Because Spring Break is tangibly close, we asked our favorite professors for their book recommendations. Their suggestions were as varied as the departments in which they teach, but we hope you'll enjoy these ideas wherever your travels may take you.
"Suite Française" (2006) by Irène Némirovsky and "Shadow Tag" (2010) by Louise Erdrich
Claire Schub, Lecturer
Department of Romance Languages
"Suite Française:" "Reading it for the second time with my class, I've been drawn into this text in unexpected ways. This is the long-lost novel written by a Russian/French/Jewish woman writer, describing first the exodus from Paris in June 1940, and then a French village during the beginning of the Occupation. Némirovsky was deported and killed in Auschwitz. She wrote her novel as the events were happening. Her writing is fascinating and deeply moving."
"Shadow Tag:" "Anything by Erdrich is worth reading, as her writing is intensely beautiful and poetic, and her books reveal a world of mid-western Native Americans and characters with connections to that world, with a sort of magic realism and attention to startling inner and outer landscapes. It is one of the most troubling novels about the destruction human beings can bring upon each other that I have ever read."
"The Three Musketeers" (1844) by Alexandre Dumas
Anne-Christine Rice, Lecturer
Department of Romance Languages
"I recommend ‘The Three Musketeers' by Alexandre Dumas for the adventures, the fun and the intrigues. You will not be able to put the book down!"
"Walt Longmire Mysteries" (2004-10) by Craig Johnson
Nan Levinson, Lecturer
Department of English
"Johnson has written six books about Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire that you won't be able to put down."
"The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film" (2002) by Michael Ondaatje and "Walden"(1854) by Henry David Thoreau
Jeanne Dillon, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, Senior Lecturer
American Studies Program
"For students who love film, try Michael Ondaatje's ‘The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film.' It sucks you in, and you eat it up fast. And for the best wrangler of the English language after Shakespeare, go with Henry David Thoreau's ‘Walden.' We are the tools of our tools, dudes!"
"The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power" (1990) by Robert Caro
John Fyler, Professor
Department of English
"Last summer I finally got around to reading the first volume of Robert Caro's three-volume biography of [Lyndon B. Johnson], ‘The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power.' It's an extraordinarily interesting look at Texas politics, the Great Depression and LBJ's enormous energy, with his equally outsized moral virtues and moral failings. Caro also explains the complex workings of Congress with great clarity. Time after time, I was surprised by how often the political and economic arguments of the last few years have repeated the arguments of the ‘30s."
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compiled by the Daily Arts Department
