Summer Reading 2010

In honor of the season, we asked various faculty, staff, students, and alumnae/i what they're looking forward to reading this summer. Feel free to send your own top five to sutt0063@umn.edu.

May '10 Retiree Beverly Atkinson, former Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies

1. Ann Patchett, Run (Harper): For my book group.
2. Annie Dillard, Pilgrim on Tinker Creek (Harper): Can you believe I have never read this?!
3. Jaspar Fforde, The Big Over Easy (Viking)
4. Kathleen Dean Moore, Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature (Trumpeter)
5. Pat Barker, The Ghost Road and The Eye in the Door (Dutton): Second and third books of Regeneration trilogy.
6. A.S. Byatt, Passions of the Mind (Random House)
7. Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (Harper)
8. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (Harper)
9. Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Volumes 1 and 2 (Bloomsbury)

Recently read (and highly recommended):
John Muir, Travels in Alaska
Margaret Murie, Two in the North Country
Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name: A short, powerful story!

May '10 Retiree Professor Michael Dennis Browne

1. Ted Bowman and Elizabeth Bourque Johnson, editors, The Wind Blows, The Ice Breaks: Poems of Loss and Renewal by Minnesota Poets (Nodin Press)
2. Mary Lethert Wingerd, North Country: The Making of Minnesota (University of Minnesota Press)
3. Francine Marie Tolf (MFA '06), Joliet Girl: A Memoir (North Star Press)
4. Lynda Bird Francke, On the Road with Francis of Assisi (Random House)
5. Karl Rahner SJ, The Mystical Way in Everyday Life (Orbis Books)

May '10 Retiree Professor Ed Griffin

You spend the whole semester reading prose written by students. After awhile, you lose your balance. A couple years ago I made myself a promise: When I get on a break, I am going to go back and reread a book that will help me regain my sense of what really good writing is. So in the past few years, there was Portrait of a Lady, Jane Austen's Emma; I went back and read Wallace Stegner's All the Little Live Things, which is a forgotten but beautifully written book. I read The Great Gatsby again. I read Melville's Piazza Tales. My "reward" book for this semester is Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop. She's a great writer; I'd put her right up there with Fitzgerald and Melville.

Otherwise, I'd like to read:

1. Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor (Little Brown): I met Brad Gooch when he was starting on this, and, after spending two days in his company, I thought, He'll never do it. He's a very handsome, brash, bright young fellow. But the manuscripts are so closely guarded: I thought, There's no way they're going to give them up to this guy—he's a nobody! He's not part of the whole O'Connor movement for canonization! But they did.
2. Kevin Starr, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance (Oxford): He's a friend of mine, whom I've admired for a long, long time. He's the great cultural historian of California. He's taken California all the way through history up to the present; he's got about nine volumes now. This one is California in the '50s and '60s, which is when I grew up there.
3. Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (Penguin): From what I've read, it's a romp through the history of words, the history of language—stuff I love.
4. Ann Patchett, Run (Harper): I loved Bel Canto; I used it in my Intro to American Lit class because I wanted to finish the semester with a love story, filled with music and lyricism.
5. Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone (Knopf): By a doctor, born in Ethiopia, raised in India. I go to the Sun Valley Writers' Conference every year, and he gave a talk; this guy is spellbinding.

Karen Frederickson, Graduate Studies Executive Administrative Specialist

1. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
2. Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
3. Isobel Williams, With Scott in the Antarctic: Edward Wilson, Explorer, Naturalist, Artist (The History Press): He is a hero of mine.
4. Ai Yazawa, Nana, Volumes 11-12 (VIZ Media LLC): A manga series—nothing to do with Zola!
5. C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (New York Review Books Classics): I'm preparing for a trip to Vienna and Prague next fall.

Swati Avasthi (MFA '10)

Avasthi is the author of the 2010 young adult novel Split (Knopf).

1. John Green and David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson (Dutton Juvenile)
2. Patricia McCormick, Purple Heart (Balzer + Bray)
3. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (Houghton Mifflin)
4. Matt De La Pena, Mexican White Boy (Delacorte Books for Young Readers)
5. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Anchor)

Rose Hendrickson, Receptionist

I revel in finding copies of paperbacks by authors that I have previously enjoyed. Sometimes I put then the order they were written and go all the way through the series. Since I have read all of my copies before, I know exactly what kind of atmosphere/character/plot I am looking for. It's like comfort food with no calories.

Wild Horses is my favorite Dick Francis novel. It has wonderfully detailed characters, breathtaking imagery, and detailed information on horse racing, movie making—and knives.

McNally's Risk is one of my favorite Lawrence Sanders novels. The character of Archie McNally is lighter than some of the other Sanders' heroes. These books are just more fun. I read all of the McNally books with a dictionary at hand.

Talking God by Tony Hillerman is great. I've told may people that reading a Hillerman novel is like taking a free vacation to the Southwest. A good map is helpful. Hillerman also has a knack for creating really human bad guys.

And Bel Canto is not to be missed. My daughter loaned it to me, and I dutifully returned it. Should have kept it. By now I could have read it several more times.

I have other sets of books that I no longer read. Familiarity with the plot lets me concentrate on the writing. When I find myself dissatisfied with the metaphors, I know that it is time to have a garage sale.

Christine (Kit) Mack Gordon (PhD '97), Senior Academic Advisor, University Honors Program

1. Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven: Kay's most recent book, this one a reimagining as historical fantasy of life in eighth century Tang dynasty China. Kay is an amazing writer, and his books are wonderfully engaging.
2. James Shapiro, Contested Will: Shapiro, a noted Shakespeare scholar, takes on the authorship question in a lucid and persuasive book that should put to rest all those theories about someone other than the man from Stratford as the author of the plays and poems (it won't, of course, but he does his best!).
3. Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey: An imaginative multiple narrative that explores a wide range of possible versions of the journey and return of Odysseus.
4. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: Pollan is one of my favorite non-fiction writers, and this book is an engaging exploration of what we eat and what it means in the context of contemporary food issues.
5. Barry Edelstein, Thinking Shakespeare: Edelstein, a long-time director of Shakespeare, writes an exceedingly articulate and useful guide to understanding and performing Shakespeare's plays. As a dramaturg, I imagine I'll be referring to it regularly.

Amir Hussain, MFA Candidate

1. Mike Tidwell, Bayou Farewell: I have started reading Tidwell's environmental expose to learn about the sinking Louisiana coastland and the Cajun communities that are losing their land and livelihood. In August, the book is expected to be re-released with an introduction that discusses the effects the present BP oil spill will have in the Gulf region.
2. Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Crow Planet: Caught my attention because it explores the commonplace crow from many angles. From the front cover: "A tribute to the crow and an invitation to engage with the wildlife in our midst."
3. Alistair MacLeod, Island: A fascinating collection of short stories that are all based in Nova Scotia and tell the story of a generation that is caught between the traditional pastoral way of life and an industrialized one.
4. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A long poem written by a contemporary of Walt Whitman's but whose poetic style and approach is radically different.
5. L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables: A classic, good-hearted summer story.