Need inspiration for your summer reading list? We asked our faculty and staff to share what they are reading and why they would recommend it. Read on below for Part 2 of our summer reading series.
Del A. Maticic, Adjunct Instructor teaching mythology
– Elif Batuman’s Either/Or. I loved her first novel, The Idiot, and this sequel lives up to it. It follows Batuman’s heroine, Selin, a Turkish immigrant and Harvard Russian literature major who moves through the world in a state of charmed puzzlement and understands the world through the books she reads, learning to navigate the pleasures and disappointments of sex, psychiatry, and travel.
– Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea. This winner of the 1978 Booker Prize is a rich and strange and dubious autobiography-in-process by the fictional playwright and director Charles Arrowby. It’s an amusing study in narcissistic delusion and erotic obsession full of vivid descriptions of portents, landscapes, and food. Any Shakespeare lover will be delighted by the variety and intricacy of Murdoch’s reception of his plays (especially The Tempest).
– Letters to Vera. This is a collection of Vladimir Nabokov’s love letters to Véra Nabokov, the writer’s lifelong love. It’s edited by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd (the latter is a preeminent Nabokov scholar). The delightful collection is full of humor, tenderness, and grace, and offers fascinating snapshots into the writer’s working life as well as his love life.
Del A. Maticic is teaching Greek and Roman Mythology in Popular Culture in Fall 2022.
Nicholas Birns, NYU SPS Adjunct Instructor teaching literature
Excluding books I am reading for teaching or research, I enjoyed reading Hanne Ørstavik’s novel The Pastor, featuring a Lutheran minister who serves a parish in far northern Norway and has to deal with a lingering tragedy in her own life and crises among her new flock. Serhei Zhadan’s novel The Orphanage just missed being on the syllabus in my summer Ukraine course. It is a very moving tale of war told from a ground-level and self-effacing perspective. I also enjoyed reading two of Arnold Rampersad’s biographies of prominent twentieth-century African American men: Ralph Ellison and Jackie Robinson.
Nicholas Birns is teaching Banned in the USA: Freedom of Expression and the Literary Canon and Five African Nobel Laureates in Fall 2022.
Gary Winter, NYU SPS Administrative Aide, Playwright
I just finished The Magician of Lublin by IB Singer, and a biography of Paul Robeson by Gerlad Horne. On my to-read pile are Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, by Walter Mosley, and The Hearing Trumpet by Leonra Carrington.
Cayla Delardi, Department of Music Administrator
I’m currently reading Crying in H-Mart, a memoir by Michelle Zauner that explores the connections between food, memory, culture, and grief. Zauner weaves together stories about the loss of her mother to cancer, their close yet complicated relationship, and her struggles with her mixed-race identity along with vivid descriptions of the Korean dishes she grew up preparing and eating with loved ones. As the title suggests, it’s an emotional read—prepare to cry and feel hungry at the same time.
P.S., In addition to being a best-selling author, Zauner is also the lead singer of the indie pop band Japanese Breakfast!
Kelly Carroll, NYU SPS Adjunct Professor teaching historical preservation
I just finished Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzolalez and Educated by Tara Westover.
Kelly Carroll is teaching Behind the Scenes in New York: Preserving a City of Historic Neighborhoods in Fall 2022.
Kelly Cannon, Content and Community Strategist, Gather
I’m reading Design for Belonging: How to Build Inclusion and Collaboration in Your Communities by Susie Wise. The exercises for identifying what belonging and its opposite, othering, feel like are valuable for learning how to intentionally support a feeling of belonging for others. I also love the profiles of her “host-heroes of belonging,” or people she has learned from either through close collaboration or as a reader of their work from afar.
I’m also reading Italo Calvino’s novel If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller. It’s a journey through stories within a story and feels at times whimsical as you’re led through the author’s cheeky but very purposeful game.
Estelle Erasmus, Adjunct Instructor teaching journalism
Bookends: A Memoir, of Love, Loss, and Literature by Zibby Owens
Career Self-Care: Find Your Happiness, Success, and Fulfillment at Work by Minda Zetlin
When She Comes Back by Ronit Plank
A Shoe Story by Jane L. Rosen
Estelle will be teaching Writing Midlife and Beyond and Micro Memoir: Write Your Life in 200 Words or Less for Fall 2022.
Filip Noterdaeme, Adjunct Instructor teaching art
I’m currently rereading Baudelaire’s masterpiece Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) and am teaching myself to learn some of the poems by heart, an addictive habit l formed since Covid. It’s tremendously rewarding to learn poetry by heart and I highly recommend it. I’m also reading Oscar Wilde’s The Critic as Artist and was pleased to read Wilde worship Baudelaire’s masterpiece, Les Fleurs du Mal: “…let its subtle music steal into your brain and colour your thoughts, and you will become for a moment what he was who wrote it; nay, not from a moment only, but for many barren moonlit nights and sunless sterile days will a despair that is not your own make it’s dwelling within you, and the misery of another gnaw your heart away. Read the whole book, suffer it to tell even one of its secrets to your soul, and your soul will grow eager to know more, and feed upon poisonous honey, and seek to repent of strange crimes of which it is guiltless, and to make atonement for terrible pleasures that it has never known.”
Wilde continues his meditation on The Flowers of Evil by remarking: “It is a strange thing, this transference of emotion. We sicken with the same maladies as the poets, and the singer lends us his pain. Dead lips have their message for us, and hearts that have fallen to dust can communicate their joy.”
Both Baudelaire and Wilde died at age 46 and both are buried in Paris. Before my return to New York, I shall adorn their respective tombs with daffodils (Wilde’s favorite flower).
Filip Noterdaeme is teaching The New York Art Scene, The Spiritual in Modern and Contemporary Art, and Painting Sound: The Intersection of Art and Music in Fall 2022.
Susan Matthias, Adjunct Instructor teaching literature
American Pastoral, The Human Stain, and Nemesis by Philip Roth;
The Short Stories of John Cheever;
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.
Susan Matthias will be teaching The Greatest Journey of Them All: Reading Homer’s Odyssey in Fall 2022.
Kenneth French, PALA Program Administrator
Absalom, Abaslom!, William Faulkner
This is supposed to be his best. Why not torture myself with a little Faulkner this summer.
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
Saw the movie with Ben Affleck and I thought the book would be even better. So far so good.
Florida, Lauren Groff
Collection of short stories. Groff’s storytelling is amazing!
Dog Years, Mark Doty
Suggested by my sister who has read it twice. Doty is a famous poet. Looking forward to digging into it. (Digging, like a dog, no pun intended. Well maybe.)
Child of God, Cormac McCarthy
McCarthy is a writer’s writer. I put him right up there with Joy Williams. This is one of his books I have not read yet. Saving it for a rainy weekend.
Tracy Flick Can’t Win, Tom Perrotta
Taking this one to the beach. He also wrote Election that was made into a movie starring a young Reese Witherspoon. Reading that will be fun and not having to think about it.
Anne Maguire, PALA Administrative Aide
This summer I am with Irish writers, which is unusual. I dip in and out of Haiku Enlightenment by Gabriel Rosenstock which I adored immediately. It is beautifully written with such a sense of joy and wonder that it’s always a pleasure to sit with. Rosenstock also translates and writes haiku in Irish Gaelic which is mind-boggling! When I’m feeling energetic I return to my first reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses, as an adult. As an 11-year-old I borrowed it from a mobile library in Dublin and thought it was really funny – I remember reading passages to my mother in our kitchen. It’s proving to be much more challenging now!
Mormei Zanke, PALA Graduate Social Media Assistant
Currently, I am reading Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan, which was Sagan’s first novel that she wrote when she was eighteen in 1954. It’s poignant and clear-eyed in a way that packs a punch. It takes place in a villa outside of Paris during the summer—so it feels particularly suitable for the season.
I’ve also just started Ocean Vuong’s second poetry collection, Time is a Mother. His poems explore grief and ancestry, taking the reader on a journey of self-exploration that is hopeful and relatable.
Expand your reading list further by signing up for one of our literature courses for the Fall 2022 semester.
Would love to hear from you—comment below what you’re reading this summer!