Thank you so much. Some great advice in your post. Any other tips of likes/dislikes you want to share? I’m really wnating to engage the class as much as possible.
I would stay away from Heart Of Darkness. I read it this year(senior) in English and it was one of the most painfully boring books I’ve ever read for school. It took me forever to get through it and it’s only, what, 70 pages? Ecch.
Other books I found irritating:
Jane Eyre
Their eyes were watching God
Books I liked:
Wuthering Heights. Some people hate it, but c’mon, what’s not to like? Deceit, betrayal, love polygons, guns with knifes on 'em?
The Great Gatsby
Ethan Frome. It’s not for everyone, though.
Books I read outside of class that I liked.
Anything by Shirley Jackson
Memoirs of a Geisha
I will probably be asking you many questions! Thank you for your help.
If I teach Shakespeare, I was leaning towards Twelfth Night, Othello, or King Lear . Which do you think would be best? I’m pretty certain they will have read Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet already.
I was really hoping to teach Heart of Darkness , but I’m surprised by how many dislike it. (sigh)
Ah, well, AP lit I know less about than AP lang. Honest to god, us Language teachers think you Lit teachers are a bunch of touchy-feely poetry types, going on about theme, when real men read nonfiction and argue about rhetorical purpose.
But Lit is also a neat course, though I would struggle with it.
You may notice that the opinions of people about books have varied widely in this thread: there is an important lesson there–one, no book is going to be universally popular and two, how a book is presented makes a big difference. The only things I think are really important are that 1) you have a varied selection of books–not all the sort of book you like, not all boy books or girl books, not all satires or all psychological novels–2) that you evaluate each not in terms of absolute worth, but in terms of opportunity cost. Does Paradise Lost deserve to be read and studied in it’s entirety? Of course it does. Does it deserve it enough to replace the three shorter, simpler works you could have read in the same amount of time? Less obvious. 3) A good book is not the same as a teachable book. Pick each book not just because it’s good (though that’s important) but because it contains certain elements that you want to teach. This will focus your teaching. You can’t teach everything about any book.
More general advice:
Ap Central is a great website. Peruse it.
If at ALL possible, attend one of the AP seminars this summer. Here in TX, the state pays for them; if your state doesn’t, see if your school will. They are not cheap, but they are extremely helpful.
If you ever get a chance to see Jane Schaffer, go. Her approach is a useful way to break down writing for kids who are not natural writers–this is diffucult for those of us who become English teachers, because we WERE natural writers, by and large.
Speaking as a student (up to recently, anyway), I vote for Twelfth Night. Actually, I would recommend the Merchant of Venice or Much Ado About Nothing. I like Othello, but it always depresses the hell out of me, more than any other play.
As for the OP, the greatest thing I read in high school was All Quiet on the Western Front followed closely by The Miller’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Bear in mind that I went to a Christian high school and was specifically told not to read it. I, being me, of course, read it. I fucking died. I still die every time I read that story.
Grendel / Beowulf is a very good combination.
We read The Sirens of Titan instead of the more well known Vonnegut choices.
I liked Heart of Darkness and The Great Gatsby.
We read 1984 and Animal Farm one after the other.
Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye are good for high school, while Crime and Punishment, my favorite novel, might be appreciated more in college.
We also read Ender’s Game my sophomore year. You can go with that if you are having trouble getting students interested in a book.
Are you sure they will have read Hamlet? We read it in 12th grade and most of the students knew the basuics, but I think only the actors had read it. Hamlet has the most to analyze, too. (By contrast, we read R&J in 9th grade.)
I’m going to counter-recommend Hung Mung and say stick with a tragedy. You know how a joke isn’t funny if somebody has to explain it to you? I love Shakespeare, but if you have to explain most of the jokes (which you will), they won’t be funny. So a whole comedy of them will not be interesting to most of them, especially those without a previous interest in Shakespeare, and I think those are the main targets. His comedies just aren’t funny on the page. Not that they’re supposed to be. If you took your class to a performance after spending a few days going over the gist of the play, that’d be different. It’s always better to see a play instead of reading it.
