Advanced Placement, or AP, courses are courses offered in US and Canadian high schools that allow them to study subjects at a college level and in turn, will enable them to earn college advance credits.

One of the AP subjects offered in high school is AP Literature and Composition. In this course, you read fiction, poetry, and dramatic plays. You will learn to evaluate and analyze and write essays on your analysis. By the end of the course, you will discover close reading, interpret the meaning of the text, learn the author's techniques and the effects, and then write an essay on your interpretation and analysis.

Here are common books that are frequently cited in AP Literature exams from 1970 to 2014, PDF link here. The source is not mine and was generated online from one of the US public schools offering the course. The books listed are not complete and some schools also recommend books that are not on the list. Student bloggers who have undergone the study of AP Literature have recommended reading as much literature as you can. Before the end of the school year, the students will be tested and the most common part of the test is the free open-ended question, a prompt, where you will write in paragraphs to present your ideas. 

In the Philippines, we don't have AP courses. In fact, throughout high school, the reading of foreign literature was never part of the curriculum. The only books we tackle are the books written by Filipino authors and there aren't that many Filipino classic writers. The only books we've ever read in high school are Noli Me Tangere, El Filibusterismo, and Florante at Laura. Books are still considered a luxury to be had in the Philippines. 

So, I've tried through the list presented by one US school and found out how many of the books there I have, started reading, heard about it, and want to read them.

Read books:

• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift 

Books started but did not finish:

• The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte    

Books I'm tempted to get started:

• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens  

There are movie adaptations of some of the books that are on my list. But, never miss out on reading the original piece if you ever have the chance.

Watch these bloggers and I hope it will inspire you to read classic literature.