Advanced Placement English 11: Language and Composition
2018-2019 Summer Reading Assignments
Ms. Dornon
Welcome,incoming juniors! I am glad that you are ready to explore the world of non-fiction, argumentation, and rhetoric. It will be an exciting year—a year of growth and possibility!
Below is a list of summer reading titles and authors. The titles are some of the most common that are placed on the AP 11 Language and Composition exam. Please choose any TWO books from the list to read before the first day of school. For each book, you must also complete an AP English Language and Composition Nonfiction Data Sheet (NDS). You can get copies of the NDS on the CHS Website <Site Shortcuts> <Summer Reading>. Be sure to print out the correct form.All NDS must be handwritten. Typed worksheets will not be accepted for credit.
During the first few days of school, you will be asked to participate in a presentation teaching the class about the books you chose. You will also complete a written assessment on your reading. You will need your books and your NDS for the presentation and the assessment. Details about the assessment and the presentation will be introduced during the first few days of class. You must come to class fully prepared to discuss and analyze the texts in-depth, teach others about your books, and inspire them to read. It will be very clear from the presentation whether or not you have prepared adequately. Therefore, in order for you to inspire others, you must yourself first be inspired. So, choose your texts carefully. Choose texts that interest you, that activate your curiosity, that inspire you to learn more about the world, and the way it works. Remember that reading should spark your curiosity, touch your emotions, and activate your mind. Manage your time wisely, complete the NDS as you read, leave yourself time to review your notes and the books before the first day of school, and you will be fine.
You may be tempted to take “shortcuts” with your summer reading, but please don’t cheat yourself. There is no substitute for reading and studying the complete books. In order to talk about a book, you must read the book, or you will have nothing to say, and it will be clear whether or not you know what you are talking about.
With academic intellectual development comes the need for a growth mindset—accompanied by “grit”—the ability and determination to follow through with things that are challenging and difficult. Studies show that those who have “grit” are more successful than those that do not. AP 11 is an intensive, weighted college-level English course that requires time and investment on your part. If you pass the AP exam, you may be able to earn college credit, so the investment of your time has the potential for a great return, but the investment must be tangible.
If you feel that you are not ready or able to commit to the depth of inquiry required in AP 11, or are perhaps not inspired by reading and writing, then this may not be the best course for you. There are other academic options available at Cabrillo.
If you are up for the challenge, then I look forward to spending the year with you helping you grow as readers, writers, and critical thinkers, taking your growth mindset to the next level. It will be a great year!
Please do not hesitate to contact me with questions .
Robin L. Dornon
English Department Chair
English 12 and AP 11 Teacher
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”―George R.R. Martin,A Dance with Dragons
Note: Books that are available in the Cabrillo Textbook Room are stared (**). Most titles are available in e-book/Kindle format. Many may be obtained from either a)Amazon, or b) the public library and checked out as an e-book
Choose TWO and complete a Nonfiction Data Sheet (NDS) on each:
- Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle
Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But, as MIT technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle argues, this relentless connection leads to a new solitude. As technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down.Alone Togetheris the result of Turkle's nearly fifteen-year exploration of our lives on the digital terrain. Based on hundreds of interviews, it describes new unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, parents, and children, and new instabilities in how we understand privacy and community, intimacy, and solitude.
- Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
This is the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank’s mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible, and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father’s tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank’s survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig’s head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness.
3. Barrio Boy by Ernesto Galarza (**)
Barrio Boyby Ernesto Galarza is a memoir about the author’s move from a small village in Mexico to a barrio in America. A barrio is the area or district of a town or city where Spanish is the dominant language. In the United States, barrios are also often rife with poverty.Barrio Boybegins when Ernesto, or Ernie, is four years old, and follows him up to high school. This book shows the influence of socio-political factors on young Ernie’s future. Of focus in the book is an emphasis on the balance of power, and the issue of hierarchy in society, adaptation and industrialization.
4. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf
In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."
5.Black Like Meby John Howard Griffin (**)
In the Deep South of the 1950s, journalist John Howard Griffin decided to cross the color line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity-that in this new millennium still has something important to say to every American.
6.Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughterby Adeline Yen Mah
A Chinese proverb says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." InChinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother dies giving birth to her. Life does not get any easier when her father remarries. She and her siblings are subjected to the disdain of her stepmother, while her stepbrother and stepsister are spoiled. Although Adeline wins prizes at school, they are not enough to compensate for what she really yearns for -- the love and understanding of her family.
7. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritanceby Barack Obama
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.
8. The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent “grand design” of our universe evidence of a benevolent creator who set things in motion—or does science offer another explanation? In this startling and lavishly illustrated book, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow present the most recent scientific thinking about these and other abiding mysteries of the universe, in nontechnical language marked by brilliance and simplicity.According to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence or history. The authors explain that we ourselves are the product of quantum fluctuations in the early universe, and show how quantum theory predicts the “multiverse”—the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature. They conclude with a riveting assessment of M-theory, an explanation of the laws governing our universe that is currently theonlyviable candidate for a “theory of everything”: the unified theory that Einstein was looking for, which, if confirmed, would represent the ultimate triumph of human reason.
9. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (**)
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? How much do parents really matter? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to parenting and sports—and reaches conclusions that turn conventional wisdom on its head.Freakonomicsis a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more.Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.
10.The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms
11. How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
This grandfather of all people-skills books was first published in 1937. It was an overnight hit, eventually selling 15 million copies.How to Win Friends and Influence Peopleis just as useful today as it was when it was first published, because Dale Carnegie had an understanding of human nature that will never be outdated. Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to "the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people." He teaches these skills through underlying principles of dealing with people so that they feel important and appreciated. He also emphasizes fundamental techniques for handling people without making them feel manipulated. Carnegie says you can make someone want to do what you want them to by seeing the situation from the other person's point of view and "arousing in the other person an eager want." You learn how to make people like you, win people over to your way of thinking, and change people without causing offense or arousing resentment. For instance, "let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers," and "talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person." Carnegie illustrates his points with anecdotes of historical figures, leaders of the business world, and everyday folks.
12. Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Roseby Michael Sokolove
Who is Pete Rose? Is he Charlie Hustle, the all-American kid who never grew up, who pushed and stretched himself to get the most out of his limited talent, who would do anything in his power to win and to be a part of the game he loved? Or is he the bloated ex-athlete who broke baseball's one absolute taboo, and who was willing to drag down the whole structure of the sport to save himself?
In January 2004, Pete Rose publicly admitted to betting on baseball and began his controversial campaign to get himself off the ineligible list and into the Baseball Hall of Fame. His recently published autobiography, the baseball legend's selective telling of the truth, only furthers the myth and the mystery that surrounds him.
13. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (Warning: Some readers may find the content disturbing)
InI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,Maya Angelou describes her coming of age as a precocious but insecure black girl in the American South during the 1930s and subsequently in California during the 1940s. Maya’s parent’s divorce when she is only three years old and ship Maya and her older brother, Bailey, to live with their paternal grandmother,Annie Henderson, in rural Stamps, Arkansas. Annie, whom they call Momma, runs the only store in the black section of Stamps and becomes the central moral figure in Maya’s childhood. Maya experiences the trials and tribulations of life surrounding racism, miscegenation, family values abandonment, adolescence, sexuality, and gender.
14. In Cold Bloodby Truman Capote
On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy.In Cold Bloodis a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.
15. Into the Wild by Jonathan Krakauer (**)
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter.How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story ofInto the Wild.