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