Advanced Placement English Summer Reading

AP English is a course in English Literature and Composition, concentrating, in the context of a study of (mostly) British and American literature, on the close reading of great prose and poetry and the expression, in clear and graceful essays, of the insights gained thereby. Both the course and the AP Examination will focus on the richness, the flexibility, the subtlety, the variety, the nuance, the intricacy, and the precision of our language; and upon your developing ability to use our language to express, analyze, explain, persuade, entertain, and stir. The quality of the work that you did in English this year proves that you can all rise to the challenge of doing college level work next year. Seniors who were in honors junior English, if any of the rest of this handout sounds like something you have read before, that's probably because it is.

Useful Background and Reference Works:

Any and all reading that stirs you to think, to feel, and to imagine is valuable preparation for this course. Because the exam has no set reading list, and because the ideas and the vocabulary of great literature range across the whole scope of human thought and experience, crossing the boundaries of all academic disciplines, all time periods, and all modes of experience, in order to meet whatever challenge might arise in the millions of texts that might appear before you must learn more than you might have to if the curriculum were more narrowly prescribed.

Students in the past have found that reading in Greek mythology and in the King James translation of the Bible provides invaluable background knowledge. If your background in these areas is weak, you might do some studying. I suggest Rolfe Humphries' or Allen Mandelbaum's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses as a fascinating way to learn the Greco-Roman myths. American literature draws so heavily on the King James Bible that some texts, such as Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter are nearly impossible to understand in any depth without at least a basic grounding in the New Testament and in certain books of the Old Testament. If you can read only one of the Gospels, read John, though you should also read Matthew, at a minimum, for comparison.

I suggest (but I do not require) that you buy, if you do not have one already, a good quality dictionary, preferably full-sized, but at least "college edition" sized (a paperback is not enough). Beware: not all large dictionaries are good, nor are all online dictionaries. My general-purpose dictionary of choice is The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (the full-sized edition lists at about sixty dollars, though it is regularly on sale for under forty—seventy list and fifty sale with a CD-ROM). The college edition of this dictionary (regularly on sale for as little as seventeen or eighteen dollars and now including the CD-ROM of the entire full-sized edition) is less comprehensive but still quite good. More expensive, but a wonderful condensation, is the two volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (listing at $150, and regularly on sale for under one hundred). Although internet encyclopedias have become ubiquitous, Wikipedia will never be a substitute for a good, well-edited print encyclopedia of general knowledge. There is no better one-volume encyclopedia than The Columbia Encyclopedia, if you can find a copy. For clearing up confusions about literary, biblical, historical, and mythological allusions, I know of no better reference work than Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia, (listing at fifty dollars, usually available for thirty-five) a great one-volume compendium of information about world literature from the dawn of time to the present. I wish that I could afford to buy a class set of these books and hand a copy out to each of my students at the beginning of the year. Also useful as a part of your general reference library is an MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (currently $17.50), which contains more than you ever wanted to know about quotation, citation, and paper format. Garner’s Modern American Usage (listing in hardcover at about forty dollars, but usually available from Amazon for just over twenty-five) does for American English what the classic Fowler’s Modern English Usage does for British English: it provides a precise, learned, witty guide to the rich, though at times bewildering, tangle of grammar and idiom that is the native ground of our language. I know that these books sound expensive, but they are investments for a lifetime. They could save you many hours of library work and many hours of confusion both next year and in college. I wish that I had had them all when I became a serious student. Although online texts are somewhat less flexible than printed books, many reference books are available for free on the internet. When you sign out your summer reading books, I will ask for your email address, and as the summer goes on I will send you more information, including links to particularly good reference sites.

Do not waste your money on any if the commercial AP English preparation books; almost all are badly done, full of misinformation and faulty multiple-choice questions.

Read as much poetry as you can during the summer. Much of our reading next year will be poems; the more accustomed you are to reading poems, the easier the course will be. In fact, any reading you do during the summer is to the good. One of my best A.P. students ever told me that when he got to college he realized how much there was to know and how little he really did know. The sooner strong students make this humbling but healthy realization, which the greatest thinkers always have come to, the sooner they can get down to the daunting, but exciting business of learning as much as they possibly can.

