Welcome to our eclectic literary bookstore of the imagination. Browse the cluttered shelves to explore a wide range of genres: fiction, memoir, essays, poetry, drama, journalism, history, religion, science. All titles are alphabetized by the authors’ last names. Each selection has been handpicked for your reading pleasure.
Over the summer, each student should read the one book assigned to her class:
Class IX
Class X
Class XI
Class XII
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Students are asked to avoid reading several books that are part of the Upper-School English curriculum:
Dickinson, Emily: Selected Poems
Faulkner, William: As I Lay Dying
Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby
Hellman, Lillian: The Little Foxes
Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Jen, Gish: Typical American
Ibsen, Henrik: A Doll’s House
Larsen, Nella: Passing
Loughery, John, ed.: The Eloquent Essay
Nottage, Lynn: Sweat
Shakespeare, William: All’s Well That Ends Well, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night
Skinner, Penelope: The Village Bike
Williams, Tennessee: The Glass Menagerie
Now find a comfy armchair and settle in with your stack of new discoveries. For a printable version of this list, click here. Enjoy!
The English Department
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This essay is an adaptation of Adichie's very popular TEDx talk. Adichie puts forth a definition of feminism for today's world and highlights the continuing existence of discrimination against and marginalization of women across the globe.
(essay)
In seven essays, Rebecca Solnit takes on gender, feminism and power through an unflinching examination of these themes. (essays)
In this book-length poem, Rankine explores race in today's world, from micro-aggressions to blatantly racist comments and actions. Rankine points out the many racial injustices that occur regularly in our society despite legislation against discrimination.
(poetry)
Baldwin's essay, which first appeared in 1963, gives voice to the civil rights movement, the legacy of racism, and the urgency to "end this racial nightmare."
Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize, Aktar’s play explores the emotional and political issues that surround a marriage between an Arab-born, Muslim-American man and a white American wife. Shouldn’t affection and the marital bond be enough? Or do the times we live in make it impossible to overlook the doubts and divisions that the modern world insists upon and that life in contemporary New York makes hard to overlook?
(drama)
Angelou shares intimate moments from the first sixteen years of her life growing up as a young African-American girl in the South and fighting against racism and misogyny. This remarkable memoir from one of America’s great writers is full of truth, wisdom, and courage. ​
(memoir)
A leading scholar of religion vividly captures the man who inspired the world’s fastest growing religion. This highly readable biography also draws rich comparisons between Muslims and those other two Peoples of the Book, Jews and Christians.
(biography/religious studies)
This compact New York Times bestseller recounts what is actually known about the founder of one of the greatest religions in history. Armstrong blends history, philosophy, mythology, and biography to sketch a vivid portrait of a man 2,500 years after his death.
(biography/religious studies)
This Iranian-American public intellectual and professor of religion sifts the evidence to reconstruct a portrait of the historical Jesus, that itinerant rabbi who wandered the ancient Near East some 2,000 years ago. Aslan’s goal is to uncover what can be deduced about one of the most influential flesh-and-blood men of all time.
(religious studies)
Employing rich imagery and language, Baldwin transports readers to NEW YORK CITY’s Greenwich Village in the 1950s. We meet Rufus Scott, a jazz drummer on the decline, and his various friends and family. Baldwin explores a variety of experiences, including interracial partnerships, marital infidelity, and bisexuality.
(fiction)
An American expatriate in Paris, David finds himself pulled between the promise of a conventional life in America with his fiancée and the prospect of gratified emotional and physical desires, which have been awoken by Giovanni, an Italian bartender.
(fiction)
This first novel by one of the most acclaimed postwar African-American writers is a coming-of-age story, one of the classics of the genre, set in Harlem in the 1930s. John Grimes, a sensitive young man, must come to terms with his religion, sexuality, and place in society as he tries to understand the brutality of his father’s anger rooted in a dark past before John was born.
(fiction)
So you thought Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie and Teacake chart an achingly beautiful love story? Meet Tish and Fonny.
(fiction)
This collection by one of America’s greatest essayists explores what it means to be black in America at the dawn of the Civil Rights Era. These essays capture moments from Baldwin’s youth as a child-preacher prodigy in Depression-era Harlem and from his adulthood as an expatriate in Paris and a writer of growing international stature. Many contemporary African-American writers and intellectuals, including Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, count Baldwin as an exemplary literary forebear.
(essays)
As the first part of an acclaimed World War I trilogy, this novel depicts the conflicted life of real-life poet and war hero Siegfried Sassoon. When Sassoon refused to continue serving in a war that he considered an exercise in senseless slaughter, he was classified as “mentally unsound” and committed to a war hospital, where he wrote some of his most scathing anti-war verse.
(historical fiction)
In her poetic debut, Barnett responds to a tragedy: the plane crash that killed two young members of her family. Barnett is unwavering in her lyrical exploration of grief, offering a moving and elegiac collection.
(poetry)
This landmark of modern poetry was publicly condemned as obscene when originally published in 1857; ironically, these poems written in conventional rhyme and meter were said to attack conventional morality. This bilingual edition offers selected poems from Baudelaire’s original and includes engravings by contemporary artist David Schorr.
