Click below to download College Board´s comprehensive list of every book that has appeared on the AP Lit exam from 1971 to 2011. Check out any of these classic titles of literary merit!
|
|
Click below to download Valhalla High School´s descriptions of favorite classics, contemporary fiction, contemporary non-fiction, drama, poetry, fantasy, short stories, sports, mysteries, and more.
|
Looking for more IB prescribed reading? To the right you will find the PLA and the PLT. The PLA includes words originally written in English separated by genre. The PLT includes works in translation separated by language. Take a look or read below for other AP/IB choices that Ms. B. specifically recommends.
|
|
_More Books Ms. B. Says You Should Read
_
(because these are the ones that might just
blow your mind). (seriously, books do
that sometimes).
The Trial by Franz Kafka: Bureaucracy sucks. Waiting sucks. Waiting really sucks. Sometimes stairwells shrink. Waiting on a shrinking stairwell sucks.
The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami: Existential hunger, four kangaroos, vanishing elephants, and you! The unquestionable logic of coincidence reigns in this hilarious and haunting collection of short stories.
Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar: Buenos Aires and Paris. Read chapter 1 and then hopscotch to 55. Then read 55 again. Then go back to chapter 6. Or actually you could just read chapter 1 and then chapter 2. It’s up to you.
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson: nameless, ageless, narrator of questionable gender/sexual identity. What’s love got to do with it?
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi: Graphic novel traces a female Iranian teenager’s experience of the Islamic Revolution.
Crime and Punishment by Fiodor Dostoevsky: Russian. Cold. Murder. Cold. Why do I exist? Cold. Guilty. Cold. Philosophy of life. Cold. Vodka. Cold. Beauty. Cold. Love. Cold. Murder. Cold. Siberia. Cold.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Some people speak two languages at the same time. Some people speak one language, swear in another, read comic books in a third, and have no friends. Until...
Life of Pi by Yann Martell: So, what would you do if you were trapped on a rowboat with a Bengal Tiger?
100 Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez: The Buendia Family has a lot of people with the same name. Sometimes, there is nothing left to do but peel the plaster off the walls and eat it. Sometimes, our blood runs a one-way beeline to mother’s doorstep. Sometimes, all we can do is make little golden fish, melt them down, and make them again.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski: A story with a second story in footnotes. A story in which the text literally crawls up the page or invades the margins or turns red, yellow, or blue on occasion.
White Noise by Don DeLilo: postmodernist farce exploring fluorescent lighting, the buzzing of empty spaces, and the horrible irony of sunsets and trailer trash.
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Marukami: the Japanese version of magical realism. What is history but a hammock for swinging in?
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino: a range of dream-like, personified cities as explored by Marco Polo. Cities that never existed, but cities that always will.
What is the What by Dave Edgers: Lost boy of the Sudan relocated to New York City. Flashback city.
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk: The first chapter is from the perspective corpse; the next, the perspective of the murderer. The following chapters give voice to over a dozen suspects and witnesses, ranging from relatives to trees to dogs to a coin discarded on the floor of a local coffee shop.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. American man in Paris. What does it mean to be an expat? What does it mean to be exiled from one’s country vs. exiled from one’s notion of love?
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. How could the Holocaust possibly be depicted with humor? And still make you sob? Just wait.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer: An 11-year-old boy’s narration of September 11th. Beware: sometimes the text crawls off the page. And sometimes there are pictures instead of words.
History of Love by Nicole Krauss: 10-year-old Polish kid falls in love with his neighbor.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky: Catcher in the Rye in the 21st century; that is, Catcher in the Rye with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: 3 generations of a Greek family. Once upon a time a brother and sister fell in love, and their grandchild, our dear narrator, was born a hermaphrodite.
On the Road by Jack Keroac.Road trip! Road trip! Road trip!
The Lover by Marguerite Duras. This is exactly what it sounds like folks.
Out of the Girl’s Room and into the Night by Thisbe Nissen: Short stories, loved by girls in particular. This is for those nights when you are feeling a wee bit lonely in life.
Beloved by Toni Morrison: “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom." This slave narrative is not actually a slave narrative per se.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison: Black nationalism, Marxism, Intellectualism, Invisiblism. Admit it, you’ve felt invisible. And you know what that’s like.
The Hours by Michael Cunningham: three women, three intertwined narratives that will crawl into your stomach and twist there. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway as the catalyst.
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins: It all started with a pack of Camel cigarettes. Then there was that princess in the tower. How to love. How to make love. How to make love last in the modern world.
Lolita by Nabokov. Perhaps the definition of unreliability. Pedofile narrator obsesses over 10-year-old girl—and somehow, we sympathize with him. Horrifyingly beautiful.
Pride and Prejudiceby Jane Austen. Remember that guy you hated? Well, it was actually because you loved him.
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Roland Barthes once said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” Godot proved it.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin: New Orleans woman at the birth of feminism cheats on her husbands and swims…to salvation?
Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano: Two Chileans steal a car in Mexico. Mayhem ensues.
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon: the mail system is actually just a vast conspiracy.
And really anything by:
The Trial by Franz Kafka: Bureaucracy sucks. Waiting sucks. Waiting really sucks. Sometimes stairwells shrink. Waiting on a shrinking stairwell sucks.
The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami: Existential hunger, four kangaroos, vanishing elephants, and you! The unquestionable logic of coincidence reigns in this hilarious and haunting collection of short stories.
Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar: Buenos Aires and Paris. Read chapter 1 and then hopscotch to 55. Then read 55 again. Then go back to chapter 6. Or actually you could just read chapter 1 and then chapter 2. It’s up to you.
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson: nameless, ageless, narrator of questionable gender/sexual identity. What’s love got to do with it?
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi: Graphic novel traces a female Iranian teenager’s experience of the Islamic Revolution.
Crime and Punishment by Fiodor Dostoevsky: Russian. Cold. Murder. Cold. Why do I exist? Cold. Guilty. Cold. Philosophy of life. Cold. Vodka. Cold. Beauty. Cold. Love. Cold. Murder. Cold. Siberia. Cold.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Some people speak two languages at the same time. Some people speak one language, swear in another, read comic books in a third, and have no friends. Until...
Life of Pi by Yann Martell: So, what would you do if you were trapped on a rowboat with a Bengal Tiger?
100 Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez: The Buendia Family has a lot of people with the same name. Sometimes, there is nothing left to do but peel the plaster off the walls and eat it. Sometimes, our blood runs a one-way beeline to mother’s doorstep. Sometimes, all we can do is make little golden fish, melt them down, and make them again.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski: A story with a second story in footnotes. A story in which the text literally crawls up the page or invades the margins or turns red, yellow, or blue on occasion.
White Noise by Don DeLilo: postmodernist farce exploring fluorescent lighting, the buzzing of empty spaces, and the horrible irony of sunsets and trailer trash.
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Marukami: the Japanese version of magical realism. What is history but a hammock for swinging in?
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino: a range of dream-like, personified cities as explored by Marco Polo. Cities that never existed, but cities that always will.
What is the What by Dave Edgers: Lost boy of the Sudan relocated to New York City. Flashback city.
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk: The first chapter is from the perspective corpse; the next, the perspective of the murderer. The following chapters give voice to over a dozen suspects and witnesses, ranging from relatives to trees to dogs to a coin discarded on the floor of a local coffee shop.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. American man in Paris. What does it mean to be an expat? What does it mean to be exiled from one’s country vs. exiled from one’s notion of love?
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. How could the Holocaust possibly be depicted with humor? And still make you sob? Just wait.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer: An 11-year-old boy’s narration of September 11th. Beware: sometimes the text crawls off the page. And sometimes there are pictures instead of words.
History of Love by Nicole Krauss: 10-year-old Polish kid falls in love with his neighbor.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky: Catcher in the Rye in the 21st century; that is, Catcher in the Rye with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: 3 generations of a Greek family. Once upon a time a brother and sister fell in love, and their grandchild, our dear narrator, was born a hermaphrodite.
On the Road by Jack Keroac.Road trip! Road trip! Road trip!
The Lover by Marguerite Duras. This is exactly what it sounds like folks.
Out of the Girl’s Room and into the Night by Thisbe Nissen: Short stories, loved by girls in particular. This is for those nights when you are feeling a wee bit lonely in life.
Beloved by Toni Morrison: “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom." This slave narrative is not actually a slave narrative per se.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison: Black nationalism, Marxism, Intellectualism, Invisiblism. Admit it, you’ve felt invisible. And you know what that’s like.
The Hours by Michael Cunningham: three women, three intertwined narratives that will crawl into your stomach and twist there. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway as the catalyst.
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins: It all started with a pack of Camel cigarettes. Then there was that princess in the tower. How to love. How to make love. How to make love last in the modern world.
Lolita by Nabokov. Perhaps the definition of unreliability. Pedofile narrator obsesses over 10-year-old girl—and somehow, we sympathize with him. Horrifyingly beautiful.
Pride and Prejudiceby Jane Austen. Remember that guy you hated? Well, it was actually because you loved him.
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Roland Barthes once said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” Godot proved it.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin: New Orleans woman at the birth of feminism cheats on her husbands and swims…to salvation?
Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano: Two Chileans steal a car in Mexico. Mayhem ensues.
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon: the mail system is actually just a vast conspiracy.
And really anything by:
- Kurt Vonnegut
- Jumpa Lahiri
- Philip Roth
- Orhan Pamuk
- Amos Oz
- Zadie Smith
- Jorge Luis Borges
Hello! Did you like what you just finished? Want something similarly intriguing?
This site will tell you what to read next...
or you could always come talk to me for more suggestions....
This site will tell you what to read next...
or you could always come talk to me for more suggestions....
Via Teach.com and USC Rossier Online