNOTATE both books as you read. You may do this in a wide variety of ways, including using sticky notes if you are using a borrowed copy. However, I encourage you to purchase your own copies so that you can underline, highlight, star, circle, and write, write, writein the margins, in between the lines, on the blank pages, inside the cover, anywhere you can find space. Assignment Part 1: Two-Column Journal For How to Read Literature Like a Professor, complete a two-column journal. You should have at least 3 entries per chapter, INCLUDING the introduction. Do this on lined paper or in a Word document. See attached instructions. Assignment Part 2: Novel Note Cards The AP Literature Exam requires that you have extensive knowledge of a wide variety of books that you may refer back to for the open-response essay. One way to cement the details of a book in your mind is to record and organize them on notecards. For this assignment, pretend that you have been asked to write the Spark Notes for your book of choice; read it carefully and use note cards to record and explain all of the books significant details. See attached instructions. Assignment Part 3: Application Essay In a 500-750 word essay, explain how three of the concepts/chapters from How to Read Literature Like a Professor apply to your book of choice. Use (and cite) direct quotations from your novel to illustrate your points. You may choose to structure this as a 5-paragraph essay, focusing each of the three body paragraphs on one concept/chapter, but you do not have to follow that exact structure. Show me your best writing, whatever that looks like. I will use this essay partially to diagnose everyones writing in order to shape my instruction for the first quarter.

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AP Literature and Composition Mrs. Renner Summer Reading 2012-2013

Further Instructions: Assignment 1 (Two-Column Journal)

A two-column journal is an easy way for you to record your thoughts about any text. Create two columns on your paper with the following headings: What the Text Says What I Say

In the left column, record phrases, sentences, or longer passages from How to Read Literature Like a Professor that strike you as important in some way. In the right column, write your response to that passage. NUMBER your entries and provide PAGE NUMBERS for all passages in the left column. See example on the next page. Responses might include: Why you think the passage is particularly important or insightful Questions you have about the passage (dont be afraid of not understanding something; ask questions!) Why you strongly agree with, strongly disagree with, or feel ambivalent about the truth of the passage Examples that illustrate the point of the passage

Further Instructions: Assignment 2 (Novel Notecards)

For your book of choice, complete a set of novel note cards. You should use 3 x 5 cards. I recommend the spiral bound kind for ease of organization, but loose cards will work as well. I cannot assign an absolute number of note cards to complete because each book will vary, but at minimum your note cards must include the following: Context Authors name & country of origin, year of publication, any relevant historical information Characters 1 card per major character, with a description Setting(s) 1 or more cards depending on how many major settings the novel utilizes Symbols 1 card per major symbol, with an explanation of what it may mean Motifs recurring images, words, or ideas that add meaning or significance to the text Plot 1 card per major event or plot point; depending on the structure of your book, you may wish to do one card per chapter with a VERY short summary of that chapter Conflicts what conflicts, internal or external, drive the plot? 1 per card Point of View / Narrator Information how is the story told? In first person? By multiple characters? By an omniscient narrator? Important Quotations choose 5 quotations that jump off the page as significant and meaningful. Write the quotation on one side of the card and your explanation of why it is important on the other side. Theme(s) 1 or more cards, depending on the complexity of your book. Themes are not just the big ideas or topics of a book but statements of what the book has to say about those ideas. For example, The Hunger Games is at least partially about the relationship between government and citizens. That, however, is not a theme. It is a topic. A theme of the book might be the statement totalitarian governments can destroy the spirits of the people they rule. Or, if youre an optimist, you might say the theme is totalitarian governments may control all external aspects of a society, but they cannot, in the end, control the spirits of the people they rule.

The key to good note-taking is to be simultaneously CONCISE and THOROUGH. You will get better at this as we go; let this be your practice round. Record exactly as much as you need to be able to remember and discuss the details of your book accurately. Remember that all of your cards should EXPLAIN, not just identify. You should always have something on the front of the card to identify what it is and your explanation on the back of the card. See example on the next page.

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AP Literature and Composition Mrs. Renner Summer Reading 2012-2013

Example: Two-Column Journal

What the Text Says 1. The real reason for a quest never involves the stated reason. In fact, more often than not, the quester fails at the stated task. So why do they go and why do we care? (p. 3) What I Say 1. Its true that a lot of journey stories seem to have some lame excuse for going on the journey that falls away after a few minutes. But what about stories where they continue to pursue the stated goal all the way through? Can the stated goal and the true goal (self-knowledge) be tied together?

Example: Symbol Note Card (using Lord of the Flies)

(front of card) (back of card) The Conch Shell, which the boys pass around as a kind of speaking stick, represents the order and rules of civilization. When the conch shell shatters, it represents the boys full abandonment of civilized ways; they are now more like wild animals than members of human society.