Here are three websites that will give you easy access to many great poems:

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/ An Online Journal and Multimedia Companion to Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2000) This site provides commentary on many modern American poems, indexed by poet, and links to sites where you can read many of the poems themselves.

http://www.bartleby.com/verse/ Bartleby provides e-texts of a wide variety of poems up to the early decades of the twentieth century.

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/ Project Gutenberg provides one of the largest collections of free e-texts available.

Your willingness to do the hard work necessary to improve your writing is essential to your success in this course. The web site associated with the book The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing-- http://nutsandbolts.washcoll.edu-- is a treasure house of good advice.


Required Reading- due on the first day of class:

A. The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy (Don’t be overwhelmed by the first chapter; the reading gets easier.)

B. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

C. at least one full-length work (the works listed in italics, not in quotation marks, not short stories or short poems), that you have not read before, drawn from the list I have given you of works that have appeared on past AP exams. If you wish to read a work not originally written in English, ask me about which translation would be best. You may either buy copies your free-choice books or check them out of a library, but either way you must have the books with you on the first day of class. There might even be a copy of the ideal book already sitting on a shelf in your house, or I might be able to lend you a copy. I might ask to borrow your copy of the free-choice book when I am reading your journal, so that I have the right page numbers. By July 1st, you must let me know, in person or by email, what work or works you have chosen. If you want help choosing, feel free to speak to me or to send me a message.

I encourage you to get your own copies of all of the books we read, if you can. One of the great pleasures of studying literature in college is the luxury of owning and being able to write in one’s very own books. I buy many of my books pretty inexpensively in used bookstores or used from Amazon.com (if you decide to use Amazon Marketplace, be sure to choose a reliable seller, somebody with a good number of sales and as close to a five-star rating as you can get).

Read all of the works closely, thoughtfully, and as deeply as you can. Take thorough notes, asking frequent questions, writing down quotations you think are particularly meaningful, keeping track of questions, large and small, raised by the reading. Use a dictionary when necessary (which I guarantee will be often—don’t fool yourself into thinking that you know the meanings of words you are only half sure of) always recording the page numbers of words you do not know, even when you do not have time to look up definitions right away, so that when you do have time, you can learn the words in context, rather than as part of a relatively meaningless list. Near the beginning of the course, you will do writing based on the works. During the school year we will use them as background for the discussion of other works and of literature in general.


Reading/Writing Journal- due on the first day of class:

Read all of the following guidelines carefully. If you do not follow them, your grade will suffer.

You will continue a version of this journal at times during the school year. The journal will provide one of the major grades in the first quarter.

First and foremost, the summer journal should be a record for you, and proof for me, of your thoughtful reactions to the assigned summer reading. Although many students like to do detailed, blow-by-blow plot summaries of the reading (and summaries can be useful when students write papers, take exams, and study for timed writings and the A.P. exam in the senior year), what I want to see is commentary on the reading, detailed reactions to and interpretations of the texts, that prove to me that you have read carefully and consciously. Those responses are best when you comment on specific passages, quoting and keying your commentary to page numbers (note the requirements below).

I expect also to see a balance in your entries. I do not want, for example, twenty-five pages of detailed entries on a hundred pages of The Return of the Native and then three pages of general commentary on the remaining two-hundred pages of the novel and a two-page response to each of the remaining books. The explanation that you read hundreds of pages at the beach, and that you didn't have your journal with you, and that you wrote what you could remember, will not hold water. I expect you to stop frequently and to respond. If your journal indicates that you rushed through the reading at the last minute, your grade and my opinion of you will suffer accordingly. One purpose of this journal is to show me that you have the dedication to your studies that makes you a good candidate to face the rigors of the coming year. If the summer journal is half-baked, what will you do when you have to balance two or three other courses? That's enough summer thunder. I just want to ward off potential problems for both of us.

NB: Clearly label each entry with its subject (the name of the text it comments on) and the date on which you wrote it. Again, your journal will consist mostly of responses to the summer reading, not summaries of, but rather commentary on, the texts. The best journals include commentary on diction, imagery, and other literary elements you have learned about in the past. In your entries you must quote from the texts often, and you must cite the page numbers of the pages you are quoting. Look up the MLA format for parenthetical citation of page numbers (http://nutsandbolts.washcoll.edu gives a good summary of the format), and practice it as you write; it will become second-nature to you. You must write at least thirty 8 1/2 x 11 pages of entries about the reading (not counting any of the Roman numeralled suggestions for pleasure below), but there is no upper limit; I will reward hard work. Often the weakest journals are those in which students have written exactly the minimum. I have had students write one-hundred-fifty single-spaced typed pages, and students commonly write seventy pages. My favorite journals are always those written by students who are interested in the ideas they are discussing. I do want you to spread your entries out over the whole summer rather than cramming them into the last few days. As in the study of a musical instrument or a foreign language, an essential element in the study of writing is regular practice.

I also expect to see, in this and in all your journals, lists of vocabulary words, with the page numbers on which you find them, and definitions that work in context. The expansion of your vocabulary is one of the most important elements in your growth as a reader and writer.

Note even more carefully: There is one more peal of thunder. If I find any evidence of your having used SparkNotes, Cliff’s Notes, or any other secondary source, printed or on the internet, no matter how minimally, to take the place of your own thinking or your own writing, you will receive a zero on the whole assignment. I will respect you far more for your own work, even if that work is weak, than I will if you cheat.

Do not skip this entry: The very last entry in the journal will be an attempt to list all the books you have ever read from the dawn of time to the present. I know that such a task is practically impossible. Have fun with it, but make a serious effort to make it complete. When you finish your list, pick the three books that you read that you feel have had the greatest impact on you, and explain as completely as you can what this impact has been.

Although the graded part of the journal is your response to the required reading, remember that this journal is a chance for me to get to know you, perhaps for the first time. We will be working together every day for a whole year, and the more I understand about you the more fruitful that experience will be. You may also include, as extras, for your own pleasure and for mine:

I. sentences or longer passages you encounter while reading (either in the assigned novels or any other books, or newspapers, magazines, advertisements, letters- any printed texts you see) that strike you as particularly well written, badly written, or otherwise rich and strange.

II. words and phrases that you read or hear in other places than the required reading which are new to you. You might also try playing around with new words in short, or long, passages of your own writing.

III. names of books you hear of that you would someday like to read and the reasons you would like to read them.

IV. any other responses to any other reading (analyses, parodies, euphoric flights of fancy, jeremiads, bdelygmia).

V. responses to films. Oftentimes movies elicit especially powerful responses from us which are worth exploring more fully.

VI. responses to music. Popular songs are both an important poetic genre and a central part of whatever folk culture we still have in the twenty-first century. In an age of standardized television conglomerates and worldwide satellite broadcasts, good songs still have the feeling of the intensely personal, or local, and at the same time, of the universal, that poetry and folk tales give us.

VII. responses to plays, music, siblings: anything on which you can exercise your critical faculties.

VIII. ideas, insights, inspirations, poems, character sketches, jokes (extra points if I laugh): anything you think or say by which you are particularly excited. Don't let these moments slip; no matter how vibrantly alive they seem when you experience them, you will forget thousands upon thousands in the course of your life. If you write them down, you will have them. I would like to continue to get to know you through this journal (if I do not already know you more than sufficiently), but you should avoid including anything so personal that you would not want me to read it.

IX. responses to poems you read. There is a good selection of great poetry in your anthology. Since the preponderance of the reading in a survey of British literature is necessarily poetry (prose fiction, for instance, did not come of age until the late eighteenth century), and since most of you have not read a great deal of poetry, I would like you to grow accustomed to thinking about and generally experiencing poems. We will practice formal, academic methods of response during the coming school year; for the summer, I would like you to make more informal, personal responses; honest, alert, imaginative informal responses are the basis of all good formal responses. Read a selection of poems wherever you can find them. One of my very favorite anthologies is The Rattle Bag, edited and selected by Seamus Heaney (maybe the best contemporary Irish poet) and Ted Hughes (a great contemporary English poet and formerly husband of Sylvia Plath). Responding to poems, like any other important activity, is a matter of practice. Sample the poems, think them over, feel your way through and around them, and react thoughtfully but without concerning yourself with impressing me. In these and all your other journal entries, be honest.

