- Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis
by Alice Yaeger Kaplan (Smith College)
- Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Rollins)
- A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge
by Josh Neufield (College at Brockport, State University of New York)
- Strength in What Remains
by Tracy Kidder (Eckerd College)
- The Glass Castle: A Memoir
by Jeannette Walls (Meredith College)
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
by Katherine Boo (Skidmore College)
- Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
by Marjane Satrapi (Georgia College)
- Zeitoun
by Dave Eggers (Emmanuel College)
- Vietnamerica: A Family's Journey
by GB Tran (Davidson College)
- Once Upon a River
by Bonnie Jo Campbell (Kalamazoo College)
What did you read as a first-year student? Did I miss your institution? What do you think of these picks?
I went to Brown which doesn't do required much of anything, so we didn't have a common book. Also, I graduated back when the earth was cooling, so I don't think this trend had hit yet. My stepson starts and Maryland this fall and I am really excited to see that he is going to be reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which is in my to read pile (for Maryland in my Around the US tour next year...).
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what common reading is...I don't think all Eng 101 classes read the same thing, but I could be wrong. I went to La. Tech. Required reading for my freshman ENG classes, if I remember correctly - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain, The Good Earth - Pearl Buck, The Moviegoer - Walker Percy, The Moon and Six Pence - W. Somerset Maugham.
ReplyDeleteA lot of schools require all freshmen to read the same book. Furman did it for a while, but by the time I came to work here we had stopped. I figure if a book is important enough to have that big group of students read it, maybe I should too!
ReplyDelete