This past semester I have been teaching a class that introduces students to Interdisciplinary Studies in preparation for them proposing their own interdisciplinary major. There are generally two books taught in the class, one fiction and one non-fiction (this year it was Dracula and And the Band Played On; last year it was Manahatta and World War Z). At the end of this semester I asked the students what books they would recommend in future years. I tried to write down all the suggestions that were flung at me, and I may have some of the titles and some of the authors incorrect. But there were a lot of interesting books proposed, and I have a reading list ahead of me for my summer.
There are 14 students in the class, and they all have interesting and strong ideas. Every one of them had at least one suggestion, and obviously most had many. I thought you would enjoy seeing book recommendations from a remarkable group of 19-22 year old students.
Below the fold for more!
Book suggestions, including comments and authors when I had a chance to write them down! (and I apologize for the titles not being in italics, but I was waiting for the site to be up again, and now I need to run out for the evening -- I will be back for comments when I am through with adult geekiness)
Frankenstein
Life of Pi or (even more highly recommended by Yann Martel, the same author):
Beatrice and Virgil
Short story collection: Facts Behind the Wholeinsky
Their Eyes were Watching God
The Color Purple
Selections (short stories) by Borges, particularly the story in the collection titled
“Library of Babel”
Lies My Teacher Told Me
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Woo by Gino Diaz
A book of essays on human trafficking: A Crime so Monstrous by E. Benjamin Skinner
The Island by Aldous Huxley, about a photographer/journalist
Zodiac: The Murderer
The People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Michael Pollan
Half the Sky, by Nicholas Krystof and (his wife)
Wild, by Cheryl Straight
Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin
Anything by Amy Tan (probably something other than The Joy Luck Club)
“This is Water” which is a commencement address by David Foster Wallace
Freakonomics
Watership Down or The Plague Dogs (there was a lot of discussion of the film of
Watership Down as well)
Suggestion that students should read examples of published scholarly research, as an introduction to scholarly writing. The accompanying analysis would ask students to identify and separate out the methodologies and content according to the constituent disciplines.
Fiction by Jess Walton: Financial Lives of Poets – economic stuff presented through poetry
Chew on This, a bit lighter than much of this, but it has substance, too. This is about the fast food industry.
What are you Looking at? Art History by a comedian
Eat my Globe – by someone who traveled the world eating – a food journal
Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince, by Mark Elliot, which is not all true, but it is entertaining to read
Nobody Passes by Mattilda Berstein Sycamore, essay anthology about all standards of authenticity
“The Room,” a film by Tommy Wissu
The Disaster Artist: My Life inside the Best Worst Movie Ever Made, about being an actor in “The Room”
For starting discussion and learning how to argue against it, nonfiction by Glenn Beck
Slavo Zizek, on film theory, The Incident
A Clockwork Orange
Tarsan’s the Fall
The Radioactive Boy Scout, by Ken Silverstein, a true story about building a nuclear plant in the backyard.
Joderosky (film maker), documentary
“The Holy Mountain,” film by Joderosky
Jhunpa, Interpreter of Maladies, short stories about immigration
“The Crucible”
The Thistle and the Drum
Black Pearl, by Beni Smocobitis
Sherman Alexi, particularly his short stories
The Diary of Anne Frank, for which the complaint is that this is no longer taught/assigned in schools
Voices of the Heart, by Huping Ling, bout immigration of Chinese into the US
The Round House, by Louise Erditch, about rape on a reservation
To Kill a Mockingbird
Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes, by Maria Konakova
The Kite Runner
Hiroshima, a non-fiction account
The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran
The Housekeeper and the Professor, about contemporary Japan, gender and class, mathematics and psychology
Digging for the Disappeared, a series of essays about identification of bodies