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Love what you read! Summer reading suggestions from Honors students and alumni

Jun 2, 2017

Worried the end of spring quarter will leave you with nothing to think about? Fall face first into one of these literary gems, recommended by students in Honors  as worthy of your precious love. 

from Jeannette Bushnell
lovework: an unfinished syllabus
summer reading June 2017

Khaled Hosseini – A Thousand Splendid Suns – historical fiction, two women in Kabul, Afghanistan

Khaled Hosseini – The Kite Runner – fiction, family, Afghanistan

Eknath Easwaran – The Bhagavad Gita – Indian Spirituality

Agatha Christie – All, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – mystery novels, England

Mitch Albom – Tuesdays with Morrie – student caregiver talks to teacher with Lou Gehrig ’s disease

Fatima Mernissi – Dreams of Trespass – memoir, Morocco

Alexander Shulgin – Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story – biography, science

Anne Moody – Coming of Age in Mississippi – autobiography

David James Duncan – The River Why – coming-of-age

Ken Follett – Fall of Giants historical fiction, WWI

Paul Kalanithi – When Breath Becomes Air – memoir

Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities – fiction

Moshin Hamid – Exit West – fiction about refugees

Brandon Sanderson – Mistborn, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages – fantasy

Brandon Sanderson – The Way of Kings – fantasy, world building, epic

Renee Ahdieh – The Wrath and the Dawn – fiction

Orson Scott Card – Ender’s Game, Ender in Exile, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind – science fiction, role of empathy in love

Kyung-Sook Shin – Please Look After Mom – fiction, Korea, meeting of East & West, old & new

Kurt Vonnegut – Hocus Pocus – fiction, satire, prison, private school, class & race dynamics

Gregory Maguire – Wicked – Wizard of Oz through perspective of the wicked witch

Eric Weiner – The Geography of Bliss – non-fiction, NPR journalist travels world to see happiness

F. Scott Fitzgerald – This Side of Paradise – fiction

Markus Zusak – The Book Thief – coming-of-age, WWII, (will make you cry)

Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things – fiction, India, forbidden love, political drama

Donna Tartt – The Secret History – fiction, group of college kids murder friend…. with consequences

Kazuo Ishiguro – Never Let Me Go – fiction on innocence, knowledge, and loss

Mario Vargas Llosa – Death in the Andes – fiction, Shining Path in Peru, suspense, political allegory

Ursula LeGuin – A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, The Other Wind – fantasy

Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – fantasy, humor

Charles Mann – 1491 – non-fiction, history

Stephen King – The Stand – fiction, post-apocalypse

Malcolm X – The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Sherman Alexie – The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – semi-autobiographical novel