AP Literature Reading List 127 Great Books for Your Prep

AP Literature Reading List 127 Great Books for Your Prep SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips A lot of students wonder if there’s a specific AP English reading list of books they should be reading to succeed on the AP Literature and Composition exam. While there’s not an official College-Board AP reading list, there are books that will be more useful for you to read than others as you prepare for the exam. In this article, I’ll break down why you need to read books to prepare, how many you should plan on reading, and what you should read- including poetry. Why Do You Need to Read Books for the AP Literature Test? This might seem like kind of an obvious question- you need to read books because it’s a literature exam! But actually, there are three specific reasons why you need to read novels, poems, and plays in preparation for the AP Lit Test. To Increase Your Familiarity With Different Eras and Genres of Literature Reading a diverse array of novels, poetry and plays from different eras and genres will help you be familiar with the language that appears in the various passages on the AP Lit exam’s multiple choice and essay sections. If you read primarily modern works, for example, you may stumble through analyzing a Shakespeare sonnet. So, having a basic familiarity level with the language of a broad variety of literary works will help keep you from floundering in confusion on test day because you’re seeing a work unlike anything you’ve ever read. To Improve Your Close-Reading Skills You’ll also want to read to improve your close-reading and rhetorical analysis skills. When you do read, really engage with the text: think about what the author’s doing to construct the novel/poem/play/etc., what literary techniques and motifs are being deployed, and what major themes are at play. You don’t necessarily need to drill down to the same degree on every text, but you should always be thinking, â€Å"Why did the author write this piece this way?† For the Student Choice Free-Response Question Perhaps the most critical piece in reading to prepare for the AP Lit test, however, is for the student choice free-response question. For the third question on the second exam section, you’ll be asked to examine how a specific theme works in one novel or play that you choose. The College Board does provide an example list of works, but you can choose any work you like just so long as it has adequate â€Å"literary merit.† However, you need to be closely familiar with more than one work so that you can be prepared for whatever theme the College Board throws at you! Want to get a perfect 5 on your AP exam and an A in class? We can help. PrepScholar Tutors is the world's best tutoring service. We combine world-class expert tutors with our proprietary teaching techniques. Our students have gotten A's on thousands of classes, perfect 5's on AP tests, and ludicrously high SAT Subject Test scores. Whether you need help with science, math, English, social science, or more, we've got you covered. Get better grades today with PrepScholar Tutors. Note: Not an effective reading method. How Many Books Do You Need to Read for the AP Exam? That depends. In terms of reading to increase your familiarity with literature from different eras and genres and to improve your close-reading skills, the more books you have time to read, the better. You’ll want to read them all with an eye for comprehension and basic analysis, but you don’t necessarily need to focus equally on every book you read. For the purposes of the student choice question, however, you’ll want to read books more closely, so that you could write a detailed, convincing analytical essay about any of their themes. So you should know the plot, characters, themes, and major literary devices or motifs used inside and out. Since you won’t know what theme you’ll be asked to write about in advance, you’ll need to be prepared to write a student choice question on more than just one book. Of the books you read for prep both in and out of class, choose four to five books that are thematically diverse to learn especially well in preparation for the exam. You may want to read these more than once, and you certainly want to take detailed notes on everything that’s going on in those books to help you remember key points and themes. Discussing them with a friend or mentor who has also read the book will help you generate ideas on what’s most interesting or intriguing about the work and how its themes operate in the text. You may be doing some of these activities anyways for books you are assigned to read for class, and those books might be solid choices if you want to be as efficient as possible. Books you write essays about for school are also great choices to include in your four to five book stable since you will be becoming super-familiar with them for the writing you do in class anyways. In answer to the question, then, of how many books you need to read for the AP Lit exam: you need to know four to five inside and out, and beyond that, the more the better! Know the books. Love the books. What Books Do You Need to Read for the AP Exam? The most important thing for the student choice free-response question is that the work you select needs to have â€Å"literary merit.† What does this mean? In the context of the College Board, this means you should stick with works of literary fiction. So in general, avoid mysteries, fantasies, romance novels, and so on. If you’re looking for ideas, authors and works that have won prestigious prizes like the Pulitzer, Man Booker, the National Book Award, and so on are good choices. Anything you read specifically for your AP literature class is a good choice, too. If you aren’t sure if a particular work has the kind of literary merit the College Board is looking for, ask your AP teacher. When creating your own AP Literature reading list for the student choice free-response, try to pick works that are diverse in author, setting, genre, and theme. This will maximize your ability to comprehensively answer a student choice question about pretty much anything with one of the works you’ve focused on. So, I might, for example, choose: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare, play, 1605 Major themes and devices: magic, dreams, transformation, foolishness, man vs. woman, play-within-a-play Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte, novel, 1847 Major themes and devices: destructive love, exile, social and economic class, suffering and passion, vengeance and violence, unreliable narrator, frame narrative, family dysfunction, intergenerational narratives. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton, novel, 1920 Major themes and devices: Tradition and duty, personal freedom, hypocrisy, irony, social class, family, â€Å"maintaining appearances†, honor Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys, novel, 1966 Major themes and devices: slavery, race, magic, madness, wildness, civilization vs. chaos, imperialism, gender As you can see, while there is some thematic overlap in my chosen works, they also cover a broad swathe of themes. They are also all very different in style (although you’ll just have to take my word on that one unless you go look at all of them yourself), and they span a range of time periods and genres as well. However, while there’s not necessarily a specific, mandated AP Literature reading list, there are books that come up again and again on the suggestion lists for student choice free-response questions. When a book comes up over and over again on exams, this suggests both that it’s thematically rich, so you can use it to answer lots of different kinds of questions, and that the College Board sees a lot of value in the work. To that end, I’ve assembled a list, separated by time period, of all the books that have appeared on the suggested works list for student choice free-response questions at least twice since 2003. While you certainly shouldn’t be aiming to read all of these books (there’s way too many for that!), these are all solid choices for the student choice essay. Other books by authors from this list are also going to be strong choices. It’s likely that some of your class reading will overlap with this list, too. I’ve divided up the works into chunks by time period. In addition to title, each entry includes the author, whether the work is a novel, play, or something else, and when it was first published or performed. Works are alphabetical by author. Warning: Not all works pictured included in AP Literature reading list below. Ancient Works Title Author Genre Date Medea Euripides play 431 BC The Odyssey Homer epic poem (no date) Antigone Sophocles play 441 BC Oedipus Rex Sophocles play 429 BC 1500-1799 Title Author Genre Date Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes novel 1605 Tom Jones Henry Fielding novel 1749 As You Like It Shakespeare play 1623 Julius Caesar Shakespeare play 1599 King Lear Shakespeare play 1606 A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare play 1605 The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare play 1605 Othello Shakespeare play 1604 The Tempest Shakespeare play 16 Candide Voltaire novel 1759 1800-1899 Title Author Genre Date Emma Jane Austen novel 1815 Mansfield Park Jane Austen novel 1814 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen novel 1813 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte novel 1847 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte novel 1847 The Awakening Kate Chopin novel 1899 The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane novel 1895 Bleak House Charles Dickens novel 1853 David Copperfield Charles Dickens novel 1850 Great Expectations Charles Dickens novel 1861 Oliver Twist Charles Dickens novel 1837 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens novel 1859 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky novel 1866 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert novel 1856 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy novel 1895 The Mayor of Casterbridge Thomas Hardy novel 1886 Tess of the d’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy novel 1891 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne novel 1850 A Doll’s House Henrik Ibsen play 1879 The American Henry James novel 1877 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James novel 1881 Moby-Dick Herman Melville novel 1851 Frankenstein Mary Shelley novel 1818 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy novel 1877 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain novel 1885 The Queen of AP Literature surveys her kingdom. 1900-1939 Title Author Genre Date My ntonia Willa Cather novel 1918 The Cherry Orchard Anton Chekhov play 1904 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad novel 1902 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser novel 1900 Murder in the Cathedral T.S. Eliot play 1935 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner novel 1936 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner novel 1930 Light in August William Faulkner novel 1932 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner novel 1929 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald novel 1925 A Passage to India E.M. Forster novel 1924 The Little Foxes Lillian Hellman play 1939 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston novel 1937 Brave New World Aldous Huxley novel 1931 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce novel 1916 Billy Budd Herman Melville novel 1924 Major Barbara George Bernard Shaw play 1905 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck novel 1939 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton novel 1920 Ethan Frome Edith Wharton novel 19 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton novel 1905 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf novel 1925 1940-1969 Title Author Genre Date Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe novel 1958 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee play 1962 Another Country James Baldwin novel 1962 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett play 1953 The Plague Albert Camus novel 1947 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison novel 1952 Lord of the Flies William Golding novel 1954 A Raisin in the Sun Lorraine Hansberry play 1959 Catch-22 Joseph Heller novel 1961 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’ s Nest Ken Kesey novel 1962 A Separate Peace John Knowles novel 1959 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee novel 1960 The Crucible Arthur Miller play 1953 Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller play 1949 House Made of Dawn N. Scott Momaday novel 1968 Wise Blood Flannery O’Connor novel 1952 1984 George Orwell novel 1949 Cry, the Beloved Country Alan Paton novel 1948 All the King’s Men Robert Penn Warren novel 1946 The Chosen Chaim Potok novel 1967 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys novel 1966 The Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger novel 1951 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Tom Stoppard play 1966 Cat’s Cradle Kurt Vonnegut novel 1963 The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams play 1945 A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams play 1947 Black Boy Richard Wright memoir 1945 Native Son Richard Wright novel 1940 Don't get trapped in a literature vortex! 