By BRIANA MURPHY ’11
Contributing Writer
Summer is almost here. This statement may seem a myth, thanks to your four exams and fifty pages worth of papers that you’ve still (somehow) got to finish in the next week. But this myth will soon become reality, and when that moment comes you might find yourself missing the time spent on seemingly endless readings for classes. Here’s where a summer reading list comes in handy. Make sure to bring one or two with you to Cape Verde or your respective Cambridge research facility, just in case you have any spare time to read in between trying to end world poverty and curing cancer. Check out some of these books to fulfill your pleasure reading quotient for the summer—it’s guaranteed to fill the void left from standing awkwardly next to the library printer all semester, pretending you weren’t actually the one printing off hundreds of pages worth of class readings.
The year 2009 ushered in a lot of changes, so why shouldn’t some brand new faces be included in your reading list? Elizabeth Strout’s work “Olive Kitteridge” comes to mind, as the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in the fiction category. Another Pulitzer prizewinner to check out is W.S. Merwin and his book of poetry, “The Shadow of Sirius.”
For the movie buff, there are always the (often better) book versions of “Kite Runner,” “Revolutionary Road,” “My Sister’s Keeper,” “The Soloist,” and “Watchmen,” among others.
Of course, there are always the oldies but goodies. If the singing birds, blooming flowers and bright green grass have you feeling romantic, pick up Jane Eyre and go read outside. Headed home for the summer and need some adventure? Try Alexander Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers.” If Athos, Porthos and Aramis are a little much for you on a sweltering midsummer afternoon, you can’t go wrong with “The Great Gatsby” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s rich, hallucination-laced imagery.
Finally, there are probably some of you out there who want to keep reading the types of books you read in class…outside of class. If you don’t shudder from the thought, consider “The Rise of the Creative Class” by Richard Florida for a provoking discussion of the dawn of a new social class. Read “This Is Your Brain On Music,” by Daniel Levitin to find out the latest research in the field of music psychology. “The Cloudspotter’s Guide,” by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, is the perfect companion for a cloud-watching afternoon date. In lieu of books, you could always consider a summer subscription to “mind_floss” or “The Atlantic Monthly.”
Of course, this list is not comprehensive, nor is it meant to be finished in one summer. In fact, all of these books (not including the magazine subscriptions) contain approximately 4,674 pages of reading—probably more than the average Wellesley-student-saving-the-world has time to do in any given summer. Even so, any of these books are excellent choices for summer reading. And none of these books require an 11:53 p.m. hot date with a printer in Clapp to prepare for your 8:30 class the next morning.