I have to read the following books this summer for my AP Lit class next year:

Genesis - King James Bible
Mythology - Edith Head
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Hard Times - Charles Dickens

So far I'm really looking forward to Mythology. I'm not so excited about the Dickens but I'm trying to keep an open mind.

So, anyone here read any of these? Opinions?

We read the bible and Mythology as well. There must be some kind of country-wide AP curriculum. They're very helpful, probably not so much for the AP test...but for future academic work.

Yeah, there probably is a curriculum.
I'm glad we're reading Genesis and Mythology. Even if they're not helpful for the test, it feels like well-read people have all read those.

have read those. I found A Prayer for Owen Meany a bit boring but all the rest are great.

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then she dances skirt swaying in the half-light she dances white blossom in the black sky
'I need new clothes', she thinks, 'new skin, a mind I can bear to live in'.

yeah, i've heard some people say A Prayer for Owen Meany is boring and others say that its like the best book of all time. i'm just hoping i can tolerate it.

I have to read Sidhartha and the Bible.
THE MOTHERFUCKING BIBLE.

I really quite liked a Prayer for Owen Meany and I thought I'd hate it because I hate most American authors and I hate anything to do with God, even if its just a passing reference. But I did enjoy it quite a lot (might have been helped by the fact I read it on a gorgeous tropical beach). Hard Times on the other hand was a Hard Time to read. It was our set text when I was 14 and I think I would rather drink a bottle of nail varnish then read it again.

The whole Bible? That fucking sucks. Usually a lit class will only make you read Genesis, which is just the first part of it.
I would be really pissed if I had to read the whole thing.

o_O wow. My school must be very different... We totally DON'T have to read the bible for AP lite next year... (maybe the senior AP lite we do, but I'm not sure...)

Thats good, I'm glad to hear someone likes Owen Meany.

I'm really nervous about Hard Times, the only Dickens I've ever read was Great Expectations (well part of it anyway) and I absolutely could not get into it.

Yeah, I'm going to be a senior next year... so maybe its more commonly done in senior lit classes.

(Mythology is by Edith Hamilton)

Haha no, not the whole bible. I'd burn it in my teacher's face if he did that, and he was almost a priest. So OHEMGEE
We have to read like.. four books and outline them.

I read Mythology. It's informative? If you like mythology you'll like that because it's just her retelling myths. You can't really love that book or hate it. You either love mythology or you hate it.

you guys have to read the Bible for required reading?? that's nutters. There would be hell to pay (no pun) if they made the Bible require reading @ my school, (when i was still in school).

I found Hard Times quite entertaining. There were parts that made me laugh out loud. Not a great book, but not bad.

Oh hehe it looks like I got my Ediths confused... I'm pretty sure Edith Head was the one who designed costumes for all those old movies.

Anyway, thanks for all the replies everybody!

But still... I don't think my school would do that... umm. Do you go to like a Catholic school or something? Can they do that in Public schools?

Haha no, I go to public school. Completely secular. A public school can ask you to read whatever they want- they teach the Bible as Literature, not as religion. Genesis is seen as the basis for a lot of western literature. (Its also part of the Old Testament, which is part of Judaism as well as Christianity)

when i read the Mythology book sophomore year, it was an awful late 50's version with bad illustrations every 30 pages or so. ALL the pictures were semi-homoerotic and strange. so of course, teenagers made captions and little bubbles with totally disgusting comments.

i wish i still had the book. in EVERY fucking illustration the male characters stood all cuddled into eachother or in strange sortof humping or 'oops i accidentally fell on your crotch' positions.