1970-1989 Title Author Genre Date Bless Me, Ultima Rudolfo Anaya novel 1972 The House on Mango Street Sandra Cisneros novel 1984 â€Å"Master Harold† . . . and the boys Athol Fugard play 1982 M. Butterfly David Henry Hwang play 1988 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving novel 1989 The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston memoir 1976 Obasan Joy Kogawa novel 1981 Beloved Toni Morrison novel 1987 The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison novel 1970 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison novel 1977 Sula Toni Morrison novel 1973 Jasmine Bharati Mukherjee novel 1989 The Women of Brewster Place Gloria Naylor novel 1982 Going After Cacciato Tim O’Brien novel 1978 Equus Peter Shaffer play 1973 Ceremony Leslie Marmon Silko novel 1977 Sophie’s Choice William Styron novel 1979 The Color Purple Alice Walker novel 1982 Fences August Wilson play 1983 The Piano Lesson August Wilson play 1987 1990-Present Title Author Genre Date Reservation Blues Sherman Alexie novel 1995 The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood novel 2000 Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood novel 2003 The Memory Keeper’s Daughter Kim Edwards novel 2005 Cold Mountain Charles Frazier novel 1997 Snow Falling on Cedars David Guterson novel 1994 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini novel 2003 A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini novel 2007 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro novel 2005 The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver novel 1998 The Namesake Jumpa Lahiri novel 2004 All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy novel 1992 Atonement Ian McEwan novel 2001 Native Speaker Chang Rae-Lee novel 1995 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy novel 1997 A Thousand Acres Jane Smiley novel 1991 The Bonesetter’s Daughter Amy Tan novel 2001 The Story of Edgar Sawtelle David Wroblewski novel 2008 Don't stay in one reading position for too long, or you'll end up like this guy. Want to get a perfect 5 on your AP exam and an A in class? We can help. PrepScholar Tutors is the world's best tutoring service. We combine world-class expert tutors with our proprietary teaching techniques. Our students have gotten A's on thousands of classes, perfect 5's on AP tests, and ludicrously high SAT Subject Test scores. Whether you need help with science, math, English, social science, or more, we've got you covered. Get better grades today with PrepScholar Tutors. An Addendum on Poetry You probably won’t be writing about poetry on your student choice essay- most just aren’t meaty enough in terms of action and character to merit a full-length essay on the themes when you don’t actually have the poem in front of you (a major exception being The Odyssey). That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be reading poetry, though! You should be reading a wide variety of poets from different eras to get comfortable with all the varieties of poetic language. This will make the poetry analysis essay and the multiple-choice questions about poetry much easier! See this list of poets compiled from the list given on page 14 of the AP Course and Exam Description for AP Lit, separated out by time period. For those poets who were working during more than one of the time periods sketched out below, I tried to place them in the era in which they were more active. I’ve placed an asterisk next to the most notable and important poets in the list; you should aim to read one or two poems by each of the starred poets to get familiar with a broad range of poetic styles and eras. 14th-17th Centuries Anne Bradstreet Geoffrey Chaucer John Donne George Herbert Ben Jonson Andrew Marvell John Milton William Shakespeare* 18th-19th Centuries William Blake* Robert Browning Samuel Taylor Coleridge* Emily Dickinson* Paul Laurence Dunbar George Gordon, Lord Byron Gerard Manley Hopkins John Keats* Edgar Allan Poe* Alexander Pope* Percy Bysshe Shelley* Alfred, Lord Tennyson* Walt Whitman* William Wordsworth* Early-Mid 20th Century W. H. Auden Elizabeth Bishop H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) T. S. Eliot* Robert Frost* Langston Hughes* Philip Larkin Robert Lowell Marianne Moore Sylvia Plath* Anne Sexton* Wallace Stevens William Carlos Williams William Butler Yeats* Late 20th Century-Present Edward Kamau Brathwaite Gwendolyn Brooks Lorna Dee Cervantes Lucille Clifton Billy Collins Rita Dove Joy Harjo Seamus Heaney Garrett Hongo Adrienne Rich Leslie Marmon Silko Cathy Song Derek Walcott Richard Wilbur You might rather burn books than read them after the exam, but please refrain. Key Takeaways Why do you need to read books to prepare for AP Lit? For three reasons: #1: To become familiar with a variety of literary eras and genres#2: To work on your close-reading skills#3: To become closely familiar with four-five works for the purposes of the student choice free-response essay analyzing a theme in a work of your choice. How many books do you need to read? Well, you definitely need to get very familiar with four-five for essay-writing purposes, and beyond that, the more the better! Which books should you read? Check out the AP English Literature reading list in this article to see works that have appeared on two or more â€Å"suggested works† lists on free-response prompts since 2003. And don’t forget to read some poetry too! See some College Board recommended poets listed in this article. What's Next? See my expert guide to the AP Literature test for more exam tips! The multiple-choice section of the AP Literature exam is a key part of your score. Learn everything you need to know about it in our complete guide to AP Lit multiple-choice questions. Taking other APs? Check out our expert guides to the AP Chemistry exam, AP US History, AP World History, AP Psychology, and AP Biology. Looking for other book recommendation lists from PrepScholar? We've compiled lists of the 7 books you must read if you're a pre-med and the 31 books to read before graduating high school. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: