 Books for the Beach
Our second annual faculty and staff recommendations on summer reading have produced a literary mix of broad appeal. Books about the Irish Revolution, horseracing, political essays, and a memoir about returning to Vietnam are some of the varied suggestions. Following, a list of titles and reasons for reading them.
Mike Duffy, associate director of university ministry and this year’s Fr. William Dunne Award winner, recommends Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman. “It’s a great collection of reflections by a woman who loves to read.  At Swim Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill. This is a story of two young friends living in Dublin during the Irish revolution. Atonement by Ian McEwan. This book is excellent and the title says it all, it’s about atonement and family relationships.”
Aaron Shurin, co-director of the master’s of fine arts in writing, recommends Seabiscuit. “Quick, before the movie comes out! It’s a beautifully written multiple biography (horse, owner, rider), an unexpected historical and social investigation, and a tale told with narrative precision and brio that you can read between sips of summer-whatever because it has its own shimmer and heat.”
 Vijaya Nagarajan, assistant professor of theology and religious studies, hopes to read Arundhati Roy’s War Talk. “After her debut novel, The God of Small Things, became an international success, Arundhati wrote several sharply articulated political essays. She is a second-generation social activist and brings a pungent reflectiveness, a revealing wit, and an ethics of the common people into her political writing. Though I do not always agree with everything she says, I am always moved by her intelligent and wise reading of contemporary international politics, and her utter courage in trying to define a more articulate response from the global South. She has a bit of Jonathan Swift in her, a bit of Gandhi, but she is mostly her delightful self!”
Peter Togni, S.J., associate dean of academic services, recommends Thomas Aquinas Theologian by Thomas O’Meara, O.P. “A relatively new book on Thomas Aquinas that is enthusiastic about Aquinas’s life and theology. Any book that’s enthusiastic about Aquinas is worth a look. I also want to re-read Andrew Pham’s prize-winning description of his journey back to Vietnam, Catfish and Mandala. It has beautiful use of the English language.”
Jennifer Larsen, periodicals and preservation specialist/Gleeson Library, recommends Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. “It is a book about women where nobody falls in love with anybody and so like nothing we’ve seen in literature before. It is a dark, dreamy novel, filled with images of light and shadow and deep water; overwhelmingly sad but quiet; meditative and secretly horrible. There are no ghosts in the story, but it feels haunted.”
|