Please clearly label the extras as extras.

Here are some final suggestions, the fruit of my long experience with summer reading:

All of this sounds like a great deal of work, but paced properly it can actually be a pleasure. Note: If you are going to Katmandu or Disney World for an extended time this summer, plan accordingly; do not plan to get huge chunks of serious work done while you are absorbing a new world (though if you did some journal entries on your travels, you would be interested in these records later). If you have a full-time summer job, it is especially important to spread your reading out over the whole summer, reading a chapter here and a chapter there, when you have time and energy. Otherwise the reading will be a terrible, thickening cloud over your summer, and you will come to resent the reading bitterly when you should be enjoying it. Finally, if you play a fall sport, get your reading done before practices begin; you might not remember how exhausting those first weeks are.

However your summer is organized, make a reading schedule and follow it. Not only will you be assured of not having to rush the reading or the journal, you will enjoy the added pleasure of having a huge chunk of the amorphous mass of Things To Do lifted out of your brain and put into a calendar where you don't have to worry about it so much. The more you worry, the less well you can concentrate; it is the most vicious of circles.

Do the journals regularly. Do not save them until the reading is a dim memory, or you defeat the purpose of preserving the vivid and intricate experience of reading in all its freshness. Many of the most successful journal writers make a habit of sitting down to their writing immediately after they do a session of reading, or first thing in the morning when their heads are clearest, or last thing before bed, when they can quietly sum and consider the day.

Most people find the reading most enjoyable when they discuss it with other human beings. If you and a friend in the class can coordinate your reading schedules, you will both learn more, and you can help to push each other actually to finish. If you can persuade your mother or father to read one or two of the books, you will get yet another interesting perspective, and you will share an experience with a person from whom, in a year or so, you might be going far away for a long time (I’m not trying to depress you).

If you are worried that you are not doing your journals the way that you should, feel free to send me some excepts by email (please make them Microsoft Word attachments, if possible, rather than putting them in the bodies of messages), and I will be happy to comment on them.

Writing Assignment- due on the first day of class:

Your first formal writing assignment is to write short essay applying your analytical skills to a film that you think is worthy of analysis. If you choose a film that you saw some time ago or only once, I urge you to watch it again, ideally taking notes as you do. You are not required to use quotations, but your review will probably be better if you do. You will answer the following question:

Any enduring work of art, literary, visual, musical, or other, endures because it feeds the human spirit; it gives people something that they need, beyond the basic physical necessities of food and shelter.

Choose a film that you think will endure, or at least deserves to endure, and in a well written, convincingly argued essay, explain, in detail, what it offers to the viewer that fulfills some basic human need. Because you are writing an analysis, in your explanation, you must discuss specific elements of the film, such as language, acting, characterization, conflict, development of ideas, even camera work or special effects, and give examples to support your assertions. If you wish to argue against another critic for the sake of strengthening your own argument, you may do so, but be sure to cite your sources.

Your essay must be a minimum of 500 words long (longer is fine), typed in standard MLA format. Please attach all notes and rough drafts to the final draft.

If there is a reason that you cannot watch a film this summer, please let me know as soon as possible, and I will find a way for you to complete the assignment.

If you have any questions about the reading, the journal, or the essay, feel free to e-mail me at honestdream@gmail.com. I will not be instantly available all summer long, but even if I go away for a bit, I will regularly check my Gmail address.

I’d even be willing to get together with a group of you at school during the summer to clear up any questions. I do all of this (partly) because I like to.

Please don't stay confused; I am more than happy to hear from you. Some of the best conversations I have ever had with students began as questions about the summer reading.

Have a fine summer.

Sincerely,

Mr. Brown