Becky Richardson: My summer reading has been a tour through "Austenland," between rereading Austen's first three published novels for a Continuing Studies class, and then more deliberately catching up on some of the many adaptations, spin-offs, and reimaginings (the theme of my PWR2 course) -- from P.D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley to Jo Baker's Longbourn -- in anticipation of the new Sense and Sensibility & Pride and Prejudice coming later this year.
Christine Alfano: It was a prolific reading summer for me, from Florence Knapp's The Names, Jess Walter's So Far Gone, a small detour into robot fiction (Murderbot Diaries #1, #2, and #3 and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Service Model), a true crime book (London Falling), some mysteries (Along Came a Spider, The Spy Coast, and The Summer Guests). Currently I'm working my way through Kin and also Bat Eater or Other Names of Cora Zeng (the latter I should have waited to read in October ... spooky!). Of all of them, The Names made the strongest impression on me; it's a wonderful variation on a sliding doors/parallel possible futures story: it charts three possible futures for the main character and his family, with the divergence point being the name his mother gave him. One warning, though: it contains scenes of domestic violence.
Emily Polk: Things in Nature Merely Grow, by Yiyun Li. Li's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir about the suicides of both of her sons is astonishing. It's a profound disruption of conventional grief narratives--honest, vulnerable and unsparing in its calm, clear, and unsentimental intensity. Li found words where there was no language before. It was an unforgettable read.
Hayden Kantor: Rebecca Scherm's Unbecoming. This is a thriller about a heist that goes wrong. At the center of the story is Grace, a talented and mercurial young woman. It's a novel about what led her to that moment and how she reinvents herself in the aftermath.
Jenne Stonaker: I read and enjoyed Country People by Daniel Mason. A professor and her family move from California to small town Vermont for a visiting professorship, with all the culture shock and interesting locals you can imagine. Some laugh out loud moments that I think academics in particular will appreciate.
I also listened to Whistler by Ann Patchett. It was a wonderful novel about a woman and her former stepfather, who reconnect after a chance meeting and together explore a pivotal moment from their past. Lots of reflection on family, memory, and overcoming trauma that kept me good company while trying not to melt in Paris during the June heat wave!
Kathleen Tarr: I'm reading Lisa Moore Ramée's The Everybody Experiment. I am planning to gift it to a friend's tween and am certain if I had been able to read it as a youth, I would have been all the stronger against peer pressure and more accepting of my authentic self. I love the characters, the writing, the story, and the messages. Highly recommend!
Kevin DiPirro: This summer I enjoyed Douglas Stewart’s latest, John of John, a Scottish story of a gay son and his religious, closeted father. I also enjoyed Han Kung’s nightmarish, boundary blending story of a writer and an artist and an abandoned project meant to memorialize the genocide and disappearance of South Korea’s island “red” population in the run up to the Korean War, with a complicit US military. I also surprisingly liked Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, about a traumatized woman who learns to let go her rock musician fantasy beau and instead learn to get out into the world as herself. I also read Venetian Vespers by John Banville—sort of a stock psych thriller that could have used a lot of less pretence and a lot more character. I finally got around to Jeff Tweedys memoir, Let’s Go, a January birthday gift from John Peterson. But the find of the summer was a short, surreal, poetic novel by Yuri Herrera, Signs Preceding the End of the World, suggested by my son over in Nepal for his Fulbright, which chronicles the border situation in ways that seemed to prophesy a NY Times article this summer. Potent stuff!
Lisa Ramee: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. I had no idea what to expect on this one except I knew time travel was involved. The book is about a group of "expats" being plucked from specific time periods and brought to the current day. Each expat has a "handler" and the book is told from the pov of one of these handlers, who remains unnamed throughout the novel. (Something I didn't notice until someone pointed it out to me.) It explores the relationships between handler and expat and the difficulty/ease of someone from the past joining current society. The book is exquisitely well written, and I had no clue where it might be going. It's the type of book you want to talk with someone about once they've read it too.
The Wish Tree by Katherine Applegate. Although a middle-grade novel, I think adults would enjoy it too--this adult did. Told from the pov of an old oak tree it's a short novel--trees don't use a lot of words--and is almost like a poem. A read the book knowing it had been banned for being supposedly supporting non-binary identities. "Some trees are male. Some trees are female. And some, like me, are both." Which is simply science. If you're looking for a quiet, peaceful, sweet read, I highly recommend this one.
The Intentions of Thunder by Patricia Smith. This IS poetry. Not for the faint hearted. Smith's poems virtually smolder on the page almost burning your hands.
Nest of Tongues by Randy Ribay. Maybe the most disturbing title ever. Lol. This is YA...horror, I guess you'd have to call it, although it's not scary imo. I love Ribay's voice in all his work and how he brings his Filipino culture front and center. This book does a lovely job of questioning the idea of "monsters" and who gets to decide what and who fall into that category. It also introduces you to manananggals, which you're going to think the way they transform is gross. Trust me on this.
Nissa Cannon: I didn't expect Ian McEwan's What We Can Know to be so riveting! As a person who likes to think about archives and academia, and a reader who enjoys a good post-apocalyptic novel, I think I might be its ideal audience, but maybe so are you!
Roberta Wolfson: I finished the "Emily Wilde" trilogy, which was super fun for some light summer reading (I especially love that the protagonist is an academic). I am currently reading Zinzi Clemmons' What We Lose, which is so far proving to be thought-provoking and poetically written.
