Advanced Placement Language and Composition

Suggested Reading List

Achebe, Chinua – Things Fall Apart

Agee, James – A Death in the Family
Allison, Dorothy – Bastard Out of Carolina
Almond, Steve – Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America
Angelou, Maya – A Song Flung Up To Heaven
Gather together in My Name
The Heart of a Woman
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Singin’ and Swingin’ and Getting’ Merry Like Christmas
Atwood, Margaret – The Handmaid’s Tale; Cat’s Eye; Oryx and Crake
Baldwin, James – Go Tell It on the Mountain
Another Country
The Fire Next Time
Bayley, John – Elegy for Iris
Bellow, Saul – The Adventures of Angie March or Herzog
Bragg, Rick – All Over but the Shoutin’
Bradbury, Ray – Fahrenheit 451
Brooks, Geraldine – March
Bronte, Charlotte – Jane Eyre
Buck, Pearl – The Good Earth
Burgess, Anthony – Clockwork Orange
Capote, Truman – In Cold Blood
Carson, Rachel – The Silent Spring
Catherm, Willa – Death Comes to the Archbishop
Chabon, Michael – The Amazing Adventuers of Cavalier and Clay; The Yiddish
Policeman’s Union: A Novel
Chopin, Kate – The Awakening
Clavell, James – Shogun; Tai Pan
Clinton, Bill – Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World
Conroy, Pat – The Prince of Tides; Beach Music; The Great Santini; Lords of Discipline
Cozzens, James Gould - Guard of Honor
Cuningham, Michael – The Hours
Crane, Stephen – The Red Badge of Courage
DeMaggio, Thomas – Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life With Alzheimer’s
Diamante, Anita – The Red Tent
Dicker, John – The United States of Wal-Mart
Didion, Joan – Slouching Toward Bethlehem; The Magical Year
Dillard, Annie – The Living; Teaching a Stone to Talk
Doctorow, E.L. – Ragtime
Donovan, Gerard – Schopenhauer’s Telescope
Douglas, Frederick – The Life and Times of Frederick Douglas; The Bondage and My
Freedom; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas
Dreiser, Theodore – An American Tragedy or Sister Carrie
Dumas, Alexander – The Count of Monte Cristo
Edel, Leon – The Stuff of Sleep and Dreams; Telling Lives
Edwards, Kim – The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
Ellison, Ralph – The Invisible Man
Enger, Leif - Peace like a River
Eugenidies, Jeffrey – Middlesex; The Virgin Suicides
Faulkner, William – Sound and the Fury or As I Lay Dying
Faulks, Sebastion - On Green Dolphin Street
Foer, Franklin – How Soccer Explains the World
Fitzgerald, F. Scott – The Great Gatsby
Fraser, Antonia – Mary, Queen of Scots; Oliver Cromwell; The Weaker vessel: Women’s
Lot in 17th Century England
Frazier, Charles – Cold Mountain
Franzen, Jonathan – The Corrections
Friedman, Thomas – The World is Flat
Frey, James – A Million Little Pieces
Gaines, Ernest – Bloodlines ; A Lesson Before Dying; The Autobiography of Miss Jane
Pittman
Gates, Henry Louis – Colored People: A Memoir or The Bondwoman’s Narrative
Gibbon, Edward – The History and Decline of the Roman Empire
Gladwell, Malcolm - Blink
Golding, William – Lord of the Flies
Goldman, William – Princess Bride; Princess Bride Revisited
Gordimer, Nadine – My Son’s Story
Gregoty, Phillippa – The Other Boleyn Girl
Gruen, Sara – Water for Elephants
Guterson, David – Snow Falling on Cedars
Haddon, Mark – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Hammett, Dashell – The Maltese Falcon
Harper, Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
Harris, Sam – The End of Faith
Hawthorne, Nathaniel – The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph – Catch-22
Hellman, Lillian – Scoundrel Time; An Unfinished Woman
Hemingway, Ernest – A Farewell to Arms ; The Sun Also Rises; Great Gatsby
Hersey, John – The Wall
Hornby, Nick – A Long Way Down; The Pollysyllabic Spree; Songbook
Hosseini, Khaled – The Kite Runner; A Thousand Splendid Suns
Hosseini, Khaled – One Thousand Splendid Suns
Hurston, Zora Neale – Their Eyes Were Watching God
Irving, John – The World According to Garp
Ishiguro, Kazuo – Never let Me Go
Jin, Ha – Waiting
Jones, Edward P. – The Known World
Junger, Sebastian- The Perfect Storm; A Death in Belmont; Fire
Keller, Helen – The Story of My Life
Kennedy, Michelle – Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (with Kids) in America:
My Story
Kerouac, Jack – On The Road
Kesey, Ken – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Kidd, Sue Monk - The Secret Life of Bees
Krakauer, John – Into Thin Air; Into the Wild; Under the Banner of Heaven
Kingsolver, Barbara – The Poisonwood Bible; Small Wonders: Essays
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Warrior Women: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
or China Men
Lahari, Jumpa – The Interpreter of Maladies
Lamb, Wally – I Know This Much is True
Lamott, Anne - Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Larsen, Erik – The Devil in the White City
Lee, Harper – To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair – The Jungle
Lightman, Alan – Einstein’s Dreams
Mailer, Norman – The Naked and the Dead or The Armies of the Night or The
Executioner’s Song
Matar, Hisham – In the Country of Men
Matthiessen, Peter – At Play in the Fields of the Lord
Maugham, W. Somerset – Of Human Bondage
McCarthy, Cormac – The Road
McCarthy, Mary – Memories of a Catholic Girl
McCullers, Carson – The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
MacDonald, Ann Marie – Fall On Your Knees
McBride, James – The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother
McEwan, Ian – Saturday; Atomement
McMurty, Larry – Lonesome Dove
Melville, Herman – Moby Dick
Michener, James – The Source or any other major work by him
Mitchell, David – Cloud Atlas: A Novel
Mitchell, Margaret – Gone With the Wind
Morrison, Toni – Beloved or Song of Solomon or The Bluest Eye
Mossman, Dow - Stones of Summer
Nemirovsky, Irene – Suite Francaise
Oates, Joyce Carol – First Person Singular or New Heaven, New Earth
Obama, Barack – Dreams From my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance;
The Audacity of Hope: Thought on Reclaiming the American Dream
O’Brien, Tim – The Things They Carried; July, July
Olson, Tillie – Tell Me a Riddle
Orwell, George – Shooting an Elephant; 1984; Animal Farm
Oufkir, Malika – Stolen Lives
Paluhniak, Chuck – The Fight Club: A Novel; Haunted; Survivor
Paton, Alan – Cry, The Beloved Country
Picoult, Jodie – Change of Heart; My Sister’s Keeper; 19 Minutes
Peterson, Per – Out Stealing Horses
Plath, Sylvia – The Bell Jar
Poitier, Sidney – The Measure of a Man
Proulx, Annie – Shipping News
Quindlen, Anna – One True Thing; Thinking Out Loud
Rand, Ayn – Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead
Rich, Frank – The Greatest Story Ever Sold
Richter, Conrad – The Town
Robbins, Alexandra – Pledged
Robinson, Marilynne – Gilead
Rodriguez, Richard – Hunger of Memory or Days of Obligation
Roth, Philip – The Human Stain
Russo, Richard – The Empire Falls
Rovaag, O.E. – Giants in the Earth
Salinger, J.D. – Catcher in the Rye
Sebold, Alice – The Lovely Bones
Sedaris, David – Me Talk Pretty One Day; Naked; Dress Your Family in Corduroy and
Denim
Shaara, Michael – The Killer Angels
Shields, Carol – The Stone Diaries
Smiley, Jane – A Thousand Acres
Smith, Zadie – White Teeth; Beauty
Steinbeck, John – The Grapes of Wrath; East of Eden
Stegner, Wallace – Angle of Repose
Stowe, Harriet Beecher – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Styron, William – Sophie’s Choice; The Confessions of Nat Turner
Tan, Amy – The Joy Luck Club or The Kitchen God’s Wife or The Bonesetter’s
Daughter
Thoreau, Henry David – Walden
Toole, John Kennedy – A Confederacy of Dunces
Twain, Mark – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Tyler, Anne – Breathing Lessons ; Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Updike, John - Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism; Rabbit is Rich
Vonnegut, Kurt – Slaughterhouse Five; A Man Without a Country
Walker, Alice – You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down
Warren, Robert Penn – All The King’s Men
Welty, Eudora – Losing Battles ; The Golden Apples
Wharton, Edith – The Age of Innocence or Ethan Fromme
Wolfe, Thomas – Look Homeward Angel
Wolfe, Tom – I Am Charlotte Simmons
Woolfe, Virginia – A Room of One’s Own; Mrs. Dalloway
Wouk, Herman – Winds of War; The Caine Mutiny
Wright, Richard – Native Son; Black Boy
Wroblewski, David – The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Zailckas, Koren – Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
Malcolm X – The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The College Board recommends a reading background in the following areas:
Autobiographies and Diarists
Biographers and History Writers
Critics
Essayists and Fiction Writers
Journalists
Political Writers
.Science and Nature Writers