AP English Language and Composition The Art of the ...

West Windsor-Plainsboro High School
AP English Language and Composition

Summer Reading List 2014

The AP English Language and Composition course primarily focuses on non-fiction prose that discusses
politics, history, social sciences, and current events. We will study and analyze stylistic and rhetorical
strategies used in various literary texts throughout the year in preparation for the AP examination in May.

The purpose of the summer reading assignments is to expand your experience with non-fiction texts.
These assignments offer you an opportunity to establish a foundation that you will use throughout the
course. Over the summer, you will be required to read an essay anthology entitled The Art of the
Personal Essay, and in the first week of school you will be given assessments that will evaluate your
reading comprehension and writing ability.

Due on the first day of school:

A. Read the following essays from The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the
Classical Era to the Present by Phillip Lopate

1. On Noise and Asthma Seneca
2. Of A Monstrous Child Michel de Montaigne
3. On the Pleasure of Hating William Hazlitt
4. On Running After One’s Hat G.K. Chesterton
5. Street Haunting Virginia Woolf
6. Blindness Jorge Luis Borges
7. He and I Natalia Ginzburg
8. Why do I Fast? Wole Soyinka
9. Meatless Days Sara Suleri
10. The Crack-Up F. Scott Fitzgerald
11. The Secret Life of James Thurber James Thurber
12. Once More to the Lake E.B. White
13. Notes of a Native Son James Baldwin
14. Split at the Root Adrienne Rich
15. Such, Such Were The Joys George Orwell
16. In Bed Joan Didion
17. Seeing Annie Dillard
18. The Knife Richard Selzer
19. Late Victorians Richard Rodriguez
20. Under The Influence Scott Russell Sanders

B. You are expected to read all 20 essays listed above, but you will choose five essays to
produce a dialectical notebook (a double-entry journal method). Each essay must
feature two quotations followed by an analysis of the passage (50-60 words each). You
should choose a quotation that reveals the author’s overall purpose and writing strategies.
In total, you should have ten entries in this notebook. Each entry will be worth five
points. The notebook must be typed (Times New Roman, 12 point font), stapled, and
double-spaced.

C. During the first week, you will be given a multiple-choice assessment that will evaluate
your comprehension of the summer reading. This assessment will be worth 50 points.

Instructions on starting a Dialectical Notebook:

You may use first-person pronouns but use them sparingly. The purpose of the
assignment is to allow your teacher to assess your ability to think about a passage
critically and analytically.

After dating your entry, start each entry by stating the title of the essay/article and the
name of the author. Then identify the author’s overall purpose in 1-2 well-written,
complete sentences. Afterwards, divide each page into two vertical columns. On the left
side of the page, take notes on the text and record the author’s writing strategies
(figurative language, imagery, word choice, sentence structure, etc.) and on the right side
of the page, explain/analyze how the strategy is used to support the author’s purpose.

Sample Entry on Kenko’s Essays in Idleness (This is a MODEL to guide your own
journal entries.)

July 10, 2014

Selections from “Essays in Idleness” by Kenko

Kenko’s musings read as a stream-of-consciousness, but there is a prevalent theme in all
his “idle” reflections – the delicate balance between the grief and the celebration of life’s
transient moments.

Quote Analysis

“If man were never to fade away In Kenko’s seventh entry, he highlights the
like the dews of Adashino, never paradox of living a long life and the
to wash away like the smoke over eventual loss of sensitivity to beauty. He
Toribeyama, but lingered on begins this observation with a hypothetical
forever in the world, how things situation of man living forever. Kenko
would lose their power to us! The demonstrates how eternal life is undesirable
most precious thing in life is by comparing the human life span to “the
uncertainty.” (31) dews of Adashino” and “the smoke over
Toribeyama,” because the beauty of dew
and smoke exists in its ephemeral nature.
To imagine that dew and smoke would
“linger forever” is unnatural and therefore
distasteful. The comparison also illustrates
the beauty of life’s uncertainty; while a
man’s life may “fade away” via old age or
“vanish” through a tragic accident or
illness, it is the uncertainty that will
encourage man to live life to its fullest.