Symbol: the Conch Shell

Example: Application Essay Outline/Plan

Note this is NOT what the final product should look likethis is merely the informal PLAN for an essay. Example Book: The Hunger Games and no, you may NOT use this book for your summer reading!!! 1st Chapter/Concept to Apply: Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion - Discuss how important food and eating are to the story. Also, the kinds of food available, the attitudes of the people eating, etc. affect the symbolic meaning of the act of eating. For instance, Gale and Katniss sharing a simple meal of bread, goat cheese, and berriesall of which have been obtained by their own hard work and savvyin the woods, their natural, comfortable habitat, is an act of pure communion and fellowship, where they put aside all other concerns and come together in a ritualistic act of sustenance. However, Effie Trinket fussing over proper table manners in front of the glut of rich dishes prepared and served by Avox servants is a perversion of this most fundamental of human rituals, representing the excesses of the Capitol and their disconnect from the realities of living off the earth. 2nd Chapter/Concept to Apply: Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before? - Discuss how much of The Hunger Games develops meaning through allusion to ancient Roman culture. Gladiators, the use of the name Panem which comes from Panem et Circenses (Bread and Circuses), etc. It adds historical weight and significance to the issues of class disparity and government control. 3rd Chapter to Apply: More Than Its Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence - Discuss how the books violence is never merely literal; it is not personal aggression but rather a reflection of societal ills and manipulation. The particular form of each characters violence also reflects his or her personality, strengths, and weaknesses; Katniss can be violent in an impulsive, emotional way such as when she shoves Peeta after his interview, but she never employs deadly violence unless for an empathetic purposesuch as to put Cato out of his misery or to avenge Rues death. Her deadly violence is also clean, quick, and impersonalan arrow shot from a distancerather than vicious and visceral or up close & personal. This shows her resistance to emotionally give in to the Capitols manipulations. Renner 2012

AP Literature and Composition Mrs. Renner Summer Reading 2012-2013 Book of Choice List Organized alphabetically by author. Some authors have multiple books listed, separated by semicolons. Choose one of these titles for your Book of Choice. This will be the book for which you complete your novel note cards and about which you will write your application essay. Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart multicultural/post-colonial/African Sherman Alexie The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven; Reservation Blues multicultural/Native American Isabel Allende The House of the Spirits; City of the Beasts multicultural/magical realism/female authors/Hispanic Rudolfo Anaya Bless Me, Ultima; Heart of Aztlan; Tortuga multicultural/Hispanic/magical realism Margaret Atwood Alias, Grace; The Handmaids Tale dystopia/science fiction/speculative fiction Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice; Persuasion British classics, social commentary, women James Baldwin Go Tell it on the Mountain mid-century American life, African-American, semi-autobiographical Saul Bellow Herzog; Humboldts Gift modernity & civilization, Jewish life and identity Charlotte Bront Jane Eyre British classics, female authors Emily Bront Wuthering Heights British classics, female authors Albert Camus The Fall; The Stranger philosophical absurdism, existentialism Willa Cather My Antonia; O Pioneers! female American authors, realism Kate Chopin The Awakening American realism, early feminism Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street Mexican-American culture, female authors Edwidge Danticat Krik? Krak!; The Farming of Bones; The Dew Breaker multicultural/Haitian-American Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe; Moll Flanders British classics, adventure, allegory Anita Desai Fire on the Mountain; Clear Light of Day multicultural/Indian Charles Dickens Great Expectations; A Tale of Two Cities; Our Mutual Friend; David Copperfield British classics, mixing fantasy with reality, human psychology Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment; The Brothers Karamazov classics, moral/philosophical issues, human psychology George Eliot Silas Marner; Middlemarch realism, human psychology, female authors (real name Mary Ann Evans) Ralph Ellison Invisible Man political turmoil, issues of race in 1930s America Louise Erdrich Love Medicine postmodernism, Native American literature William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Light in August; Absalom, Absalom American classics, southern/southern gothic literature Henry Fielding Tom Jones British classics, comic novel F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby; Tender is the Night American classics, the Jazz Age E. M. Forster A Passage to India; A Room with a View humanism, class struggle Thomas Hardy Tess of the dUrbervilles; Far From the Madding Crowd Victorian realism, social constraints Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter dark Romanticism, puritanism, moral allegories, sin & evil Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms; The Sun Also Rises; For Whom the Bell Tolls American classics Renner 2012

AP Literature and Composition Mrs. Renner Summer Reading 2012-2013 Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God African-American fiction Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day; Never Let Me Go alternate realities, human psychology Henry James The Turn of the Screw; The Portrait of a Lady; Daisy Miller human psychology James Joyce The Dead; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man modernism, personal growth/loss of innocence Joy Kogawa Obasan multicultural/Asian- Canadian Jhumpa Lahiri The Namesake multicultural/Indian-American Margaret Laurence The Stone Angel; The Diviners Christian symbolism, post-colonialism, womens roles D. H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers philosophical realism Chang-rae Lee Native Speaker; A Gesture Life multicultural/Korean-American Bernard Malamud The Fixer mythic literature, Jewish-American experience Gabriel Garca Mrquez A Thousand Years of Solitude magical realism, multicultural/Colombian-American Aldous Huxley Brave New World dystopia, science fiction Cormac McCarthy All the Pretty Horses; The Road bleak American romanticism, isolation, evil Herman Melville Moby Dick; Billy Budd American classics Toni Morrison Beloved; Song of Solomon; The Bluest Eye; Sula African-American fiction, female authors Vladimir Nabokov Lolita; Pale Fire complex plots, linguistic playfulness & experimentation George Orwell 1984; Animal Farm social commentary, dystopia Orhan Pamuk My Name is Red; Snow; The Museum of Innocence multicultural (Turkish), conflict between East and West, postmodernism John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men; East of Eden; The Grapes of Wrath American classics, the Great Depression Jonathan Swift Gullivers Travels satire, humor Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina; War and Peace realism, social issues Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn American classics, social commentary Voltaire Candide social satire and critique Alice Walker The Color Purple African-American fiction, female authors Eudora Welty The Optimists Daughter southern fiction Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence; Ethan Frome social critique Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse early feminism, womens issues Richard Wright Native Son African-American fiction, racial issues

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