Senior Book Recommendations!
By Laurence Jacobian ’28
Recently, four seniors were invited by Next Chapter Books to write summary blurbs to be displayed next to a copy of their chosen novel! Additionally, starting this academic year, some ENCW senior majors will be asked for book recommendations. Each of the recommended titles were available as prizes during the “Bingo for Books” Coffee House.
Here is a brief preview of the chosen novels, harnessing the blurbs found within the Next Chapter Books store.
Sarah Tachau;
A Tale for the Time Being – Ruth Ozeki
“I have a fiction-aversion problem but I plowed through all 400 pages of this novel and am desperate to discuss it. Ozeki intricately characterizes a 16 year old, a 104 year old Buddhist nun, a WWII fighter pilot, and a middle aged author with such rawness it feels like a collective memoir.”
Paul Wallace
Satantango – László Krasznahorkai
“This book can seem like a dreary and inevitable trudge toward tragedy rendered in meandering sentences without a single paragraph break. However, Krasznahorkai’s attention to mood, character, and structure kept me hooked. I read this book at the height of summer, closing the blinds and allowing myself to be transported to rural Hungary, inundated with wind, rain, and mud.”
Peyton Williamson
Writers & Lovers – Lily King
“I’ve been in a pretty bad reading slump the last few months but I devoured this book! If you’re a fan of Elif Batuman’s The Idiot or enjoy very stream-of-consciousness, coming-of-age type books, this one lingered in my mind quite a while after I finished it!”
Lucy Flack
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries – Heather Fawcett
“If Cambridge had the option to major in the studies of the world of Faerie and all its delightfully weird creatures, would you take it? This is my favorite series of the summer, and it follows curmudgeonly and curious scholar, Cambridge professor, and researcher Emily Wilde (and her less curmudgeonly but equally loveable colleague, Wendell) as she arrives in a small town to investigate the secrets of the Hidden Ones—the most elusive of all faeries. Enjoy the weird and wonderful faeries, a cozy twist on academia, and a sprinkle of romance :)”