The start of the semester doesn't have to mean the end of reading for pleasure. Members of the advisory council share their favorite book from the summer to help you build your to-be-read list.
Maria Therese Barry really enjoyed reading The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams over the summer. It was a great historical fiction piece centered around the origins of the Oxford English Dictionary. I also appreciated how it delved into the topic of reviving the words that were originally missed in the Dictionary's first-ever published fascicles and fell out of common use (hence the "lost words").
Bianca Brucker's favorite read this summer would have to be The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand. The story takes place in the heart of Nantucket in a magnificent beach themed hotel where there is a lavish restaurant and bar, and all the hotel bathroom tiles are made out of real oyster shells. The novel is full of summer scandals and relationships. Many guests come to the hotel for a break (or to run away) from their day to day lives and somehow their stories start to intertwine. Even the ghost of the hotel has an interesting storyline and experiences a summer she won't forget!
Amanda McKean recommends The Outsiders. Before seeing the now the Tony award-winning musical, she read the book and watched the movie to round out this classic American novel whose messages and adaptations stand the test of time with its original characters and complex portrayal of the American teenager.
Over the summer, Mickey Wilcox enjoyed Stephanie McCarter's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. He appreciated how McCarter's new translation portrayed the often immensely one-sided relationships between Gods and mortals, and confronted head-on the sexual violence that marked these relationships. The Metamorphoses is a wonderful encyclopedia of ancient Greek and Roman myth, and is a fun read when reading through a whole book (chapter), or just focusing on a specific mythological tale.
