October MOR (Due Monday, Nov. 4)

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Please partner up and read a Contemporary novel (published after WWII) for your first MOR partner dialogue. As you read, you should write four entries each (approx. 300-400 words per entry), conversing with each other as you go, to analyze the text. Please refer to quotations from the text and include at least one question for your partner in each entry.  Your dialogues may be informally composed (I/you/contractions ok), but they should also demonstrate that you are reading deeply and keeping an eye on how the lit devices that we are studying show up and help create deeper meaning. Don't forget to discuss the ending!

You should post these dialogues on one of your blogs. For example, Jaden might make the first entry by posting on his blog, and then the rest of his and his partner's entries would be posted as comments on that first post. (I highly recommend composing the posts in Word or another program first, however, as it is easy to lose track of spelling, word count, and even whole pages of content if one composes in the blogspot space itself.)

A list of all works that have been suggested on the AP exam since 1971 can be found at this link (most frequently recommended works are also listed at the bottom). You may, of course, read a novel that is not on this list, but please make sure it is of sufficient literary merit that you might be able to use it on the open essay question of the AP test. If you would like any advice, I've got plenty!

A few recommendations that would not disappoint:

1984, George Orwell
The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey

Click here for a fuller discussion of what "contemporary fiction" means today.