Customer Reviews

SAT Subject Tests: Literature 2005-2006 (Kaplan SAT Subject Tests: Literature)

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Kaplan's new book for preparing for the SAT Subject Test on Literature is a really well done book. This book includes an extensive review for helping to ace the test. It includes many sample questions on each section and many good recomendations. I really suggest you to buy this book if you are taking the Literature test, it will definitely improve your score on the test. When I took the test I was more confident and did a better job.

I normally don't write reviews, but I was browsing Amazon to get this book for my little brother and saw Mary's comments. She's right. Either you're good at analyzing literature or you're not. But that's the point of the SAT Subject Tests: you have lots to choose from, and you only take the ones that you're good at, to show off what you can do. I wanted to take the SAT Lit because I was pretty good at analyzing literature. But I bought the Kaplan study guide a few years ago to get better at taking the test. The book was a big help. There were no surprises when I walked in to take the test. Don't look for this guide to miraculously teach you the analytical skills you should have been using in school; all it's going to do is make you better than you were at reading and answering questions about literary passages. Bottom line: if you have to take the SAT II battery, then stick to subjects that you know. Then use a study guide to get better at giving the test makers what they want.

I bought this book a month before taking the SAT Subject Test: Literature, and having taken the test this morning, I would say that the sample tests are rather similar to the real thing (pretty elementary, in my opinion - think the Critical Reading section of the SAT minus all those banal sentence completion questions). Also, there are eight of them instead of the usual three or four, so you can get plenty of practice.

The review section is nice and concise and provides a good refresher of literary terms.

What really amazed me about this book, though, was that the author actually had a distinguishable voice. Not as important as the content of the book, I know, but it was still quite refreshing, as all other review books I've ever seen have been so insipid that I've had to convince myself it was worth plowing through them. For once, I read a prep book instead of dissecting it.

So, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who needs a quick review, or who just wants to take a few practice tests and see where they are. If you have decent reading comprehension skills and make sure you know your literary terms, you should do just fine on the test. This book provides a great review to help you feel confident in your success.

Unless you just like to waste money, do not buy this book. It was a complete waste of time. I went through every chapter, completed the practice tests, and went into my SAT Literature test feeling confident, and came out wanting to kill myself. In my opinion, there is nothing you can do to study for this test. You are either good at analyzing literature, or you're not. It is impossible to study for this test within a two-month period. Maybe I would've been more successful if I had started studying when I was seven, instead of seventeen.

The text arrived in a timely fashion and was in good condition.