(poetry)
Originally written in the dialect of nineteenth-century Rome, these witty, often outrageous poems depict the proverbial six Ps of the city-state – Pope, priests, princes, prostitutes, parasites, the poor – all of whom Belli praises and derides. These irreverent gems should be avoided by anyone easily offended by profane humor or squeamish about love, death, sex, money, and politics in poetry.
(poetry)
The women in Aimee Bender’s stories navigate a fantastical world, whether to deal with being a mermaid in high school or having a boyfriend who is evolving backward from homo sapiens to salamander, yet something unmistakably real and ultimately relatable emerges. These are not your typical short stories; they are postmodern fairy tales.
(stories)
Historical fiction at its best, this novel depicts the siege of Leningrad during World War II, during which an estimated one million residents died. Two youths go behind enemy lines in search of a rare commodity in this war-torn city—a dozen fresh eggs. This coming-of-age tale is grim in parts but ultimately uplifting.
(fiction)
This definitive 2011 edition collects work by one of the most important American poets of the mid-twentieth century, a master craftsperson known for her striking descriptions and pitch-perfect diction. As a peripatetic traveler who lived in New York, Paris, Key West, Brazil, and Boston, she explores maps, geography, far-flung locales, and the abiding search for a settled sense of home.
(poetry)
Published in 1973, Brown’s story struck many people of the time as provocative in its portrayal of Molly Bolt and her love affairs with different women. While perhaps less provocative today, Bolt’s story still enthralls readers as we track her journey from her childhood in the South to her later life in New York City.
(fiction)
Michelle Wolf and the rest of today’s comics should thank Lenny Bruce for their careers. Bruce swore and told off-color jokes that got him arrested. Now you get a Netflix special.
(autobiography)
Influenced by the New Journalism that emerged in the late 1960s, Capote’s “non-fiction novel” tracks Dick and Perry, stone-cold killers who committed a quadruple murder in 1959, as you might stalk your ex on Instagram.
(investigative fiction)
What Carson describes as “A Novel in Verse” is a beautiful, layered story of Geryon, part boy and part “winged red monster.” Mythical and contemporary, accessible and mysterious, Carson’s narrative is full of wonder, beauty, pain, love, and romance.
(poetry)
This series of shorts lays bare all the painfully idiosyncratic people and moments that can characterize romantic relationships.
(fiction)
Set in New Orleans in the early 1900s, this novella offers a feminist’s take on women, domesticity, and life in the American South. With plenty of drama and commentary on one woman’s life as wife and mother, the story asks readers to think about what would make them happy if their world were limited like Edna’s.
(fiction)
Did you ever wonder what “that black guy” on the subway, on the street, or in the elevator is thinking about? Coates has some revelations to share. As an ostensible letter to his young son, this extended essay offers a scathing explication of that curious source of cultural anxiety: a black man’s body.
(essay)
This powerful collection of essays interspersed with personal reflections dives deeply into race, Obama’s presidency, and our current political climate.
(essays)
In Paris in the 1920s, Léa de Lonval is an aging courtesan at the end of a long and lucrative career. Chéri is a handsome, selfish playboy half her age with whom she has been having an affair since he was in his teens. They are more attached to each other than society or his family thinks appropriate in this honest, sophisticated novella by one of France’s great prose writers.
(fiction)
The early twentieth century in Europe before the Russian Revolution was a time of anarchist assassinations and political turmoil, and Conrad captures the spirit of the times perfectly in his story of a plot gone wrong to blow up the Greenwich Observatory in London. This short, heartrending novel focuses on the innocent bystanders to a terrorist act.
(fiction)
Readers looking for a worthy successor to British Romantic John Keats may fine their answer in American Morri Creech. This collection (a Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry) brilliantly deploys lush language and subtle prosody to explore everyday life: a cigarette lighter, a landfill, a painting, a stone well, a goldfinch, a dream, bedtime reading.
(poetry)
A drawer full of My Little Pony dolls becomes a metaphor for Crosley’s dating life; the butterfly exhibit at the Natural History Museum, a place to teach children about death. These essays bring gravity and irony to topics that are too often relegated to “chick lit”: romance, female friendships, early career life. (And, yes, there is cake.)
(essays)
This novel weaves together three narratives: the British writer Virginia Woolf, who is crafting her classic novel Mrs. Dalloway in 1923; Los Angeles housewife Laura Brown, who is planning her husband’s birthday party while reading Mrs. Dalloway in 1949; and New Yorker Clarissa Vaughn, who is giving a party in 1999 to celebrate her poet friend Richard, who is dying of AIDS. The three plot lines ultimately converge in a powerful revelation. (fiction)
This novel opens in India, where we meet Jemubhai Patel, a judge educated at Cambridge University, in his crumbling, isolated house. His life is juxtaposed with that of his cook’s son, who lives in New York as a restaurant worker. Ambitious in its broad sweep, this moving story explores issues of class and nationhood.
(fiction)
In the voice of Yunior, Díaz takes us from his adolescent life in the Dominican Republic to his teenage years in Newark, New Jersey. This series of stand-alone, yet interconnected shorts includes some of the most hilarious similes you’ll ever encounter.
(fiction)
Yunior is back, this time as an adult, and he’s making the same mistakes. Don’t some people ever learn?
(fiction)
One of the great Victorian writer’s most popular works, this is the story of every child’s nightmare: becoming separated from one’s family and carried off to a life of crime and poverty by a gang of city thugs. A dark, dramatic tale, the novel nonetheless ends – not surprisingly, in the hands of this master storyteller – with satisfying resolutions and the moral order restored.
(fiction)
Set in occupied France during World War II, this compelling novel has two main characters, a blind French girl and a young German soldier. Their stories unfold in parallel narratives, but eventually their paths converge. Elegantly crafted, this is a tale of bravery, ingenuity, passion and sacrifice.
(fiction)
“No man is an island” and “For whom the bell tolls…” are just two of the memorable lines from Donne’s Devotions on Emergent Occasions, first published in 1624. Though best known for his poetry, this metaphysical cleric crafts these prose meditations to consider life, sickness, death, and faith.
(essays)
The setting of Deep Lane is Amagansett, NY, though there are plenty of poems about New York City, too – on nature, venturing down hidden depths, celebrating beauty and mystery. In arguably one of his most confessional collections, Doty offers the reader memorable imagery in a highly readable style.
(poetry)
Part essay, part memoir, Doty’s meditative exploration of painting (still life, in particular) is a quick and beautiful read.
(essays)
This moving autobiography of a former slave attests to both the cruelty of slavery and the author’s own humanity in the face of horrific circumstances. A veritable handbook of classical rhetoric, it is so beautifully written that you may want to read passages aloud.
(autobiography)
Meet Mrs. Darwin and Mrs. Icarus – along with Mrs. Midas, who doesn’t want her husband to touch her. In this witty and perceptive collection, Duffy gives voice to the unacknowledged wives of their more famous husbands, both fictional and real. The twists in these women’s tales enrich the men’s original stories.
(poetry)
A neuroscientist explores perceptions, reality, identity, and the trillions of connections that make our brain the most phenomenal and mysterious organ. Explore the “science” of who we are and how we navigate the complexities of our world.
(science)
Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is as playful as its title. Told in thirteen chapters from thirteen points of view, this narrative is wild, quirky, funny, and modern. Characters range from a kleptomaniac to a music executive to a punk-band guitarist, and New York City is the main setting for this rowdy group.
(fiction)
Absolutely nothing like Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, this more traditional novel is set on the New York City waterfront during World War II. The main characters are a resourceful young woman named Anna Kerrigan, her father Eddie, and an underworld figure named Dexter Styles. Their stories intertwine cleverly, and the action builds to a satisfying climax. (fiction)
Eggers has had an illustrious career as a novelist, educator, and founder of McSweeney’s. But before any of that, his parents died and left him to raise his younger brother alone. Bittersweet and hilarious, this memoir details Eggers’ struggle to make it work, while giving readers a vicarious view into the life of a 20-something in 1990s California.
(memoir)
In this non-fiction account of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, Eggers focuses on Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American owner of a painting and contracting company in New Orleans. Zeitoun sets out in a secondhand canoe to help rescue neighbors but is arrested by national guardsmen and detained for 23 days – a disturbing look at how law enforcement responded in the wake of a major natural disaster. (non-fiction)
Ellison won the 1953 National Book Award for Fiction with this dynamic novel. Narrated by a nameless African-American man whose skin color renders him invisible, the story tracks his journey from the South to Harlem, absorbing all the shock, violence, and adventure in Ellison’s rich, poetic imagery and style.
(fiction)
Who doesn’t want to listen to what the vagina might have to say? Before writing this award-winning play, Ensler interviewed hundreds of women of all ages and backgrounds about sex, abuse, reproduction. At times the play is challenging to track, but the voices Ensler captures – some, for example, speaking about orgasm for the first time – are a welcome antidote to the usual silence surrounding such topics.​
(drama)
This first novel by Eugenides is the story of a neighborhood besieged by adolescent angst, young love, and a dysfunctional family. Nostalgic and dark, it explores the consequences of fear and longing in a small community in the 1970s.
(fiction)
The title itself should be enough reason to pick up this book, though you will be rewarded from the first page with gems such as “Virgins” and “Snakes.” Only 26 at the time of this debut collection’s publication, Evans is a stunningly talented and precocious voice.
(fiction)
Narrated by Anais Hendricks, whom we first meet handcuffed to a police car, this novel explores the dark side of the juvenile detention facility, the bright side of friendship, and much of the range in between. Did Anais put a policewoman into a coma?
(fiction)
This is a quick, laugh-out-loud read. Fey takes readers on a fantastic journey through her childhood and adulthood, covering a range of topics, including teenage attraction, family dynamics, the four rules of improvisation, and stories from the male-dominated world of comedy writing and performing.
(memoir)
Published in 1934, Fitzgerald’s novel takes readers to the South of France with Dick and Nicole Diver, an American couple whose marriage is more challenging than it appears. Rosemary, a young Hollywood actress on vacation with her mother, only adds to the complications.
(fiction)
Lucy Honeychurch, an upper-middle class Brit, is accompanied by her overbearing cousin Charlotte Bartlett on a first trip to Italy. Seduced by the landscape and the art, Lucy falls in love not only with Florence, but also with an unsuitable English boy. But how can she resist when the romance of Italy beckons?
