Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition

Independent Reading Program

AP Independent Reading Plan:

As our academic schedule allows, you will be given each Thursday to engage in Independent Reading.  While
in the past you have been afforded the opportunity to freely select your reading texts, now you will need to
choose texts that the AP Board has included in its “Suggested Reading List.”
 
Each marking period, you will need to read either one novel or one drama, and you will be required to keep a
reader’s log that consists of notes/quotes; text to text connections; text to self connections; and, text to world
connections.
 
Thereafter, you will be expected to complete the following tasks:
1.) use your selected text(s) to respond to Question 3 of practice AP exams;
2.) write an Annotated Bibliography based on one analytical/critical essay;
3.) write a Biographical Sketch focusing on the author of the text;
4.) engage in Literature Circles;
5.) provide oral presentations on your novel’s literary merit.
Numbers one through three are mandatory for each marking period. Numbers four and five will be additional
tasks assigned as our academic schedule allows.
 
Student Expectations for Independent Reading Day:

  Come to class each Independent Reading Day with a book of literary merit;
  If you do not have your text with you, you will be provided with an optional text but lose class
participation/preparation points for the day;
  You will be expected to complete your text within a four to six week time frame;
  Read until the task is assigned;
  Remain on task for the entire class period or you will lose class participation points: sleeping, talking,
writing notes/completing other assignments are not acceptable ways to use Independent Reading time;
 Maintain your reading log/folder;
  Keep your reading log in the classroom unless you are given permission to sign it out.  You will lose
10 points from your Independent Reading Program class participation/preparation marking period
average if your reading log is not accounted for on any given day;
  Use clear/legible handwriting on your tasks;
  If you are absent for an Independent Reading Day, you will need to make up the time with a teacher
after school.
 
 Student Signature: _______________________________________Date: _______________ 

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 AP English Literature Suggested Reading List
The WP library has the following titles.

FICTION BOOKS
Author Title Call #
James Agee A Death in the Family F AGE
Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale F ATW
Jane Austen Emma F AUS
Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice F AUS
Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility F AUS
James Baldwin Go tell it on the Mountain F BAL
Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre F BRO
Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights F BRO
Pearl Buck The Good Earth F BUC
Albert Camus The Stranger F CAM
Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop F CAT
Willa Cather My Antonia F CAT
Willa Cather One of Ours F CAT
Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales F CHA
James Fenimore Cooper The Last of the Mohicans F COO
Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage F CRA
Dante Inferno F DAN
Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote F DEC
Daniel Defoe Moll Flanders F DEF
Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe F DEF
Charles Dickens David Copperfield F DIC
Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities F DIC
Fyofor Dostoevski Crime and Punishment F DOS
Theodore Dreiser An American Tragedy F DRE
Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie F DRE
Alexander Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo F DUM
George Eliot The Mill on the Floss F ELI
George Eliot Middlemarch F ELI
George Eliot Silas Marner F ELI
Ralph Ellison Invisible Man F ELL
William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury F FAU
Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary F FLA
E.M. Forster Passage to India F FOR
Graham Greene The Power and The Glory F GRE
Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure F HAR
Thomas Hardy The Return of the Native F HAR
Thomas Hardy Tess of the d”Urbervilles F HAR
Nathaniel Hawthorne The House of the Seven Gables F HAW
Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter F HAW
Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms F HEM
Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls F HEM

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Author Title Call #
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises F HEM
Victor Hugo The Hunchback of Notre Dame F HUG
Victor Hugo Les Miserables F HUG
Kazuuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day F ISH
Henry James The American F JAM
Henry James Portrait of a Lady F JAM
Henry James Washington Square F JAM
James Joyce Dubliners F JOY
James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man F JOY
Maxine Hong Kingston The Woman Warrior F MAX
John Knowles A Separate Peace F KNO
D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers F LAW
Sinclair Lewis Babbitt F LEW
Jack London Call of the Wild F LON
Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain F MAN
Bernard Malamud The Fixer F MAL
Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Tears of Solitude F MAR
W. Somerset Maugham Of Human Bondage F MAU
Herman Melville Billy Budd F MEL
Herman Melville Moby Dick F MEL
Toni Morrison Beloved F MOR
Frank Norris The Octopus F NOR
George Orwell 1984 F ORW
Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried F OBR
Boris Pasternak Doctor Zhivago F PAS
Alan Paton Cry, the Beloved Country F PAT
Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar F PLA
Edmond Rostand Cyrano de Bergerac F ROS
Upton Sinclair The Jungle F SIN
Alexander Solzhenitsyn One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich F SOL
John Steinbeck Cannery Row F STE
John Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath F STE
Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island F STE
Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin F STO
Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels F SWI
William Thackeray Vanity Fair F THA
Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina F TOL
Leo Tolstoy War and Peace F TOL
Ivan Turgenev Fathers and Sons F TUR
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Slaughterhouse Five F VON
Alice Walker The Color Purple F WAL
Robert Penn Warren All the King’s Men F WAR
Edith Warton The House of Mirth F WHA
Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway F WOO
Richard Wright Native Son F WRI

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 PLAYS

Author Title Call #

Aeschylus Agamemnon 882.08 AES
William Gibson The Miracle Worker 812 GIB
Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun 812 HAN
Henrik Ibsen A Doll’s House 813 IBS
Henrik Ibsen Hedda Gabler 813 IBS
Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman 812 MIL
Jean-Paul Sartre No Exit 808.82 SAR
Thorton Wilder Our Town 812 WIL

CLASSIC WORKS

Author Title Call #

Anonymous Beowulf 829.3 LEH
Euripides Medea 851 EUR
Homer The Iliad 883.01 HOM
Homer The Odyssey 883 HOM
John Milton Paradise Lost 811 MIL
Racine Phaedra 808.82 HAR
Voltaire Candide 812 HEL

BIOGRAPHIES

Author Title Call #

Maxine Hong Kingston The Woman Warrior B KIN

ESSAYS

Author Title Call #

Ralph Waldo Emerson Selected Essays 814 EME

Recommended Reading
The titles below are recommended readings for AP English. The books are not in the high school
library, but may be found at a public library or be purchased.

FICTION BOOKS

Author Title
Saul Bellow The Adventures of Augie March
Kate Chopin The Awakening
Joseph Conrad The Secret Sharer
Don Delillo White Noise
Charles Dickens Great Expectations
Alexandre Dumas The Three Musketeers

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William Faulkner As I Lay Dying
Henry Fielding Tom Jones
Ford Madox Ford The Good Soldier
Henry James Turn of the Screw
Herman Melville Bartleby the Scrivener
Toni Morrison Song of Solomon
V. S. Naipul A Bend in the River
Marcel Proust Swann’s Way
Thomas Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49
Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea
Henry Roth Call It Sleep
Amy Tan The Kitchen God’s Wife
Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own

SHORT STORIES

Author Title
Flannery O’Connor A Good Man is Hard to Find

PLAYS

Author Title
Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot
Anton Chekhov The Cherry Orchard
Johann Goethe Faust
Eugene O’Neil Desire Under the Elms
Eugene O’Neil Long Day’s Journey into Night
Jean-Paul Sarte Nausea
George Bernard Shaw Major Barbara
George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman
George Bernard Shaw Pygmalion
Tom Stoppard Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray
Tennesse Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

CLASSIC WORKS
Author Title
Bocaccio The Decameron
Voltaire Candide