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Any ideas for AP Lit curriculum?

So, I am back to teaching high school (WOOO!) and I'm teaching AP English Literature. The yay/boo about teaching AP Lit is that the curriculum is entirely up to me. The point of the class is to get them prepared for the AP test, and that test REALLY focuses on books with "literary merit"...but that doesn't mean they HAVE to be classics. And you guys know me, I'm all about high interest reading material. I don't want them to be bored to tears, I want to give them books they will fall in love with. 

So, here's what I have so far: 

Summer Reading (This was not assigned by me, and I'll probably change it for next year, but who knows. I haven't read The Outsider, but it sounds like they all hated it.)
The Kite Runner
The Stranger - Camus
The Outsider - Richard Wright

Outside Reading
The Bell Jar
Everything Is Illuminated
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Book Thief
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Handmaid's Tale

In-Class Reading (Here's where I need help)
Pride & Prejudice
Hamlet

Right now I'm thinking Slaughterhouse Five for in-class reading. Also Never Let Me Go. The previous teacher taught Remains of the Day, and I know it's supposed to be excellent, but Never Let Me Go sounds SO much more interesting. (Granted, I haven't read either yet.) I'd like to get as much diversity (women, POC authors/characters, etc) on this list as I can.

If you were a HS senior, what would you want to read? 
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Re: Any ideas for AP Lit curriculum?

  • I should add...this is a college-level course, so it's ok if the books are dense or controversial or have "adult" situations/language. 
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  • I'm trying to think back to my AP Lit class and I remember reading Frankenstein (I actually wrote about it on the written portion of the AP test), Things Fall Apart by Chenua Achebe, Brave New World, 1984, Othello, and Catch-22.  Basically, we only read classics and I didn't really love any of them.  I was only 1 of 3 out of about 40 that passed the AP Lit test that year. While I really do think it's great to get more classics in, I'm not sure that it is an added benefit if the students aren't going to really read them.

    I haven't read either Never Let Me Go or Remains of the Day, but I do agree that Never Let Me Go sounds more interesting.  It has the dystopian element that I think would go over really well right now since it is a pretty big trend in YA.  I didn't read Slaughterhouse Five, it was a small group book that my group was not assigned, but I remember the people that did read it actually liking it.

    This might not be helpful at all lol
     



    my read shelf:
    Lauren's book recommendations, liked quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (read shelf)


  • I got really into Kafka my senior year. Maybe The Metamorphosis and The Castle, they have some similar themes. 
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  • This may not be helpful at all but I google AP Literature suggested reading and this was a list from the college board website:

    Drama 
    A, C, D 
    Antigone by Sophocles 
    Arcadia by Tom Stoppard 
    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams 
    The Cherry Orchard by Anton Checkhov 
    The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman 
    Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 
    A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen 
    Dutchman by Amiri Baraka 
    F, G, H 
    Fences by August Wilson 
    The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams 
    Hamlet by William Shakespeare 
    The Harvest Festival by Sean O'Casey 
    Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen 
    Homecoming by Harold Pinter 
    I, K, L 
    The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill 
    The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde 
    King Lear by William Shakespeare 
    The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman 
    Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill 
    M, O, P 
    M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang The Misanthrope by Moliere 
    Oedipus Rex by Sophocles 
    Othello by William Shakespeare 
    Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus 
    R, S, T 
    A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry 
    Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard 
    She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith 
    Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello 
    A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams 
    Tartuffe by Moliere 
    W, Z 
    Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett 
    The Way of the World by William Congreve 
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee 
    The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen 
    Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez 
    Fiction (Novel & Short Story) 
    A
    The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow 
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 
    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain 
    Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood 
    All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque 
    The American by Henry James 
    An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears 
    Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 
    Antelope Wife by Louise Erdich 
    As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 
    The Aspern Papers by Henry James 
    The Awakening by Kate Chopin 
    B
    Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
    The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino 
    Bee Season by Myla Goldberg 
    Beloved by Toni Morrison 
    Billy Budd by Herman Melville 
    Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy 
    The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton 
    Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman 
    C
    Cane by Jean Toomer 
    Cathedral by Raymond Carver 
    Clara by Luisa Valenzuela 
    Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai 
    Corelli's Mandolin by Louis DeBernieres 
    Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky 
    Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton 
    D, F
    Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather 
    Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee 
    Dubliners by James Joyce 
    Fathers and Sons by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev 
    The Fixer by Bernard Malamud 
    The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles 
    G
    The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield 
    Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike 
    Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien 
    The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford 
    Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin 
    Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 
    The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
    Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift 
    H
    The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 
    The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers 
    Heart of Darkeness by Joseph Conrad 
    The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene 
    Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick 
    The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton 
    The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros 
    The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
    I, J
    The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky 
    In Cold Blood by Truman Capote 
    In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason 
    In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien 
    In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez 
    Invisable Cities by Italo Calvino The Invisable Man by Ralph Ellison 
    Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway 
    Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte 
    Jazz by Toni Morrison 
    L, M
    Libra by Don DeLillo 
    Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 
    The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh 
    Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis 
    The Magus by John Fowles 
    A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton 
    The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers 
    The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka 
    Middlemarch by George Eliot 
    Moby Dick by Herman Melville 
    N, O, P
    Native Son by Richard Wright 
    The Natural by Bernard Malamud 
    1984 by George Orwell 
    No Exit by JeanPaul Sartre 
    Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky 
    Obasan by Joy Kogawa 
    One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
    O Pioneers! by Willa Cather 
    The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty 
    A Passage to India by E.M. Forster 
    The Plague by Albert Camus 
    Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 
    R, S
    Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow 
    The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane 
    Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro 
    Serafina's Stories by Rudolfo Anaya 
    Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter 
    Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse 
    Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser 
    Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut 
    Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison 
    Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence 
    The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 
    The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence 
    The Stranger by Albert Camus 
    The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway Surfacing by Margaret Atwood 
    T, U, V
    Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker 
    Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy 
    Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 
    Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 
    Time's Arrow by Martin Amis 
    Tom Jones by Henry Fielding 
    A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 
    To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 
    Tree Bride by Bharati Mukherjee 
    The Unberable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera 
    Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys 
    W
    Waiting by Ha Jin 
    The Wapshot Scandal by John Cheever 
    We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates 
    Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor 
    The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston 
    Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 
    Poetry 
    B
    The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 
    Ben Johnson by Ben Johnson 
    The Best Poems of the English Language compiled by Harold Bloom 
    A Book of Luminous Things: An international Anthology of Poetry compiled by Czeslaw Milosz 
    C
    The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer 
    Collected Poems by Philip Larkin 
    Collected Poems by William Butler Yeats 
    Collected Poems, 1943-2004 by Richard Wilbur 
    Collected Poems, 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott 
    The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson 
    The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes 
    The Complete English Poems by George Herbert 
    The Complete Poems of John Keats by John Keats 
    The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop 
     
    E, H, I, J
    Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Poems and Tales by Edgar Allan Poe 
    Helen in Egypt by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) How We Became Human by Joy Harjo 
    Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson 
    In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson 
    John Donne's Poetry by John Donne 
     
    L, M, N
    Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman 
    Life Studies/For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell 
    Lord Byron: Poems by George Gordon, Lord Byron 
    The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake 
    Mortal Beauty, God's Grace by Gerard Manley Hopkins 
    The Norton Anthology of Poetry (5th edition) compiled by Margaret Ferguson 
     
    O, P
    On the Bus with Rosa Parks by Rita Dove 
    Opened Ground: Selected Poems by Seamus Heaney 
    Paradise Lost by John Milton 
    Paterson by William Carlos Williams 
    Picture Bride by Cathy Song 
    The Poems of Marianne Moore by Marianne Moore 
    Poems of W.H. Auden by W.H. Auden 
    Poetry: A Pocket Anthology (4th edition) compiled by R.S. Gwynn 
    Poetry for the Spirit compiled by Alan Jacobs 
    R, S, T
    The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems by Alexander Pope 
    The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
    Robert Browning's Poetry by Robert Browning 
    Roots by Edward Kamau Brathwaite 
    The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004 by Adrienne Rich 
    Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks 
    Shelley's Poetry and Prose by Percy Bysshe Shelley 
    Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake 
    The Sonnets by William Shakespeare 
    Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost 
    Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko 
    "To His Coy Mistress" & Other Poems by Andrew Marvell 
    W, Y
    The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot 
    William Wordsworth — the Major Works: Including the Prelude by William Wordsworth 
    Works of Anne Bradstreet by Anne Bradstreet 
    Yellow Light: Poems by Garrett Hongo 
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  • I remember really enjoying Brave New World. We also read some Kafka, Things Fall Apart, Heart of Darkness (which I hated), The Remains of the Day, Homer, and Beowolf (which I also hated). 
    Is there anyway you can include some more modern literature? Maybe some Stephen King or The Watership Down?
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  • I guess my question wasn't clear...I'm looking for suggestions for more modern stuff! Or at least more interesting. If I'm bored with these books, I know they'll be bored. Stephen King wouldn't be literary enough, unfortunately. 
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  • A Visit From the Goon Squad?
    75 Books in 2015?
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    It's slippery as waterweed.
  • Is Jellicoe Road too easy? You could probably have some great discussions about it.
    75 Books in 2015?
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    It's slippery as waterweed.
  • Why don't you take some books from the Printz award and honors list? Isn't it based on literary merit?

    Jellicoe Road, Looking for Alaska, Where Things Come Back, Code Name Verity, Please Ignore Vera Dietz, The Scorpio Races, and I am the Messenger are some that have won or been an honor book in the past.


    my read shelf:
    Lauren's book recommendations, liked quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (read shelf)


  • OOooooh. Ummmm...The Things They Carried, The Namesake, or Blindness...still thinking...
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  • I've read both The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. They are both great books, but The Remains of the Day is one of my absolute favorite books. I didn't think I would be into it at all based on the synopsis but it is absolutely one of the most powerful books I have ever read. I think you could have great discussions about either. 

    What about Haruki Murakami? I like his weirder stuff best (Wind Up Bird Chronicle is my favorite) but Norwegian Wood might appeal to high school students a lot. 

    I second the recommendation for the Namesake.




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    My read shelf:
    Jessica Ninneman's book recommendations, liked quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (read shelf)
  • Never Let Me Go is a good choice. Code Name Verity would be loved by all, I'm sure, but maybe not "literary" enough? What about The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon?) The Alchemist is short? Siddhartha?
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  • The Quiet American (Greene) or The Gargoyle? Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter seems to be getting traction in some book clubs.
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  • Can you read A Game of Thrones? Who doesn't like a good beheading?!

    Well, one of my all time favorites is The Count of Monte Cristo. It is a classic so it fails your stipulation, but it's not on your above list and that's just a shame because it's spectacular.
    ~ G ~ 10/2008
    ~ E ~ 7/2010
    ~ A ~ 3/2014
  • Slaughterhouse Five and The Handmaid's Tale are two of my favorite books ever.  You absolutely need to do those.

    Looking at my shelves, titles catching my eye are A Clockwork Orange, Neverwhere, Battle Royale, and The Jungle.  I'm not sure about the literary-ness of the two in the middle, but I think these are all excellent discussion books.  Battle Royale is like Hunger Games on crack with uzis.

    I'm afraid I haven't read a lot of the books mentioned.  Maybe I should start taking notes.
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  • Never Let Me Go is such a great choice! It's dystopian and would make for a lot of really great discussions!

    I second Where Things Come Back and even Code Name Verity. 
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  • We read Grendel in my AP Senior Lit class, and it definitely made me appreciate Beowulf a lot more. I also ended up rehashing my Grendel essay to net a perfect score on the SAT II writing test.

    I read Brave New World on my own in high school, and it stuck with me ever since.

    I also quite like the suggestion of Things Fall Apart. My entire classroom literature experience was American and European, and eventually I branched into Asian in college because of my Japanese minor. I don't know that I was ever exposed to South American or African literature until a few years ago.
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  • The Shadow of the Wind. 

    The Goldfinch

    The Red Tent 



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              Elizabeth Salom (elistar)'s book recommendations, liked quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (read shelf)

  • We read A Prayer for Owen Meany in my AP Lit class and almost all of us loved it. In fact, that's the one I remember most from that year.
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    my read shelf:
    Sarah (mrs.vedo)'s book recommendations, liked quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (read shelf) 


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  • mrsvedo said:
    We read A Prayer for Owen Meany in my AP Lit class and almost all of us loved it. In fact, that's the one I remember most from that year.
    I think I'm broken, I hated Owen Meany, and everyone I've ever talked to LOVES it. Then again, I just can't get into John Irving stuff at all. That being said, I think it's a great suggestion!
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  • mrsvedo said:
    We read A Prayer for Owen Meany in my AP Lit class and almost all of us loved it. In fact, that's the one I remember most from that year.
    I think I'm broken, I hated Owen Meany, and everyone I've ever talked to LOVES it. Then again, I just can't get into John Irving stuff at all. That being said, I think it's a great suggestion!
    @booneybear hated it.
    75 Books in 2015?
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    It's slippery as waterweed.
  • MrsJenE said:
    mrsvedo said:
    We read A Prayer for Owen Meany in my AP Lit class and almost all of us loved it. In fact, that's the one I remember most from that year.
    I think I'm broken, I hated Owen Meany, and everyone I've ever talked to LOVES it. Then again, I just can't get into John Irving stuff at all. That being said, I think it's a great suggestion!
    @booneybear hated it.
    John Irving and I have terminated our relationship.  I have nightmares about Owen Meany YELLING AT ME IN ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME.
    90 books in 2015?
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  • @sfgiantsjo - I really liked Cider House Rules, but the polarizing reaction to Owen Meany makes me never want to read it even though I've owned it forever.

    @MrsJenE - Your siggy pic makes me chartreuse with envy.

    @booneybear - HI BOONEY! I'M TALKING TO YOU ALL IN CAPS BUT PLEASE DON'T SEVER OUR RELATIONSHIP. BECAUSE OF ALL OF THE CAPITAL LETTERS. THAT I WROTE. IN CAPS.
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  • In my college freshman writing course, I read two books that have stuck with me to this day. I think they would be absolutely adaptable to an AP Lit course.




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