Over the summer we asked our Department of English alumni to share the books they’ve been reading and the books on their to-be-read list. Check out the recommendations below! 

Christine Almeida  

• The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell 

Miranda Miller Finn (MA, 2006) 

• The In-Between by Rebecca K.S. Ansari 

• The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After by Julie Yip-Williams 

• My Ackee Tree: A Chef’s Memoir of Finding Home in the Kitchen by Suzanne Barr 

• Yellowface by R. F. Kuang 

• They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us by Prachi Gupta 

• Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice by Cristina Rivera Garza  

Jacob Gillam (BA, 2011) 

• You and Your Profile by Paul J. D'Ambrosio and Hans-Georg Moeller  

• Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th edition core rulebook by Renegade Game Studios 

• The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson 

Tracy Healy (BA/MA, 1988/1990) 

• Half-Blown Rose by Leesa Cross-Smith  

• The Summer Place by Jennifer Weiner 

• Zero Days by Ruth Ware 

• Happy Place by Emily Henry 

• The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane 

• Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum 

Clarence Jeffries (BA, 1968)  

• The Last Chair Lift by John Irving 

• The Wager by David Grann 

Megan Kafka (BA, 2022)  

• Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy 

• A Memory called Empire by Arkady Martine 

• The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias 

• Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth 

• Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey 

• I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman 

• Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum 

• Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh 

• The Deep by Nick Cutter 

• The Troop by Nick Cutter 

• Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda 

• The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones 

• Earthlings by Sayaka Murata 

• Burial Rites by Hannah Kent 

• How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu 

• I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid 

• This Thing Between Us by Gus Moren 

• My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell 

• Geek Love by Katherine Dunn 

Colleen Kennedy (PhD, 2015) 

• Bad Habits by Amy Gentry 

• Blindness by Jose Saramago 

• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell 

• The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue 

• Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder by John Waters 

• The Virtues of Aging by Jimmy Carter 

Daniel Moore (BA, 1980) 

• The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlett 

• Cibola Burn (Expanse Series) by James S. A. Corey 

• Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum 

Will Moran (BA, 2012) 

• The George Floyd Uprising: An Anthology by Vortex Group 

• The Gallic Wars (Latin and English): De Bello Gallico by Julius Caesar, trans. Franz Ruedele 

Rachel Polcek (BA, 2010) 

• Happy Place by Emily Henry  

• Did You Hear about Kitty Karr? by Crystal Smith Paul 

• Saving Time by Jenny Odell 

Maddy Smyth (BA, 2023) 

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer 

• Get a Life Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert 

• Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney