“In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read.  It is not true that we can have only one life to live.  If we can read, we can live as many lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.”   --S. I. Hayakawa                                                                             

“I find television very educating.  Every time someone turns the set on, I go into the other room and read a book.”  --Groucho Marx 

“The world is made up of stories, not of atoms.”   --Muriel Rukeyser 

Welcome to Advanced Placement English! 

With an open mind and willingness to work, you should have no trouble scoring high on the AP exam next May and earning credit at a participating college.  One of my goals—among many—is to provide you with the instruction and guidance that will prepare you for this exam—but the test is really not what drives the course. 

To ensure a strong beginning, I would like you to read the works listed below during the summer and to take informal notes on them.  Your notes should include impressions, reactions, quotations, questions, connections to other works—anything that helps you understand and interpret literature.  Two handwritten pages is sufficient for each work, but feel free to take as many notes as you wish. 

In addition, I would like you to write a slightly more substantial paper (about 3 pages—typed double-spaced—10 or 11 Times New Roman font) in which you relate the four works you have read to the following quotation by Franz Kafka: 

“A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.”

In other words, I want you to discuss what each of the works has taught you about yourself. You have latitude regarding how to approach and structure the paper but it must be organized and focused.  Please do not use any outside sources for the paper—I want to see how you think and write.

I will collect both of these assignments at the first class meeting in September and they will count as a test grade for the first marking period.  You will receive half credit if the work is not turned in at the first class—no exceptions (including technology issues). 

The following are the four required summer readings: 

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky  (one of the first and probably the greatest of all                                                       psychological detective novels)

 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte  (one of  the most complex and passionate stories of tragic love—                                                      you’ll never forget  Cathy or Heathcliffe)

 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy  (a scathing attack on Victorian morality and sensibility—the reaction

                                                      against the book was so harsh that even though Hardy was at the peak of

                                                      his literary powers, he never published another novel)

 The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot  (Another Victorian novel—this one by and about a young woman—

                                                     Maggie Tulliver—who like Hardy’s Jude finds herself at odds with 19^th  

                                                     Century English society.)

 After reading these works, I am confident you’ll come back to school with plenty to question and discuss.  Be prepared for some sort of “evaluation” for each—check tests, essays, or a combination of both—within the first two weeks of class.

 I look forward to seeing you in September—if you have any questions or concerns over the summer feel free to email me at rwvalerio@comcast.net  or  rvalerio@wtps.org . 

Return to Summer Reading