Summer Reading Recommendations

Summer days can be dull and boring when there is nothing to do. That’s why we have compiled a list of faculty book recommendations to read over the summer. Take them to the river, to the pool, to the park or just read them on the couch. In any setting, they are guaranteed entertainment.

“Song Yet Sung” by James McBride

Price: From $4.57 on Amazon.com

Set in 1850 antebellum Maryland, “The Song Yet Sung” tells the story of Liz Spocott, a runaway slave who has the ability to see into the future, forseeing everything from Martin Luther King, Jr. to today’s transforming hip-hop. Liz sees how her people will not be free, and even after the abolitionist movement they will still be trapped in their culture. Her only hope is the vision of a man who will sing the “song yet sung” and will set them all free.

“It’s a unique story that allows us to experience pre-Civil War realities while commenting upon the world in which we currently live through Liz’s attempts to make sense of her visions of the future,” Associate Professor of Africana studies and English Novian Whitsitt said. “It’s a page-turner.”

“The Girl Who Played With Fire” by Stieg Larsson

Price: From $4.12 on Amazon.com

The second book of the trilogy Millenium, this novel tells the story of journalist Mikael Blomkvist as he works on an exposé story about sex trafficking in Sweden. Lisbeth Salander, a computer hacker who was repeatedly abused as a child, gains access to Blomkvist’s hard drive and tries to take into her own hands the revenge of the victims in Blomkvist’s exposé. After Salander is accused of three murders, the journalist tries to find her and clear her name.

“I’ll spend an entire Sunday reading a whole book [from the trilogy],” KWLC General Manager Jennifer Cantine said.

“Out Stealing Horses” by Per Petterson

Price: From $5.74 on Amazon.com

Trond Sander, a 70-year-old man dwelling in self-imposed exile in the eastern edge of Norway fights with his memories of the past. After meeting his neighbor, Trond begins to remember a summer in 1948 when his friend Jon proposed that they go steal horses. Trond reflects on the fragility of life while he unfolds secrets about his father, who was in World War II and disappeared.

“This is an elegant, haunting story of parent and child,”Dean William Craft said.

“Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann

Price: From $8.36 on Amazon.com

This novel takes place in New York City, illustrating a day in 1974 in the intertwining lives of an artist, an Irish monk, a Park Avenue mother to only name a few things. Another aspect threading the book together is a tightrope walk between the World Trade Center Towers based on the “art crime of the century” by French tightrope walker Phillipe Petit.Rather than focusing on Petit, the novel focuses on the people down below—the beauty, tenderness and violence found in their ordinary lives. Another piece of the book depicts two more lives that crash down, which the author calls his “Twin Towers,” and the rebuilding of those lives.

“A recent Luther grad now living in NYC read this on my recommendation and did back flips (figuratively speaking), she loved this so much,” Professor of English Amy Weldon said.