(fiction)
Rosemary Cooke narrates this fictional story of an eccentric family. Their past is complicated as a result of an experiment conducted by Rosemary’s father, a psychology professor at Indiana University. Avoid reading the book jacket of this text so that you can fully experience Fowler’s surprising tale.
(fiction)
Set against the backdrop of the Mississippi River flood of 1927, this rousing tale of murder, moonshine, and an abandoned infant is historical fiction at its most compelling. Packed with fascinating facts about this epic event, it also is an unlikely love story that captures the imagination.
(fiction)
How long can a geriatric black man stand being referred to as “boy”? Read this book and find out how it’s never too late to claim your manhood in the Deep South.
(fiction)
When a plane carrying a British school group crashes on a remote island and all adults are killed, the boys must fend for themselves. Cut off from the outer world, they build shelters and hunt for food. As leadership is contested, they gradually give in to baser impulses and darker animal instincts.
(fiction)
Responding to seismic shifts in the literary landscape, Willa Cather wrote, "The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts." Follow the letters and diaries of four writers – Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster and T.S. Eliot – to grasp how this year marked a before-and-after in the literary world.
(literary history)
The sixteenth American President’s first move was to organize a cabinet made up of the three rivals whom he had beaten at the Republican National Convention. This is a brilliant biography of all four men.
(history)
How to compile a biography of a man who was notoriously secretive, even for his time? Enjoy as Greenblatt places the Bard in his historical context and builds, from the precious few clues in public record, the picture of a man whose rendering of the human spirit enraptures audiences 400 years later.
(biography/literary history)
The United States’ involvement with Vietnam was marked by “good intentions” from the start. The great British novelist Graham Greene dramatizes in his short, suspenseful novel just how disastrous good intentions can be when linked to personal and political naiveté and a narrow (typically American?) understanding of good vs. evil.
(fiction)
In this award-winning novel, four adult siblings hold a family reunion in France to decide what to do with their summer house. Will they sell it or keep it? Passion erupts when least expected as the narrative winds down to its inevitable ending.
(fiction)
Its title notwithstanding, this is not a book about baseball. This coming-of-age tale – about life, love, college, and what it takes to throw a ball from shortstop to first base – is one of those rare fictional romps whose final pages you will want to read at a snail’s pace, to savor every moment.
(fiction)
Hopkins (1844-1889) remains one of the most dynamic, unconventional poets in English. You will be hard-pressed to find more perfect examples of what poetry can offer than “The Windhover” and “As Kingfishers Catch Fire.” His collected poems (those that remain – Hopkins burned many during a period of religious crisis) astonish and delight.
(poetry)
Hornby (author of High Fidelity and About a Boy) edits this wonderful collection of shorts. “Last Requests,” for example, is told from the point of view of a cook who prepares the last meal for inmates on Death Row.
(fiction)
Born and raised in an all-black town in rural Florida in the early twentieth century, Hurston was heir to a rich oral tradition. She studied anthropology at Columbia and eventually revisited her native South as a trained folklorist intent on collecting local songs, sayings, and tales. The fruits of her labor are assembled in this quirky collection of African-American folklore, which is filled with witty one-liners and outrageous tall tales.
(folklore)
Ibsen’s Nora Helmer of A Doll’s House felt confined by her narrow, husband-dominated life as wife and mother. At the play’s end, she made a radical choice, at least for a woman in 1880. In an equally famous play by the Norwegian writer, the frustrated Hedda Gabler is more certain of herself (diabolically so) but makes a different, equally radical, choice.
(drama)
This unsettling novella tells the story of a neurotic, possibly murderous family holed up in an isolated castle. When a cousin arrives unexpectedly at the estate, a struggle for control ensues. Jackson’s eerie prose conveys a surreal sense of mystery and a menacing whiff of mayhem.
(fiction)
In this classic novella, Catherine Sloper, a plain, dull, well-meaning young woman in antebellum New York, has a problem: she is rich. Her strong-willed father believes that handsome Morris Townsend only wants her for her money. Could any man truly love so earnest and unattractive a girl as his daughter? Catherine must risk her father’s wrath and disinheritance or reconcile herself to a life lived alone.
(fiction)
This novel, a study of English society in the nineteenth century, follows Maisie, the precocious daughter of divorced parents, from childhood through maturity. Maisie is handed back and forth between her dysfunctional parents and must decide the kind of life that will serve her own best interests.
(fiction)
In this delightful sequel to Jen’s Typical American, it is 1968. Mona Chang, a Chinese-American teenager living in comfortable Westchester County, is in love with a nice Jewish boy who lives in a teepee – not exactly what her parents, Ralph and Helen, expected when they moved from the city to “the promised land.”
(fiction)
There’s just one problem with this wonderful novel: it’s too darn short. In the winter of 1870 in Texas, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd – an elderly widower, veteran of three wars, and itinerant news reader – encounters a 10-year-old girl kidnapped four years earlier by Kiowa Indians, who had killed her immediate family. Kidd is charged with returning the girl to her closest living relatives in San Antonio. An unlikely bond develops between these two, and the reader is swept along in this heart-warming tale.
