Stanford Alumni brings you the Stanford Book Salon summer reading list.
John W. Evans, the Jones Lecturer of Creative Writing, hosted The Book of Hulga for the Book Salon. He recommends:
- Late in the Empire of Men by Christopher Kempf
- In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais
NoViolet Bulawayo, the Jones Lecturer in Fiction, hosted Born on a Tuesday for the Book Salon this year. She recommends:
- Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun by Sarah Ladipo Manyika
- All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan
- Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole
- The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Marisa Galvez, PhD ’07, associate professor of French and, by courtesy, of German Studies, hosted Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome for the Book Salon. She recommends:
- Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
- The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
Feel waves of new ideas — read like you’re 18 again
Each year, books are selected for incoming undergraduates to read through the Three Books program. This year, Noah Diffenbaugh, ’96, MS ’97, professor of earth system science and senior fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment, selected the following titles around the theme of “sustainability and equity.”
- Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, ’11
- The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
- Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, ’99, MA ’00
Calling all armchair travelers
These books, recommended to students in the Bing Overseas Study Program, are the next best thing to being there.
- Australia: In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
- Beijing: Age of Ambitions: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos
- Berlin: The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
- Cape Town: I Write What I Like by Steve Biko
- Florence: The Italians by John Hooper
- Kyoto: A Geek in Japan: Discovering the Land of Manga, Anime, Zen, and the Tea Ceremony by Hector Garcia
- Madrid: New Spaniards by John Hooper
- Santiago: A Nation of Enemies by Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela
