Petersons American Lit.

[TMW2010]

That would explain it then!! lol Thanks. I'll probably go with the idiot's guide since it's tried and true, but my mom is a little nervous about it (not sure why!!), so she may end up making me buy the REA. :confused:

One thing I will say about the Idiot's Guide is that you have to cherry pick the info from it, and it doesn't go into the depth on a lot of stuff that is on the test. Its a good start, but you really do need to use additional resources to get the down and dirty information, especially reading some passages by the different authors. The IG has a lot of biographical information that doesn't show up on the test.

Also, if you don't mind reading it on your computer (or have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or Kindle) you can get the IG in Kindle format for $9.95 from Amazon. (This is what I did.)

I haven't had a look at the REA guide, but unless it gives good chunks of the authors' works, the IG + Wikipedia + Google are pretty good resources. Focus on African American, Women, and a couple of the Jewish writers along with the big names, like Hemingway, Melville, etc. And do a little research on the Beat Era writers like Kerouac & Ginsberg.

[PonyGirl93]

Alright, I was already planning on reading the descriptions of like every American book on sparknotes, & I reserved the Norton Anth. from my library. I'll have to remember to especially look up the minorities & women...

[PonyGirl93]

OK, I took the Peterson's pdf test... I only got 58%, but I really haven't studied much yet. I'm going over all the questions that I got wrong or guessed on.

Does anyone have a list of poets that would be good to look up?? Other than the household name poets, I have pretty much no knowledge of poetry. I got the Oxford Book of Am Poetry & I'll be skimming that & looking things up in it, but I don't even know where to start :?

[Ruddigore]

A resource that helped me quite a lot while studying for the Literature in English GRE was the Vade Mecum:

Vade Mecum: A GRE for Literature in English Study Guide

The above link goes straight to the study guide page. About half of the American Lit sections are for poetry. It may go into more detail than you need, but better to have extra knowledge than not enough!