(fiction)
In the realm of horrific childhood memoirs, no one writes with more humor and poetry than Mary Karr. You will finish this book terrified of—and in love with—every member of Mary Karr’s family.
(memoir)
Blending autobiography with old Chinese folktales, Kingston presents the conflicted perspective of a first-generation Chinese-American woman raised to be submissive and agreeable yet inclined to be bold and fierce. Kingston tells her story in five interconnected chapters, which read like separate stories.
(memoir)
Landau wrote this collection over several summers, which proves metaphorically relevant to its explorations of girlhood and motherhood. Full of striking images (and named one of “8 New Books to Savor” by O, the Oprah Magazine), The Uses of the Body explores femininity in complex and memorable ways.
(poetry)
In a follow-up investigation into Joseph Mitchell’s famous subject (see Mitchell’s book below), Lepore revisits the questions of whether and how Joe Gould might have written “An Oral History of Our Time.” Like Mitchell a New Yorker staff writer, Lepore ends up challenging Mitchell’s own conclusions about Gould and his epic work.
(biography/journalism)
Levitt’s first collection of poetry is a search for self and how the poet does (and doesn’t) fit into the world around her. Levitt is particularly good at conveying the tensions that arise in high school. Her small shifts in viewpoint reveal larger vistas.
(poetry)
You never took your life in your hands by riding the New York City subway in the 1970s, never experienced the blackout of 1977, never went to bed fearing the Son of Sam would break through your apartment window. Mahler’s New York in the 70s: what a blighted paradise!
(fiction)
A 13-year-old British cabin boy, Gemmy Fairley, is shipwrecked, cast ashore, and adopted by Australian aborigines in the 1840s. Sixteen years later, he returns to the world of European colonizers, who find him a source of fascination and repulsion. Where does this hybrid figure caught between two worlds belong?
(fiction)
A high court judge experiences difficulties in her marriage, which is childless, and at the same time she is asked to adjudicate a case in which a 17-year-old boy questions whether he wants to receive medical treatment that runs counter to his religious beliefs. An intense relationship between the judge and the boy is at the center of this novel.
(fiction)
People interested in extreme athletic challenges will likely enjoy McDougall’s autobiographical account of his time racing with the expert long-distance runners of the Tarahumara, a tribe from Mexico’s Copper Canyons region. McDougall’s story culminates in unexpected relationships and an unforgettable race.
(investigative journalism)
Told through the drug-addled eyes of the narrator, this plotless tale captures the buzz and disturbing underbelly of New York in the 1980s. Is there any wonder that his wife left him?
(fiction)
McKendrick relishes the formal play of language, as in “Stricken Proverbs,” in which the speaker proclaims, “Where there’s a will, there’s a wall.” These poems consider what exists “out there” – at close range, as in the unexplored universe.
(poetry)
A noted classics professor weaves personal narrative with the story of Odysseus as he and his 81-year-old father, Jay, go on a Mediterranean cruise to retrace Odysseus’s mythic journey.
(classical studies)
Who is the God of the Bible? What is his story and his character arc? Miles studies God as hero of the Bible, offering a complex portrait of a complex literary figure.
(religious studies)
In a pleasant American town in the early 1950s, a prosperous family seem to enjoy a comfortable, undramatic life. When revelations of a tainted past emerge, however, they are forced to confront long-buried secrets and assign blame. What will become of the business that Joe Keller worked so hard to build up if his sons are unable or unwilling to step in? Will his son Chris be able to marry his fiancée and get on with his life?
(drama)
Set in India in 1975, this tale depicts four strangers from diverse backgrounds yet sharing an apartment just as a State of Emergency has been declared. Mistry has been praised as an Indian Dickens.
(fiction)
The narrative revolves around twins who imbibe the souls of others so that they continue to “live” in Slade House, alongside mere mortals who know nothing of their presence. Told in a completely realistic style, the story spans five or so decades as various victims get close to solving the mystery of this parallel world.
(fiction)
Joe Gould, a brilliant, imbalanced man who roamed New York from World War I to the Fifties, claimed to be writing “An Oral History of Our Time,” an ever-expanding transcript and analysis of overheard conversation spoken by everyday people. As a reporter for The New Yorker, Mitchell wrote two lengthy profile pieces on Gould, one of the most fascinating characters ever to walk the streets of New York.
(investigative journalism)
Explore the mysterious and boundary-breaking world of octopuses through a naturalist’s in-depth study of several specimens, who happen to possess very distinct personalities. Touching, profound, thought-provoking and entertaining, this scientific account reads like fiction.
(science/non-fiction)
Who watches the Watchmen? This ground-breaking graphic novel was among the first to take the genre seriously, combining superhero elements with serious social commentary. The characters in this story are nuanced and heart-breaking, all the more human for their superhuman powers.
(graphic novel)
This paranormal tale spans slavery, reincarnation, and the liberated hereafter. In this Pulitzer Prize winner, Morrison creeps you out, but your hands will remain fastened to this page-turner.
