Summer Reading 2010

This summer I read three books for AP Literature: How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively Entertaining Guide to Reading Between Lines, by Thomas Foster; The Brief Wondrous Life Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz; and Goldengrove, by Francine Prose.

I found How to Read Literature Like a Professor to be a little obvious and repetitive, especially when discussing irony. However, the part that I thought was very helpful was about water and how it is a cleansing rebirth. It is like baptism. This is show to be true in Goldengrove when Nico goes in the water at the end of the novel and then comes out as a different, happier person.

I enjoyed reading Goldengrove. It was a thoughtful novel about growing up and dealing with grief at the same time. That was the common thread between this novel and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Goldengrove was more straightforward. Oscar Wao was more complicated due to the switching of narrators and time periods, the usage of Spanish vocabulary, and the more complex symbolism such as the men with no faces. Oscar Wao has a lot of vulgar language in it, but it is crucial to express the anger the characters feel and the negative tone and mood of the book in general. I would definitely recommend these two novels.