As kids, the summer reading list brings to mind homework assignments that have to be completed before the next school year begins. As adults, however, the summer reading list could mean anything from engaging reads to pack for a trip to the shore to books that we keep meaning to read but simply haven't gotten to yet. We asked a few readers among us for some titles we might consider over the coming months.
Tristan Davies, senior lecturer and director of Graduate Studies in the Krieger School's Writing Seminars, who this summer is headed for points westerly and of increased altitude—namely his home waters of Colorado.
- Silver Bullets, by Élmer Mendoza
- A Fine Line, by Gianrico Carofiglio
- The Girls of Slender Means, by Muriel Spark
Craig Hankin, director of the Homewood campus's Center for Visual Arts, who will be working this summer with colleague Tom Chalkley to finish ("fingers crossed," Hankin says) the first volume of their graphic memoir, Novelty Record.
- My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, by Emil Ferris
- Swing Time, by Zadie Smith
- Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes, Vol. 1, by Walt Stanchfield
- The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
- Super-Natural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group, by Ian F. Svenonius
Jeanne-Marie Jackson, an assistant professor of English, who says she is committed to staying off Facebook for most of the summer.
- Kintu, by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
- The Philosophy of Money, by Georg Simmel
- Doubt, Atheism, and the Russian Intelligentsia, by Victoria Frede
- Woman of the Aeroplanes, by Kojo Laing
- The Mountain and the Wall, by Alisa Ganieva
Dora Malech, an assistant professor in the Krieger School's Writing Seminars, who plans to spend the summer getting to know her new baby, Ada, and re-reading some favorite new books of contemporary poetry.
- When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, by Chen Chen
- The January Children, by Safia Elhillo
- Hard Child, by Natalie Shapero
Anne Eakin Moss, an assistant professor in the Humanities Center, who says she looks forward to catching up with her teenager and getting him ready to start high school at Baltimore City College in the fall.
- Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
- The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults, by Frances Jensen, MD
- The Death and Life of the Great American School System, by Diane Ravitch
- Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, by Robert D. Putnam
- The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools?, by Dale Russakoff
Chris Nelson, PhD student and "polar bear nurse"—aka circumpolar health researcher—in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, who says accordingly, "I thought I might give you some chilly suggestions."
- Smilla's Sense of Snow, by Peter Høeg
- An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
- Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic, by Marla Cone
- In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, by Hampton Sides
- Circumpolar Health Atlas, edited by Kue T. Young
Hollis Robbins, chair of the Humanities Department at the Peabody Institute and director of the Center for Africana Studies in the Krieger School, says, "Here's what I'm taking with me on a trip to Japan, Singapore, and China in June. I'm intending to read them all on my long flights. If I don't like them, I'll leave them on the airplane. If I like them, I won't mind lugging them back to Baltimore."
- Emily Dickinson's Poems: As She Preserved Them, edited by Cristanne Miller
- American Settler Colonialism: A History, by Walter Hixson
- Montaigne: A Life, by Philippe Desan
- A New Literary History of Modern China, edited by David Der-wei Wang
- Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, by David Garrow
- The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, From Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone, by Thomas Hazlett
Molly Warnock, an assistant professor in the Krieger School's Department of the History of Art, who plans to spend the summer working on a new book project on the painter James Bishop, seeing as many exhibitions as possible, and reading some good spy novels along the way.
- The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, by Jean-Paul Sartre
- Cherokee, by Jean Echenoz
Bernadette Wegenstein, professor of media studies and director of the Center for Advanced Media Studies in the Krieger School, who plans on showing her film The Good Breast at the Collège de France in Paris, visiting friends and family in Germany and Switzerland, holidaying in Italy with her own family, and heading to Vienna to receive a Statal Award, Ars Docendi, from the Austrian government for her recent class at Johns Hopkins that she taught with two professors from the Sigmund Freud University in Vienna.
- Living a Feminist Life, by Sara Ahmed
- All of Elena Ferrante's books
- The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us, by Richard Prum
- Walk Through Walls: A Memoir, by Marina Abramovic
Also on her summertime to-do list, Wegenstein says, are watching the film Manifesto and the docuseries The Keepers and seeing two exhibitions in New York: Carol Rama: Antibodies at the New Museum and the Whitney Biennial 2017 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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