As an adult, I’ve read a lot of books and thought “wow, that should have been on the AP list.”
And they were. Just, back when I was reading off the AP list, I didn’t know about them. Or, if I did know about them, I didn’t realize they were for me.
This blog post has been rattling around in my brain for the past few years, whenever I think about how I definitely should have read My Antonia instead of Wuthering Heights, The Awakening instead of Catcher in the Rye, or One Hundred Years of Solitude instead of, well, anything.
Then, of course, came current events. With diversity and hidden biases on the forefront, I’ve started questioning why I grew up thinking many of these books were for someone else. I finally sat down to read Their Eyes Were Watching God, and wondered why no one saw it as the natural conclusion of the American novel unit.
And, looking into it as an adult, I realized the AP literature list isn’t just one list — it’s a creature of itself. Yeah, you’re probably not going to get anywhere citing Twilight, but nothing’s stopping you from writing your open essay about The Days of Abandonment or Salvage the Bones (neither of which I found on any list, but both are worthy).
There’s another purpose to this post, though. When thinking about AP books, I realized that with school out early and the library closed, there are probably students all over Odessa who don’t have something On the Level to read this summer. I know they don’t actually take the AP Lit test at OHS anymore, and I actually don’t know if they still read off “the list” anymore, but I still think it’s a great guide for literature. I never went that long in high school without reading one of these books, and I’d hate to think a student wanting to get ahead in English and not having the chance.
So! I’ve rounded up all the AP books I have, and want to make them available to loan out for OHS students who need them! I’m going to post a full list of what’s available AP lit-wise on this post, but first I’ll make a few specific recommendations to let students know these books are absolutely worth it and absolutely for you.
Credentials for these recommendations:
5 on the AP lit and comp test as an OHS senior
Continues to read approximately 30 books a year
A huge nerd
Turned down by the Trails Regional Library Board for being “fake news.”
So, without further ado, The Better AP List.
The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
Set in New York, it’s a book about class, love, morals and societal expectations. An unfulfilled love story.
Pairs well with: Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, The Awakening
Broadens your shelf: Female American author, female subject
The Awakening
Kate Chopin
Set on the Gulf Coast, it’s an early book about women’s issues (and one of the earliest written by a woman). It’s about becoming yourself, societal expectations and solitude.
Pairs well with: Age of Innocence, Jane Eyre, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Could potentially replace: Catcher in the Rye
Broadens your shelf: Female American author, women’s issues, female subject
Ceremony
Leslie Marmon Silko
Set on a Native American reservation, it’s about Native Americans who have returned from World War II and are trying to find their place in both their native cultures and modern America. It’s modern/post-modern literature, which is a different type of reading than the above novels.
Pairs well with: Probably Hemingway’s war novels (I haven’t read them). It’s a hero journey, so any traditional hero journey stories.
Broadens your shelf: Native American (female) author, Native American subject
Cry the Beloved Country
by Alan Paton
Set in South Africa, with Black South African characters, it uses a family’s struggles, and crime issues, to talk about the impact of apartheid. It uses some of the same writing conventions as Steinbeck, but I think it flows easier than Steinbeck.
Author note: Paton was a white anti-apartheid activist in the early days of apartheid
Pairs well with: To Kill a Mockingbird, Things Fall Apart
Broadens your shelf: African novel, Black (African) characters in apartheid
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
Set in Afghanistan, it’s the story about two families over generations, with the Taliban in the background. It’s very much about guilt. Warning: it’s a very dark and sad book! But it’s worth it. Admittedly, I knew about this one in high school, I just didn’t read it until college.
Pairs well with: Another of Hosseini’s books, A Thousand Splendid Suns, which is female-oriented but not included on any AP lists I’ve seen
Broadens your shelf: Afghan-American author and Afghani characters.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This book is joy, joy joy to read, despite dealing with some serious topics. Based on the title, I expected it to be about, well, solitude, but the characters themselves never feel lonely. It’s about a family and the town they create in Colombia. There is a lot of magical realism and several allegories to real Colombian history.
This is one I’d recommend to anyone.
Broadens your shelf: Latin American novel and author.
O Pioneers! and My Antonia
by Willa Cather
I’m putting these both together because they have the same author and similar themes and subjects. They’re both about pioneers to Nebraska.
My personal favorite of the two is My Antonia, which in addition to the solitude and independence themes is about societal expectations for women. Antonia is a great character.
Pairs well with: The entire American novel canon
Could replace: Wuthering Heights
Broadens your shelf: female American author
Song of Solomon
by Toni Morrison
This one has some magical realism, and deals with a boy named Milkman Dead as he navigates his family’s history. It has a lot of call backs to the Bible and feels like folklore.
Other reading: there are several other Toni Morrison novels on the list, but I haven’t read them yet.
Broadens your shelf: Black female author, Black characters
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
Set in 1920s Florida, this book really, truly feels like a culmination of the whole concept of an American novel. It’s about societal expectations, class, race, women’s issues and the relationship between humans and nature. It’s also a love story!
Pairs well with: Every American novel you’re supposed to read, the Awakening, really just read it.
Broadens your shelf: Black female author, Black characters.
Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe
Set in Nigeria, it’s about the impact of colonialism on traditions in the country. Deals with race, traditions and imperialism in the context of a man whose village is upended.
Should replace: Heart of Darkness. A critique Achebe wrote of Heart of Darkness is maybe one of the most important things I read in college.
Broadens your shelf: Black African author, Black African characters.
And now, for the books in all their glory…
Other books available
Here are the other books. There are other kinds of diversity hidden within them, some very obvious but I just haven’t read them yet. An asterisk notes a personal favorite, and the complete works are broken down by common AP listings.
The books:
1984, George Orwell
A Separate Peace, John Knowles
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
Antigone, Sophocles
Arthur Miller complete works
Death of a Salesman*
All My Sons
The Crucible
A View from the Bridge
Atonement, Ian McEwan
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Candide, Voltaire*
The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway
The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Iliad, Homer
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
Middlemarch, George Eliot
The Odyssey, Homer
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
The Plague, Albert Camus
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw
Shakespeare, complete works
King Lear*
Romeo and Juliet
Anthony and Cleopatra
Julius Caesar
Macbeth*
Much Ado About Nothing
Othello*
Richard III
Twelfth Night*
A Winter’s Tale
A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee*