Anonymous wrote:I would pick Kindred. But that is because I have been wanting to read that particular book for a couple years now.

Pride and Prejudice is a book people will still be talking about 40 years from now. So that would be a recommendation from me.
All the Light We Cannot See sounds appealing to me. But It has been a long time since I was a teenager. What appeals to a teen might be way different from what appeals to me.

If you truly can't decide what appeals to you, you could just look on Libby for your library and see what is available right now for you to check out.

Anonymous wrote:Books that have appearedthe most times on the exam over the past 53 years

32 times: Invisible Man

27 times: Wuthering Heights

25 times: Great Expectations; Jane Eyre

23 times: King Lear

19 times: Heart of Darkness; Their Eyes Were Watching God

18 times: Crime and Punishment

17 times: Moby Dick

16 times: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Awakening; Catch-22; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; The Scarlet Letter

15 times: Beloved; Native Son

14 times: The Color Purple; A Raisin in the Sun

13 times: Antigone; Ceremony; Death of a Salesman; The Great Gatsby; Light in August; Othello

12 times: The Crucible; Portrait of a Lady

11 times: As I Lay Dying; Candide; The Glass Menagerie; A Streetcar Named Desire; Waiting for Godot

10 times: A Passage to India; Pride and Prejudice; Song of Solomon; Sula; The Tempest

9 times: Frankenstein; Madame Bovary; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; Things Fall Apart

Anonymous wrote:They are all pretty quick reads, so I'd read them all. However, she is most likely to be assigned everything on that list on some other class at some point, so I'd do Pride and Prejudice, otherwise she may never read it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would pick the Joy Luck Club. It’s an interesting and not difficult read. As a treat for finishing the book, watch the movie. Since it’s summer reading, I’d probably take decent notes on a few things, and read the other books as well, although I’m not sure about the Austen.

I agree with Joy Luck Club. It's not my ethnic background, but I am interested in Chinese culture and Chinese-American culture and the role of women in these cultures. I read the book after the movie, which I usually don't do...I usually try to read the book first. The movie does a wonderful job of making the emotional turmoil visceral, while the book has more time to set up backstories and connections. My husband and I still think about some of the scenes in the movie from time to time. Like Waverly and the "best quality crab scene. Or the architect and his wife splitting grocery bills down to the ice cream. There's a lot there to think about.

I read Pride and Prejudice first in middle school and found it very boring. I had to grow up to understand it better. The attraction between the main characters involves negative energy and unspoken feelings so it's not easy for a romantically inexperienced person to relate to it. Now I really like it, and I'm a sucker for the vivacity and intensity of the Colin Firth miniseries version. But I think it's less accessible than Joy Luck Club what with it being essentially about a very narrow social class and being about very repressed feelings.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a list for AP Lit?

Pride and Prejudice is definitely the best book on that list.
After that, I'd say
Poisonwood Bible
Kindred
Joy Luck Club

I haven't read Jasmine.
Very "meh" on the rest as books for a course. They are all great for independent entertainment reading.

This would be my ranking although I haven’t read Kindred. I did find poison wood Bible super depressing — but I’ll also note that books about death didn’t bother me as much as a teen so maybe she wouldn’t. There is a major character in poison wood Bible that is a teen girl so that might appeal. But if she hasn’t read any Austen, that’s the clear pick.