(fiction)
This first novel by Morrison transports readers into the life of a young girl who questions who she is and how she fits into the world. Constantly feeling as if she lacks something of value, she desperately clings to images she believes could bring her happiness. At once sad and beautiful, this book offers a great commentary on beauty, the American Dream, and social/cultural isolation.
(fiction)
Raised in Lahore and Wisconsin by his Pakistani father and his white American mother, Mueenuddin now lives on a farm in Pakistan’s Punjab, the setting for this collection of stories. These tales paint vivid portraits of Pakistani society at all levels: an aging feudal landowner, his servants, his managers, his extended family, and industrialists who have lost touch with the land.
(linked stories)
Calcutta-born American Tara Chatterjee searches for her roots in a well-plotted novel about the generations past whose actions shape our lives in ways we cannot imagine. The plot within a plot includes a nineteenth-century pirate attack on a ship in the Bengal Sea and a British colonial official torn between his love for an Indian woman and his loyalty to the Empire.
(fiction)
Published in 2015, Nelson’s memoir explores motherhood, gender fluidity, alternative family structures, and partnership through a personal, philosophical, and intellectual lens. This is a challenging, unconventional, and rewarding read.
(memoir/queer studies)
Though we most often associate Nabokov with Lolita, this delightful, brief novel is the work that made him well-known in the United States. It follows Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, a Russian-born professor who immigrates to the United States to teach Russian at a fictional university (as Nabokov himself did). Pnin is tender, funny, and full of Nabokov's enviable descriptions.
(fiction)
Raised in South Africa during apartheid when being the son of a black mother and a white father was illegal, Trevor Noah was literally “born a crime.” He tells stories of his childhood with unreserved honesty and the kind of satiric wit that would later make him famous on The Daily Show. Layered with a multiplicity of South African voices, this memoir sketches a time and place that no history book could impart with such heart.
(memoir)
Too few stories from the Vietnam War are told from a woman’s perspective. This novel weaves together the story of Rouenna, a retired army nurse, and that of the unnamed narrator, who grew up with Rouenna in the projects of Staten Island. This story is about storytelling as much as about war, about struggling to piece together a narrative from details that are often unspeakable.
(fiction)
Before he ever sought elected office, the former president of the United States wrote this lyrical account of his complicated legacy as the son of a black African father and a white American mother. Does he consider himself biracial or black? How does he understand his early years that would eventually lead him to the White House?
(memoir)
Hazel Motes, a soldier wounded in World War II, returns to his family home in Tennessee to find it abandoned. As an avowed atheist, he begins a peripatetic journey to spread the gospel of anti-religion. Along the way, prostitute Leora Watts, zookeeper Enoch Emery, and preacher Asa Hawks help him discover the right direction to take in life.
(fiction)
Ostensibly five conversations with Walter Murch, a film and sound editor, this book presents two men in wide-ranging discussion about art, writing, music, editing, and, of course, films. Both the specificity and the broad implications of their concerns make this a book to return to again and again – and you will want to check out the movies discussed.
(cultural studies)
What if after World War II the world’s nations had realigned into three super-states in which citizens are subject to constant warfare, omnipresent surveillance, and systematic disinformation? This classic of dystopian literature follows Winston Smith, a high-level bureaucrat whose job is to alter historical records to fit the ever-changing agenda of Big Brother. As Smith’s hatred for the Party grows and he pursues a sexual liaison with a fellow rebel, will he be able to elude the Thought Police?
(dystopian fiction)
In preparing for this collection, Oswald spent three years recording conversations with people who live and work along the River Dart in England. Dart is the book-length poem that arose from that oral history. Oswald is among the greatest, most innovative living English poets.
(poetry)
This 2,000-year-old epic is actually an artfully woven tapestry of tales that involve physical transformations (or metamorphoses). Ovid chronicles the history of the world, from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar. Along the way, he narrates 250 separate myths – Daphne and Apollo, Daedalus and Icarus, and Orpheus and Eurydice among them – making this the most popular source of Roman mythology since the Renaissance.
(epic poetry)
In the long title story (which refers to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), an ill woman is nursed by a soldier during the influenza epidemic of 1918. This collection of stories provides penetrating insights into the human condition.
(fiction)
Narrated in a mixed range of voices, this experimental novel treats two unlikely cellmates in an Argentine prison, Molina and Valentin, who pass the time in sharing stories. In a closed society of two, how might a straight man and a queer man find common ground? In the end, what makes a man?
(fiction)
Drama, intrigue, and the relentless pursuit of lost love are central to this modern retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Set in Spanish Harlem in Manhattan in the 1990s, the story treats New York, community values, and the American Dream. A must-read for anyone who loves Jay Gatsby!
(fiction)
In this spare, haunting novel, two sisters who grew up haphazardly, Ruth and Lucille, spend their young adulthoods struggling to create some settled sense of home, even as the forces of entropy undermine their efforts. In such a transient world, loss must be confronted and survival negotiated.
(fiction)
Winner of the 1997 Booker Prize, Roy’s novel tells the story of fraternal twins in India. Alternating between their childhood and adulthood, it explores political, cultural, and religious ideas of the time.
(fiction)
This graphic novel is autobiographical: a coming-of-age story that dovetails with political events. Told in two parts, the text examines Satrapi’s childhood in Iran and highlights her journey to find herself despite her family’s differing expectations. Funny, insightful, and artfully crafted, this is a great read for anyone who wants to learn more about Persia and one woman’s pursuit of individuality.
(graphic novel)
Michael Berg, a German boy of the post-World War II generation, comes of age in a country reluctant to revisit its Nazi past. As a high-school student, Berg stumbles into a passionate affair with an older woman, and their short-lived relationship marks the rest of his life. Years later as a law student observing the Nuremberg trials, he is startled to spot a familiar face on the witness stand.
(fiction)
Sedaris’s hilarious send up of a transplant’s first years in the big city is gut-busting.
(essays)
This landmark anthology features major writers of South Asian descent, including Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati Mukherjee, and Anita Desai. These “story-wallahs,” or story traders, offer tales like fine goods in a bustling bazaar: about a honeymoon in Sri Lanka, a Bangladeshi refugee in England, a sugar plantation in Trinidad, an Indian family’s arranged marriage for their rebellious daughter, and more.
(short stories)
The occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II forms the backdrop for this lovely, understated novel. Written as a series of letters, it is a small, well-told tale of love, war, and a salute to all things literary.
(fiction)
Shaughnessy questions the idea of a parallel existence, another Andromeda, in this collection of poems. We learn, as the poems’ narrative arc emerges, that this other place might offer Shaughnessy, as well as others, relief from tragedy and human suffering.
(poetry)
In the not-too-distant future, books are relics from a time long gone, everyone communicates digitally, the dollar is worthless, New York City has fallen apart, and Chinese bankers are threatening to foreclose on the U.S. But book-loving, 39-year-old Lenny Abramov, the eternal optimist, has fallen for 24-year-old Eunice Park (a Korean-American college student majoring in Images), and the title says it all.
(fiction)
This entertaining and unexpectedly moving novel about the clash of cultures in a small English village details a late-in-life romance between the title character and a Pakistani shopkeeper. Humorous and affecting, this story about the difficulties they must surmount builds to a satisfying conclusion.
(fiction)
Smith presents two intertwined narratives: one by a girl named George and the other by Italian Renaissance artists. The order in which you read these stories depends on chance. Questions of sexuality and gender arise: the artist is born as a girl but passes as a man, and the teenage girl explores her attraction to girls.
(fiction)
This British author’s first novel tells the story of Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, two World War II veterans whose lives are woven together. Told from multiple perspectives, White Teeth demonstrates how nuanced, complicated and personal the issues of race, immigration, and colonialism can be – and how they can tear apart communities and the humanity that unites us.
(fiction)
One of the most influential California poets of the Beat Generation, Snyder was also a learned student of ecology and environmental preservation long before the terms climate change and eco-poetics had gained currency. These essays constitute one of the essential statements on cultivated wilderness and the ethical husbandry of natural resources. As Snyder writes, he works to resolve “the dichotomy between civilization and the wild.”
(environmental essays)
This true but little-known story follows a group of women employed by Harvard in the mid-nineteenth century to be “human computers,” calculating and interpreting data recorded from night-sky photographs. This thrilling history of their rich contributions to the field of astronomy is a must-read.
(science/history)
Twenty-six graphic and thematic atlases are interspersed with essays that bring together the perspectives and insights of a wide range of experts on historical and contemporary New York City. This fascinating assemblage captures the city both up close and zoomed out.
(geography)
This graphic novel recounts a father’s experience in the Holocaust. As the father retells events to his son in the 1970s, the story explores the themes of guilt, racism, and memory. Don’t let the comic form fool you: Spiegelman depicts the tragic events of the Holocaust with care and sensitivity.
(graphic novel)
A controversial firebrand among clergy, Spong argues that the Christian church must overhaul its outdated belief system in order to reveal its essential truth. Urging modern Christians to move beyond traditional theism, this former Episcopal bishop of New Jersey vividly describes new ways of imagining God. Whatever your own belief or unbelief, this extended essay will leave you questioning heaven, hell, and the hereafter.
(religious studies)
This assured first novel by a historian is crammed with telling details about life in New York in the 1740s. Just as compelling, though, is the story line about a mysterious stranger named Richard Smith, who comes to New York from London with murky motives and a hidden agenda. Smith encounters a prickly lass named Tabitha, and an intriguing hint of potential romance is added to the mix.
(fiction)
With remarkable clarity and rich diction, Stallings addresses the joys and anxieties of marriage and motherhood. This fine collection includes work by one of our finest contemporary American poets.
(poetry)
Two migrant laborers in California struggle to find work during the Great Depression. Like an older brother, small, clever George must look after the physically imposing Lennie, who is mentally challenged and prone to accidents. Starting in new jobs, they encounter kind souls as well as rough, unforgiving men. Cinematic in its visual sweep, this poignant tale builds to a shocking climax.
(fiction)
Two minor characters in Hamlet are front-and-center figures in Tom Stoppard’s witty modern drama set in the same time and place as Shakespeare’s play. We know what is happening around them (or we do if we know the story of Hamlet), but they haven’t a clue – and not having a clue can be a big problem if someone wants you dead.
