Excerpts from Books for AP Literature

Book Excerpt Links
Fredrik Backman  opening of Bear Town  
Ceremony Materials
Leslie Marmon Silko  Ceremony
Leslie Marmon Silkos  Ceremony – the Effects of White Contact on Pueblo Myth and Ritual
Ceremony – A timeline of Tayo’s journey and Myth time in Ceremony

Ernest J. Gaines  A Lesson Before Dying
Anthony Doerr   All the Light We cannot See
 Henrik Ibsen  adapted by Arthur Miller  An Enemy of the People
Exit West Materials
A Novel About Refugees That Feels Instantly Canonical Exit West
Mohsin Hamid   Exit West
Exit West annotation by the author
Lesson Plan For Teaching Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West
Jane Eyre Materials
Charlotte Brontë   Jane Eyre chapters 1 and 2
Charlotte Brontë   Jane Eyre chapter 26
Jane Eyre_Setting_Dialectics_
Jean Rhys  Wide Sargasso Sea Selections
Station Eleven Materials
Emily St. John Mandel   Station Eleven excerpt chapter 1
Emily St. John Mandel Station Eleven additional excerpts
Watership Down Materials
Richard Adams Watership Down Chapter One
Why Watership Down Should Be On Every Students Reading List
What Richard Adams’ Watership Down Taught Me About Death
When the Emperor was Divine Materials
Julie Otsuka When The Emperor was Divine
When the Emperor Was Divine 2
Reader-Resources-When The Emperor was Divine
A Day No Pigs Would Die (Example of a complete Unit on a Novel)
Robert Newton Peck A Day No Pigs Would Die
Andrew Sean Greer excerpt from Less “It’s a Summer Day” published in the New Yorker  2017
Barbara Kingsolver Poisonwood Bible and interview with Kingsolver
The Nickel Boys Materials
Colson Whitehead The Nickel Boys 
“A Good Read: Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead”

Colson Whitehead  The Nickel Boys – Prologue
The Underground Railroad Materials
Colson Whitehead  The Underground Railroad
Lesson Plan for teaching The Underground Railroad
 ….
Interview with Colson Whitehead NPR Fresh Air
Ta-Nehisi Coates  The Water Dancer 
Helena MarÍa Viramontes  Under the Feet of Jesus
William Faulkner  Light in August
Maggie O’Farrell  Hamnet “chapter one”
Homegoing Materials
Yaa Gyasi  Homegoing 
How Homegoing Has Changed My Teaching

Eugene Ionesco  The Bald Soprano (Theatre of the Absurd)
Oscar Wilde  The Importance of Being Earnest “chapter one selections”
Questioning the Text for understanding
Henry Fielding  Tom Jones understanding the passage 
Understanding the Passage Vocabulary Study
Alan Paton  Cry the Beloved Country
Douglas Adams  Hitch Hiker’s Guide To the Galaxy
Ralph Ellison  Invisible Man Passages (note:  this has appeared as a choice on Question 3 more often than any other book.)
Charles Dickens  Tale of Two Cities
Harper Lee  To Kill a Mockingbird  “Maycomb”
T.S. Eliot  Murder in the Cathedral – The individual’s opposition to authority
Americanah Materials
New York Times: Realities of Race
The Novel That Made Me and Many Black People Feel Understood
npr.org-lt Americanah Author Explains Learning To Be Black In The US
glencoepubliclibrary.org-Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie excerpt from Chapter 36 of AMERICANAH  
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  Americanah
The Danger of a Single Story Transcript
The Book Thief  Materials
Markus Zusak  The Book Thief – longer excerpt
Markus Zusak  The Book Thief – teaching ideas
Alice Sebold  The Lovely Bones
The Warmth of Other Suns Materials
Isabel Wilkerson  The Warmth of Other Suns
 – nonfiction (video reading of the opening to chapter “The Great Migration, 1915–1970)
Isabel Wilkerson The Warmth of Other Suns – nonfiction (transcript to above video)
Isabel Wilkerson The Warmth of Other Suns – nonfiction (excerpts chapter 1)
Isabel Wilkerson The Warmth of Other Suns – nonfiction (“Chicago”)
Octavia E. Butler  Audio recording of Kindred
Octavia E. Butler Kindred  – entire book online
Past Workshop (TCU 2013) on 11 Post-apocalyptic novels and one short story – far too broad a concept for one workshop!  What was I thinking?  However, the excepts from one or more of the novels might work with your students.  Each grouping of novels has suggestions, including reading and activities.
Amor Towles   A Gentleman in Moscow
Amy Tan   The Bone Setter’s Daughter
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie   Half a Yellow Sun
David Grann   Killers of the Flower Moon
Delia Owens Where the Crawdads Sing
Donna Tartt The Goldfinch
Hillary Jordan   Mudbound
John Searles   Strange But True
Jonathan Safran Foer   Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Madeline Miller   Circe
Madeline Miller   The Song Of Achilles: A Novel
Manil Suri   The Death Vishnu: A Novel
Neil Gaiman   The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Sara Gruen   Water for Elephants: A Novel
Tara Westover  Educated: A Memoir
Yann Martel  Life of Pi

Various lists of possible novel choices.

All AP Literature Exam Referenced Novels (Updated 2022)
Non-White Authors to Diversify Your AP Lit Curriculum
Annotated AP Novel List
10 Reasons You Should Encourage Graphic Novel Reading
The Great American Novels – The Atlantic
50 greatest works of immigration Literature
100 Books about Nature
50 classic novels under 200 pages
100 Great Works of Dystopian Fiction
60 years of post-apocalyptic fiction
americanliterature.com