If you’re looking to get ahead and further prepare yourself for the AP Lit exam, or simply enjoy a good read, the Left Bank Book Club will satisfy.

The Left Bank Book Club was started last year when students of language arts teacher Jeffrey Landow complained about how they missed reading fiction, as Landow’s class, AP Language, consists of primarily nonfiction.

“They would ask me for recommendations and I would tell them my favorite books. They would read them on their own time and then we’d talk about it. I thought to myself, ‘Why not just make an outlet for these kids dying to read great books?’” Landow said.

The name of the Left Bank Book Club is derived from the Left Bank, an area in Paris, France in which, according to Landow, American authors such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald met, discussed and wrote literature.

The club officially meets four times per year, but Landow welcomes students to come in before or after school to discuss the readings as well. Meetings consist of discussions about the book members read over the duration of that quarter.

The literature selected for this club consists of plays and novels that commonly appear on the AP Lit exam. Upon reading, the club analyzes Question 3 prompts from previous exams and talks about how to potentially answer it.

This quarter, the play is Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, and the Left Bank Book Club will meet on March 13 at 7:00 a.m. and 3:15 p.m., the normal meeting times.

The final book of the year will be The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and the date for those meetings has not yet been set.

Landow recommends the club for anyone who enjoys reading and discussing literary devices of the text such as symbolism and historical context.

“It’s a great opportunity to get help on your AP Lit test, read awesome literature, and experience a book club setting where you get to talk about different aspects of the book,” Landow said.