(drama)
A mother-daughter novel, Tan’s story begins in California in the 1980s. A loosely biographical work, it tells the story of the mother’s past in China in the 1930s and 1940s. By learning of the painful history that forged her mother, the narrator comes to a discovery of self. In a moving, and sometimes comical way, Tan questions whether the hard work of keeping secrets protects or destroys relationships.
(fiction)
Over the course of two years, Thoreau tried to get back to nature by living simply in a small cabin he built alongside Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. By giving up luxuries, he hoped to discover his purpose in the world and to develop a better understanding of society. Although it was published in 1854, this powerful account of his sojourn is especially relevant to our technology-saturated world today.
(memoir/essay)
In this epic trilogy, Tolkien conjures a wholly imagined world populated by wizards, elves, dwarves, dragons, and halflings (known as hobbits). One mild-mannered hobbit, Frodo Baggins, is designated to undertake a great quest: to cast the One Ring into the volcanic fire where it was forged, thus destroying it, before the Dark Lord can use it to subjugate all free peoples in irredeemable darkness.
(fantasy fiction)
Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow in 1922 for writing a poem thought to incite revolt, Count Alexander Rostov leads a full life. In this seemingly claustrophobic setting – virtually all of the action takes place within the confines of the hotel – this charming novel spans four decades. Just when you might begin to wonder if it’s headed anywhere in particular, you discover that it is. Well worth the trip.
(fiction)
Complex concepts of astrophysics are distilled and made accessible for the layperson in this witty, charming exploration.
(science)
Unferth writes about 1987, the year she dropped out of college to join her older boyfriend, George, on an idealistic journey through Central America. The narrator finds the world is harder to change than she imagined; personal transformation, however, may be possible after such an adventure.
(memoir)
On the day of her father’s funeral, 28-year-old Clarissa Iverton discovers that he was not her biological father. Unsettled by this revelation, Clarissa travels in search of her real father. While in northernmost Scandinavia, she makes a discovery that forces her to rethink how she will live the rest of her life.
(fiction)
This Pulitzer Prize winner tells the story of Willie Stark’s rise to political power and his governorship in the Deep South during the 1930s. Narrated by Jack Burden, a reporter who becomes Stark’s confidant and assistant, this novel is as compelling and relevant now as it was in 1947.
(fiction)
A wicked sense of humor and a finely-honed satirical style are the hallmarks of Evelyn Waugh’s fiction. In this 1930 novel, Tony Last, an upper-crust Brit, has been deserted by his wife and embarks on an expedition to the Brazilian jungle; strange occurrences ensue, including an ominous meeting with a man obsessed with Charles Dickens.
(fiction)
A wealthy young couple are about to marry in the 1870s, when the prospective groom finds he has, quite unexpectedly, fallen in love with the cousin of his wife-to-be. Should he acknowledge his real feelings, buck convention, ruin the bride’s life, and destroy his family’s happiness? Or will he do his duty and spend his life regretting his irrevocable choice? Passion and loyalty collide in Wharton’s world.
(fiction)
One of the great twentieth-century American poets, Wilbur combines pitch-perfect diction, flawless technique, and gorgeous clarity. These genial poems arise from a passionate person’s impulse to praise life and the gift of living in all of its beautiful complexity.
(poetry)
When the volcano-island of Krakatoa erupted in 1883, it was completed annihilated, setting off a tsunami, killing nearly 40,000 people, and helping to trigger a wave of anti-Western militancy in Java, one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings. This deep-dive examines the geological, historical, and cultural impact of an earth-shattering event.
(history/science)
This episodic collection recounts the pratfalls of the bungling aristocrat Bertie, who is repeatedly rescued through the behind-the-scenes efforts of that discreet man servant, Jeeves – the book’s narrator. Often absurd and always delightful, Wodehouse’s dry humor and wry satire of all things British will leave you chuckling.
(fiction)
Wolfe captures the “greed is good,” racially-polarized New York of the 1980s like no other. Plotlines and characters intersect and merge like a New York City subway map.
(fiction)
This sophisticated essay imagines Shakespeare having a sister equal to him in talent, but not in (male) privilege and opportunity. If only she had had an income and a room of her own in which to write, she might not have died by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. This 1929 feminist classic should be required reading for all women and men.
(essay)
These selected extracts from Woolf’s diaries chart the artistic setbacks and breakthroughs as one writer struggles to craft her ground-breaking novels. Woolf considered her diaries an integral part of her creative process; reading them, we get to experience vicariously that process of artistic creation.
(diary)
Long before the terms “gender fluid” and “trans” entered our vocabulary, the British novelist Virginia Woolf was playfully imagining a situation in which gender identity might alter and time slow down. As a boy, Orlando is a page at the royal court of Queen Elizabeth I. As he grows out of adolescence, his body changes of its own accord. The female Orlando leads a very different, and much longer, life than he/she/ze had ever imagined.
(fiction)
Set in Chicago in the 1930s, this gripping novel portrays Bigger Thomas, a young man grappling with the class and race limitations of his society. In this segregated world, he wants to change his circumstances but instead discovers that he is powerless to change how the world sees him. This novel is as relevant today as it was when first published in 1940.
(fiction)