Since distopian novels are a requirement in high school for some reason, maybe just to make the students bitter at the world, let me say this: I read Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, and 1984 for school. Brave New World (which I read on my own this year) is better than any of them. Please go with that instead. Rather than being heavy-handed and depressing - okay, it’s heavy-handed sometimes - it’s funny, for one, and more importantly it comes much, much closer to what America is like today. All of your kids will probably agree that a government that tells everybody what to think and disappears people is bad, but the whole ‘control through hedonism’ thing is more interesting and more relevant.
No, I’m not certain. This was just what one of librarian’s told me she “thought” they did. I have a meeting with the department head and the principal in about two weeks to iron all of these details out.
My class read R&J in 9th grade, Macbeth in 10th (holy moly, how did I forget Macbeth? Between that and Merchant, you’ve got two awesome plays) and Hamlet and Henry IV pt.1 in 12th.
Measure for Measure is an absolutely eerie problem comedy and good for debate. The histories are pretty dry for high school. And avoid Antony and Cleopatra at all costs. Unless you like to see kids passing out from sheer boredom.
Of the ones assigned?
I’d have to say Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Any and all Shakespeare was well appreciated as well.
Just as a personal rule of thumb, Hawthorne and Hemmingway and Faulkner? Oh, no.
Do most of you think Animal Farm would interest the class? I loved it, but wonder if it would be liked as well by todays students.
I loved it when I read it in 7th grade, but like I said before, I was one of two weird kids who also liked Heart of Darkness.
Heh. I almost typed Army of Darkness. That would’ve been a very atypical curriculum choice. 
It just seems like there is so much you can do with the novella and symbolism, colonialism, etc. But the last thing I wnat to do is bore a class to tears. Maybe they will appreciate it when they are older.
The only assigned book I really remember from high school is The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart. I just couldn’t put it down. In fact, by the time we were supposed to have finished the book, I had read the other three books of the series.
I loved
Bridge to Terabithia
1984
The Outsider/Le Estranger
Can you see I really like depressing books?
That does make me happy to see.
[Assigning a Shakespearean Comedy rant]
Some of Shakespeare’s comedies work upon reading. Some don’t. Much Ado About Nothing will, indeed, mean nothing to your class (not to say I don’t enjoy it, but I also performed in it). Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I and many others in this thread suggested, works brilliantly on paper (and even more brilliantly on stage!) Whereas, for example, Much Ado has Dogberry and Conrad for very limited crude slapstick, Midsummer has the six mechanicals, particularly Bottom, who are juvenilely funny throughout. The fact that the nobles basically MST3K the Pyramus and Thisbe play is very easy to understand the humor. And it has Puck, which might fly over some of their heads, but is pretty accessibly mischievous. If they can keep track of which of the four lovers goes with which, the kids will get that mess, too. It’s a GREAT comedy for high schoolers because it’s probably the one that Shakespeare played the most to the low sensibilities of the masses.
[/Assigning a Shakespearean Comedy rant]
And I agree with Marley23: If you’re going to go with a dystopian story, make it Brave New World. It offers the most unique spin, when everything’s so controllably sensible and GOOD that it’s a disaster.
I just finished a Britsh Lit course as a 27 year old junior in college, and even I couldn’t stand to read one more word by Conrad. We read Youth, Hearth of Darkness, and Lord Jim. If your students aren’t educated in boating then they’ll be somewhat lost. What I didn’t like was that not only could I not follow the language of boating terminology, but he is so wordy that I had to reread many sentences. Not to mention I’d reread the last ten pages every so often because nothing happens the majority of the time, it’s just a lot of descriptions. I found it boring, but that’s just me.
Books I loved:
The Hobbit
The Great Gatsby
Of Mice and Men
Lord of the Flies
It seems like many of you like Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men , so I will definitely reconsider these.
Enough of you have said you dislike Heart of Darkness to make me pretty certain not to have the class read it.