Vacation Reading Recommendations
Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis. This book by an NPR reporter describes the flourishing world of professional, competitive Scrabble, including words even non-professional Scrabble players need to know: "thionines," "etic," "parotic," and some, like "lariated" and "nasalised" you're almost ashamed to discover are real English words.
--Rich DuRocher, faculty
Why Read the Classics, by Italo Calvino. This collection of short essays contains Calvino's ideas on literature from Dickens toDr. Zhivago.
--Rich DuRocher, faculty
Bread Givers, by Anzia Yezierska. A 1920s novel about Jewish immigrants depicting one woman's attempt to become independent of her father.
--Carol Holly, faculty
Unless, by Carol Shields. An intense, beautifully-written novel about mothers and daughters and the meaning of life. Shields also wrote *The Stone Diaries*, which is in paperback.
--Diana Postlethwaite, faculty
Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters. Nominated for the Booker prize, this suspenseful and clever Victorian page-turner follows a family of pickpockets working the London streets.
--Diana Postlethwaite, faculty
Baseball: A Literary Anthology, edited by Nicholas Dawidoff. For lovers of sports literature, this anthology is filled with wonderful baseball writing--fiction,poetry and journalism.
--David Wee, faculty
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. The tricks of Houdini, the comic book industry at its height in 1939, a 19-year old Jewish immigrant and his Brooklyn cousin, possible lives for a gay man, World War II--Michael Chabon said in an interview that he was afraid until the very end of writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that these disparate parts would fail to come together. But they do.
--Mary Steen, faculty
Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich. A sobering and readable account of how people survive on minimum wage. To write her report the author, a journalist and essayist, worked at three minimum-wage jobs across the country, one of them a Wal-Mart in Minneapolis.
--Karen Marsalek, faculty
John Adams, by David McCullough. This biography reads like a novel and records a time when being a patriot meant something. Seeing the events of the period through the eyes of Adams gives you an entirely different impression of people like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
--Eric Nelson, faculty
Early Morning, by Kim Stafford. A beautifully written memoir about Stafford's father, the poet William Stafford, this book also includes the senior Stafford's philosophy of pedagogy: no praise, no blame--don't pollute students with praise.
--Jim Heynen, faculty
KGB Bar Book of Poems, edited by David Lehman and Star Black. A sort of "new beat poetry" collection of 75 or so poets who read at the KGB Bar in New York City. It's a nice mixture of living poets whose birth dates span much of the 20th century--from Anne Porter, b. 1911, through Richard Howard, Mark Strand, Billy Collins, and younger poets such as Denise Duhamel, Karen Volkman.
--Jan Allister, faculty
Genesis Code, by John Case. An exciting and suspenseful story combining the elements of the best mysteries and medical thrillers, this book has a lot of action and interesting twists.
--Melissa Kimmerling, '04 (Biology/Premed)
Omeros, by Derek Walcott. A challenging book on location in the Caribbean. How perfect for a cold winter break.
--Travis Rother, '04
Mindhunter, by John Douglas. This book is sort of an autobiography. Douglas used to work for the FBI solving serial killer crimes, and is the basis of a character in the movie Silence of the Lambs.
--Brian Martin, '04 (Social Studies Ed. Major)
Catch 22, by Joseph Heller. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway. Timequake and Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut. There's my contribution...a lot of generic titles, but good books nonetheless.
--Noah Greenwald '04 (History/Political Science Major)
Death and the King's Horsemen, by Wole Soyinka. A short play which makes it nice for break, this classic tale of tragic decisions in a traditional African culture is extremely moving.
--Lindsay Bonine '04
