From Rachel Toor
After I wrote to a bunch of presidents asking what was on their just-read and to-be-read lists for a summer reading roundup and got a bunch of unsurprisingly interesting and diverse responses, I realized I think the idea of "summer reading" is just plain dumb.
It may make sense for students free of school assignments, but for many of us who never leave campus, reading is a year-round given. Our taste does not change seasonally, and often it's a crazy salad, including meaty sustenance and stuff that is nutritionally bankrupt but still delicious, the candy corn of reading.
Literature helps us to live, and there are a zillion kinds of books that do just that, from policy analyses to memoirs to juicy murder mysteries. If anyone needs proof that higher ed leaders believe in the importance of the liberal arts, well, friends, here it is.
The books mentioned by more than one president were James McBride's The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store and (former president) Brian Rosenberg's Whatever It Is, I’m Against It, though one president said, "I had to take a short hiatus from reading it in the spring because it was too close to home." The rest is as diverse as, well, presidents.
For what it's worth, my last month's just-read list includes: re-reading three collections of Nora Ephron's essays, Salman Rushdie's The Knife, Sigred Nunez's The Friend, Amy Tintera's Listen for the Lie, re-reading Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Sloane Crosley's Grief is for People, Kiley Reid's Come & Get It, Sulari Gentill's The Mystery Writer, and Amy Bloom's In Love.
I can report all this because I recently discovered a handy-dandy app called "Reading List" that allows me to keep track of my greedy consumption.
[Presidential friends: be prepared to be hit up again so I can circulate what you're watching and/or listening to.]