We asked our wonderful faculty, staff, and colleagues what books are on their summer reading list. We received an outpouring of interesting recommendations in a variety of genres—everything from fantasy and 19th-century literature to memoirs and poetry.
Stumped for what should be your next beach read? What about the dystopian sci-fi novel, Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro? Need an engrossing cross-country flight book? Perhaps Time’s Witness: History in the Age of Romanticism by Rosemary Hill would do.
Read on below for Part 1 of our summer reading list.
Angie Kamath, Harvey J. Stedman Dean of the School of Professional Studies
I am reading Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu- funny and ironic book on Asian stereotypes in Hollywood. Excellent and original story.
And for nonfiction:
I am reading Harvard professor Richard Light’s Becoming Great Universities- Small Steps for Sustained Excellence, about low cost and no cost ways to prioritize student centered approaches that lead to impact.
Jenny McPhee, Director of the Center for Publishing and Applied Liberal Arts and Clinical Assistant Professor teaching in the MS in Translation
I’m reading:
– Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and totally loving it. So quiet and ominous. Ishiguru is the master of quiet ominousness!
– His Bloody Project a novel by Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet based on a true story of a triple homicide by a 17-year-old boy in the Scottish village of Culduie in 1869. The way this narrative expertly pulls together actual documents, fictional documents, and a very strong narrative voice reminds me a lot of Rivka Galken’s Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch but in a stunning Scottish landscape.
-Maud Casey’s City of Incurable Women is also a novel with deep historical truth about women and hysteria with pictures! Totally brilliant.
Francis Morrone, NYU SPS Adjunct Professor teaching art and architecture history, and historic preservation
Time’s Witness: History in the Age of Romanticism by Rosemary Hill, a study of early 19th-century “antiquaries” so often neglected or despised by professional historians but whose importance to the way we view the world around us Hill argues is vastly underrated. Reading the book made me feel—as, indeed, many things make me feel—that I am an early 19th-century person inexplicably marooned in the 21st century. (This book also got me to read Walter Scott’s novel The Antiquary.)
I am also reading all the novels (and other books, such as The True History of Mrs. Meredith) of Diane Johnson, whom I’d never read before and find delightful.
Francis Morrone will be teaching Understanding Traditional Architecture and Words in Place: Architecture and Typography in Fall 2022.
Juliana Gilheany, NYU SPS Adjunct Associate Professor of History
I also read Klara and the Sun and enjoyed it thoroughly. Three others are The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell and non-fiction Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. Now I’m back to the Supreme Court books.
Juliana Gilheany will be teaching The United States Supreme Court in the 21st Century in Fall 2022.
Margaret Boe Birns, NYU SPS Adjunct Assistant Professor teaching literature
I have really enjoyed Hernan Diaz’ Trust this summer, and also enjoyed Anne Tyler’s French Braid, which is I feel her darkest and strangest novel, and the great David Grossman’s More Than I Love My Life. But these three will no doubt appear on my syllabus for 2023, so can’t count them as “fun” reading. For fun, I am enjoying two “minor” books of essays by my favorite poet WH Auden, The Prolific and the Devourer and Forwards and Afterwards, and also an anthology called Poems on Poetry. Maybe not everyone’s idea of fun books, but they are definitely fun for me.
Margaret Boe Birns will be teaching The Novel Today and Masterpieces of 20th-Century Literature in Fall 2022.
Marsha Prosper, Sr. Continuing Education Student Services Assistant
I’d started reading A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph by Sheldon Vanauken. It was recommended to me by one of my mentors.
Anne Wolff, Assistant Director of Programs, Center for Publishing and Applied Liberal Arts
I am a few chapters into a book that I started reading last March…I’ve been dragging my feet, picking it up and putting it down. I’m also a notoriously slow reader, unfortunately. This is a good nudge to get me to continue reading it! It’s called Lilac Girls and it’s a story about three women who were impacted in different ways by World War II and how they came to know each other and find healing. I like that it weaves WWII history with interesting stories about women’s lives and their perspectives on the war. There’s a connection to a historic house called the Bellamy-Ferriday House in Bethlehem, Connecticut, one town over from where I grew up. I visited a few years ago when my sister worked there and she gave me a tour. The house belonged to one of the characters in the story, Caroline Ferriday and she opened up her family’s summer house to survivors of the Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany as they healed from wounds and experiments conducted on them by Nazis.
Marcus Reeves, Adjunct Instructor teaching journalism
I am reading The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Marcus Reeves will be teaching Interviews and Profiles in Fall 2022.
Lorella Brocklesby, Adjunct Professor teaching history
I am reading Saving Italy by Robert M.Edsel. By the author of The Monuments Men, it is an intriguing book that offers perspectives on what happened to Italy’s great treasures immediately before and during WWII. It was recommended by one of my students.
Have just bought, but not yet read ….Fortune’s Many Houses by Simon Welfare about a Scottish aristocratic family in the Victorian age, their great Scottish country house, and an inheritance lost.
Lorella Brocklesby will be teaching Georgian England: Cities of Elegance and Art in Fall 2022.
Expand your reading list further by signing up for one of our literature courses for the Fall 2022 semester. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this reading series!
Would love to hear from you—comment below what you’re reading this summer!