All About Love – bell hooks
I spent most of my time as an undergrad in isolation, not by choice but by unfortunate circumstance. About halfway through the spring semester of my sophomore year, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown occurred. I had come home for spring break and suddenly found myself finishing the rest of the semester away from campus. I got reacquainted with the home I had spent most of my life in. After the summer had ended, I returned to Austin, alone in an apartment because I signed a lease before the pandemic. I was never the type to get homesick, especially when I was a measly three hours away, but I missed the sound of my dad’s footsteps and my mom’s laugh. My days blurred together, a mix of Zoom lectures and working the closing shifts at a local restaurant.
bell hooks’ All About Love was one of the only books I read for myself at this time. In between classes, I would read a chapter and take time to process my emotions. When I read “in solitude we find the place where we can truly look at ourselves and shed the false self,” I began to rethink how I engaged with others and what my views on loneliness were. As cliché as it is, in a transitionary period, “fostering community” and finding comfort in being alone is necessary (I wish someone would have told me that before I started college).
I recommend All About Love for any college student experiencing loneliness or just looking for a change in perspective. It’s not perfect. At times it feels very prescriptive and heteronormative, and some passages have not aged well. But her chapters on alienation and individualism, grief, and love as action have stuck with me since 2020.
I now find myself 1,227 miles away from home, once again in school, and while I spend a lot of time alone, I am not lonely.
- Jamari Bass
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
A new school year means a new set of never-ending assignments, places to be, people to see, while pretending to have some semblance of a work-life balance. Despite the chaos, I try to have at least one book on standby in case I decide to take a break from doomscrolling. If I could only recommend one book for everyone to read, especially while in college, it would be James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. I first read this novel during the spring of my freshman year for my introductory gender studies course, and it quickly became one of my favorites. Baldwin’s depiction of David, the novel’s protagonist, and his inner struggle with his identity is so visceral that I couldn’t bring myself to look away. Baldwin brilliantly captures the complexities of the heart through his prose. He writes, “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” His writing manages to express the whole scale of emotions ranging from the pinnacle of ecstasy to the deepest pits of despair. It is a gut-wrenchingly elegant novel that will leave you wondering if there is anything you can say to even fully express Baldwin’s greatness.
- Allison Blair
The Aeneid by Virgil
My first time reading Virgil’s Aeneid was in high school. I was assigned the Roman epic so as to better learn about Latin translation. It made enough of an impression that my senior yearbook quote, reflecting on a high school experience shaped by COVID, was the famous line “Perhaps someday it will be pleasing to remember even these things.” It’s been an Odyssey summer, but I highly recommend an Aeneid autumn.
Translating the Aeneid was like every other time I’ve tried to translate something long: impossible at first, and then a process that speeds up as I begin to understand the author’s preferred turns of phrase and their attitudes. As I painstakingly wound my way through, Aeneas escaped from the fiery ruins of Troy and was tossed by fate across the Mediterranean from Carthage to Italy. Unlike wily Odysseus, Aeneas’s main trait is his faithfulness to his duty, which leads to faithlessness to the men who die under his command and the women who fall in love with him. He must press onwards towards the destiny his gods dictate: an arrival to Italy, where his descendants will found Rome. There’s no sparkling ending. Instead, the poem is left unfinished by the death of its author. After the last lines, I had to accept the lack of satisfaction with no loose ends tied up and instead wrapped myself in the beauty of the poem’s underworld, its cities, and its warfare.
- Riona Duncan
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
When I was a first-year undergraduate, my mother’s sister (the designated “Cool Aunt”) gave me her copy of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, a foundational text for practitioners of Zen meditation. I had been lamenting the chaotic pace of my collegiate lifestyle, feeling drained and fantasizing about days filled with simple routines. I was convinced that minimalism and meditation might assuage my angst. My aunt had dabbled, occasionally attending temple down the road from her trendy Chicago apartment, and after hearing my woes, she offhandedly gifted me her Suzuki. “This book really changed my perspective,” she claimed, “and helped me deal with my anxiety. It might be helpful for you.” To my shame, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind has sat virtually unopened on my nightstand since. Sometimes, I throw it in my bag while packing for a trip, envisioning an ideal self that reads Zen philosophy while waiting to board a flight, rather than absentmindedly scrolling. But that version of me has yet to actualize.
Historically, I’ve approached academics with confidence–but as the new school year gets underway, I find myself challenged by classes, new projects at work, and developments in my personal life. Graduate school is unfamiliar and difficult. Sharing my writing is, at best, productively vulnerable–but often a little humiliating. I feel more unsure of my future than ever. The other day, mired in anxious ruminations, I was compelled to toss Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind in my backpack before embarking on my morning bus ride. I can now proudly say I’ve skimmed a few dusty pages, and while the bit of reading I’ve done hasn’t quite revolutionized my life like I hoped, “beginner’s mind” has been a conceptual panacea to my anxious and self-doubting inner dialogue. When I feel stupid, underqualified, or like an imposter, I assure myself that I’m simply a beginner, and when you’re a beginner, you always have potential to grow into something better.
- Alexander Johnson
Utopia (Literature & Politics) by Duncan Bell and Douglas Mao
Has the utopian dream been co-opted by radical technocrats in Silicon Valley? Duncan Bell and Douglas Mao would argue so, with radical implications to their accusation. In Utopia (Literature & Politics) released this year from the Oxford University Press, Bell and Mao make the case that “dystopian fiction” is effectively a construct of the new elite. It is an adulteration of the anti-utopia, which is already an adulteration of utopia itself. In my sophomore year of university, I took a course on banned books. Most of the books in the curriculum were dystopian in nature, including The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984. After a certain age, adult people need to ask adult questions of their adult world: What is the fixation, in a literary sense, in toppling a society which is almost comically evil? Why have readers abandoned exploring the utopian instead of perseverating in the dystopian?? What does any of this have to do with neoliberalism, space travel, nuclear war and the timeless hope of all billionaires to eventually live forever? Over the span of a crisp one hundred and forty-four pages, divided into two chapters, Bell and Mao present some answers. They also cite a corpus of essential reading, which is always pleasant to see—at least from a completionist’s perspective.
- Stephen Makin
Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono
When I started grad school, I thought that was the end of my obsession with magic. I no longer needed fairies or knights to save me from the humdrum of classrooms and household chores. The magic I sought would instead come from my ability to choose: to choosewhat classes I would take. To choose to always get takeout. To choose who I want to be.
At least, that’s what I thought was supposed to happen. But instead, I realized how unprepared I was. Everyone I met seemed to know exactly what to do with this newfound power of choice: they knew how to dress, how to smile, how to speak to professors and classmates. They had spent years tending to their gardens while I had no greenery to speak of.
The only thing that gave me peace was Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono. I was inspired by Kiki’s journey as a fledgling witch in Koriko. Her ability to fly didn’t make her immune to uncertainty or fear. And instead of being consumed by her doubts, she pushed herself to meet new people, try new things, and make mistakes along the way.
In the introduction, Kadono writes, “I’ve come to believe that everyone has some type of magic inside them. If a person can find their magic and lovingly cultivate it, they’ll truly feel alive every day.” I entered grad school expecting to know exactly who I was supposed to be. Kiki’s Delivery Service told me that this wasn’t true. Perhaps what’s special is the journey towards becoming who I want to be—and perhaps that journey is what Kadono meant by magic all along.
- Saty Mukherjee
The Five-Minute Linguist by Caroline Myrick and Walt Wolfram
The book I want to recommend to every college student (and everyone in general) is The Five-Minute Linguist (3rd Edition), edited by Caroline Myrick and Walt Wolfram. Robert Rodman, the author of the first chapter, begins the book by saying, “Language is universal, and each of us is a kind of expert in using the language we were raised speaking, but there’s a lot more to language than what we use in everyday life, and it raises a lot of fascinating questions.” I believe that linguistics is one of the most understudied and undertaught subjects in higher education. Language underpins every part of our daily lives. Studying the structure of language can help fill the gaps in many places. Personally, the area in which linguistics has helped me the most is in the studying of foreign languages. Having the tools to dissect the structure and sound system of language has made it easier to grasp foreign grammatical concepts and sounds. The Five-Minute Linguist contains more than 60 chapters, each no more than five pages long, that serve as jumping-off points for various linguistic topics, including animal language, sign language, linguistic structure, language acquisition, and language evolution. Each chapter also provides resources for further reading if the topic is especially interesting to you. My favorite chapter is “Where did English come from?” by John Algeo. It dives into the history of English, recounting the history of the world’s current lingua franca. This book is a great introduction to many different parts of linguistics, and I think there’s something in it for everybody.
- Eliot Polikowski
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell
One does not simply sit down and make a list of every instance in their life where they’ve almost died. But perhaps they should. The importance of life cannot be understood without the conversation of death. Maggie O’Farrell understood that well. In I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death, we see not just seventeen memories that almost ended in tragedy, but seventeen moments in which a lesson was learned, each reshaping her without her permission. As she puts it, “If you are aware of these moments, they will alter you. You can try to forget them, to turn away from them, to shrug them off, but they will have infiltrated you, whether you like it or not.” College is supposed to be the place that asks you to sit in the discomfort. I say ask instead of teach or help, because truthfully, life will come at you unexpectedly, sometimes in ways that will make it flash before your eyes. But also in ways that will make you stronger than you knew you could be. The line between being alive and being gone is thin. O’Farrell’s memoir shows that in the realest form–it refuses tidy meaning, refuses to turn survival into a lesson with a bow on it. It just asks you to notice. To be present. And to never look back on a memory, even a life-altering one, with just ache.
- Hailey Price
Educated by Tara Westover
If there’s any book that despite being about fundamentalist Mormon survivalism and scrap metal that will be incredibly gripping, and maybe even make you cry, so it’s Tara Westover’s Educated. Westover asks how education changes a person wholly and how far somebody would be willing to push for education even if it means distancing yourself from everything they once found familiar – even if that familiarity becomes nearly impossible to confront. What caught me so much about Westover’s unexpected educational path is how it was an invitation to myself to say “I don’t know,” to be confused blatantly and still be on the right track. I never thought confusion could be worn like a badge until I read her memoir. My dad always told me that not knowing was the entire point of school: that’s what you go to school for, sitting there and not knowing. Educated helped me internalize his point. When you’re finally given that breath of I don’t know and I don’t have to right this second, it’s freeing. Westover’s journey exemplifies sitting in that unknown in such a real and personal way with intentionality in every description. One of my favorite parts from the book still sits in my chest every time I hesitate to admit my I don’t knows aloud: “To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frailty, but in this frailty there is a strength: the conviction to live in your own mind, and not in someone else’s.” What better way is there to approach the daunting world of college than knowing that not knowing is where we begin?
- Violet Shields
The Secret History by Donna Tart
Whether you want your first-year college experience to be running and dancing in the forest naked with your friends performing an ancient Greek ritual or not, The Secret History by Donna Tartt is a must-read. When the leaves become orange and red, and the air develops that cool crisp, the recommendations for this book become ever more run rampant, and rightfully so. Described as a modern-day Greek tragedy, a group of classics-obsessed college students descend into a state of madness after a terrible accident has struck the group. Tartt begins the novel with “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” Although none of the characters have particularly admirable traits, their eccentric personalities absolutely envelope the reader. At times, it’s almost easy to forget the poor moral compasses of the characters, because Tartt is able to weave a sort of hypnosis with her writing, that lulls you into the book, almost as if you are a part of their “cult.” Reading Tartt’s first novel, it makes you wonder whether you should befriend the Greek obsessed students on your own campus just to see what will happen.
- Cassandra Skebeck
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
I always find it difficult to choose just one book for questions like these, but after much deliberation, I decided on The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.
I first read The Outsiders in sophomore year of college, also during what felt like the infinite time continuum of the early 2020’s – the COVID era. I was binge-watching Gilmore Girls at the time, and I challenged myself to read all the books on Rory’s list, The Outsiders being one of them. After the countless classic novels I read in advanced English classes in high school, I had been subject to a severe reading slump, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get back the spark I used to feel when reading books for leisure.
Originally, we were supposed to read The Outsiders in high school, but never got around to it because we spent an unconscionable amount of time on things like symbolism in The Scarlet Letter and debating whether or not Gene from A Separate Peace was a vampire.
That book was an epiphany for me, as it was perhaps the first I had read since high school that I thoroughly enjoyed. I realized that Hinton’s book functions as not only a drama about teens learning to navigate their youth, but also a social commentary on some aspects of 1960s history. It tackles themes that continue to be relevant to today’s world like social polarization and the importance of maintaining one’s identity, as well as the implications of having to part with childhood innocence and face a new reality. It goes to show that history seems to repeat itself, and while discrimination based on financial status is less common, economic privilege is a very real thing.
Needless to say, The Outsiders is the break one may need and rightly deserves from the typical, flowery literary fiction that is assigned in school. Tears may or may not be shed.
- Isabel Weaver
