Are you EVER going to read that?

Check out some tales you might’ve missed along the way

Sometimes, life gets busy, and the latest bestseller languishes on your nightstand for a year. Or two. Or a decade. Or two. That’s OK! We asked around campus for book recommendations and found some timehonored titles, including books by a former First Lady, some pop science (from 2011), and a memoir by a ’90s actor. Or, if you’re looking for trouble, we’ve got a book called “Trouble” (published in 2008). Need something lighter? The Elephant and Piggie series (which began in 2007) might be your style. Want something heavier than an elephant? There’s a whale of tale that’s been waiting for you since 1851. The next book you read doesn’t have to be new to be great.

In ‘Trouble’ there’s grace

A car crash told from two perspectives

Right now, I am rereading “Trouble” by Gary Schmidt. This book is about a wealthy New England family navigating a tragic accident their son was in. The first line of this book is, “If you build your house far enough away from trouble, trouble will never find you.”

The first half of the book is centered around the youngest son Henry not being able to believe that something so tragic could happen to his family. I love books like this for many reasons, but the main one is I love seeing deep moral observations articulated through fiction.

Just like many Americans, the family in this book tried to buy their way into peace. Every difficult situation that came their way was fixable with good doctors, good schools and good tutors. Their social and economic capital had created a false reality for them. When they were confronted with the horror that happens in the second chapter, it shakes them to the core because they thought they were immune to tragedy.

I love this book because I think it illustrates beautifully the way many American Christians tend to build their lives and, subsequently, their theology. Just like the family in the book, our theology is often untouchable by the realities we build. They are so racially segregated that our ideas about reconciliation seldom change anything significant about our congregations. We often intentionally segment our lives so the social aspects of our faith never touch anything we do daily. We have built our theology “far away from trouble” just like the family in the book.

I think this book speaks to that mistake, and I am always drawn to books like that. The lessons the family learns throughout particularly the youngest son Henry can be applicable to my life and perhaps many others.

–Alessandra LaGeorge '27, public relations

We often intentionally segment our lives so the social aspects of our faith never touch anything we do daily. We have built our theology ‘far away from trouble’ just like the family in the book.

–Alessandra LaGeorge ’27, public relations

Shared sense of humanity

Books with a powerful narrative

For me, reading is like looking through a window and being captivated by a view that you did not even know was there until you opened the curtains and peered through the glass. I always gravitate toward books with a powerful narrative about what it means to be human. I love listening to the stories of others, particularly when they delve into the complexities of life, namely human suffering, and highlight the journey toward healing and hope. A shared sense of humanity evidenced through the lens of diverse perspectives and experiences always causes me to reflect on my own life, purpose and place in the world. After reading a powerful true story, I’m often left in awe of the Creator and His faithfulness across, people, time, environment, nation and culture. (For a list of books that fit this theme, please look to your right.)

These books have humbled me and opened my mind and heart to the lived experiences of others that are different than my own. They have taught me to care deeply, listen well and love more fully.

–Marcelle Giovannetti, vice provost of student success and engagement, assistant professor

A READING LIST OF LIVED EXPERIENCE

“Becoming” by Michelle Obama

“Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood” by Trevor Noah

“I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban” by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb

“The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates” by Wes Moore

“Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” by Isabel Wilkerson

“Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson

“The Sun Does Shine” by Anthony Ray Hinton

“The Souls of Black Folk” by W.E.B. Du Bois

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou

“No Future Without Forgiveness” by Desmond Tutu

“The Hiding Place” by Corrie ten Boom

“Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith” by Anne Lamott

‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’

Want to read about behavioral economics?

I want to improve the internal dialogue that leads my life down one path as opposed to another.

–Dan Custer ’09, M.A. ’14, assistant director of institutional research

I gravitate toward books about human behavior and decision making. Often, we behave in ways that seem rational in the moment but, with hindsight, are regrettable. I’m curious about this subject on two levels. One, on a personal level, I want to improve the internal dialogue that leads my life down one path as opposed to another. Two, on a professional level as an analyst, I strive to minimize the errors in the models I create and maximize the utility of the information I provide for institutional decision making.

“Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman fed both aims for me. Kahneman was a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work summarized in this book, which served as one of the foundations for the field of behavioral economics. Sadly, Kahneman passed away in March. The book illustrates how the brain approaches decision making and then lays out key ways in which it systematically errs and therefore can be accounted for to improve decision making. Kahneman describes two systems in the brain: one that is fast, reactive and prone to errors, and one that is slow(er), calculated and easily persuaded by its counterpart. This imbalance can lead to systematic errors in judgement and decision making. For example, the “fast” system often substitutes difficult questions that are more suited for the “slow” system for easier ones (e.g., “How happy are you right now?” is answered instead of the more involved question, “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life?”). This aptly named “substitution error” may seem harmless unless the answer to the actual, more difficult question differs.

Kahneman shows that by the time the “slow” system of thinking has time to catch up, the “fast” system often has already moved on to the next task at hand, cementing this initial, possibly incorrect impression. Once you see examples of this or one of the other systematic errors in decision making in your own life, it is difficult to unsee them. When identified in real-time, we can then use one of the many strategies Kahneman describes to improve decision making.

If you find this book interesting, I suggest checking out two more. Michael Lewis’ “The Undoing Project” chronicles the lives of Kahneman and his long-time co-researcher Amos Tversky. Another excellent related book is Richard Thaler’s “Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics,” which describes the development of a new (and heretical at the time) branch of economics that emerged in part due to Kahneman and Tversky’s groundbreaking work summarized in “Thinking, Fast and Slow.”

–Dan Custer ’09, M.A. ’14, assistant director of institutional research

‘Moby-Dick’

is waiting for you

People usually laugh when I tell them “Moby-Dick” is my favorite book. Sometimes they think they’re laughing with me, because “obviously” I’ve made a very funny joke. In this case, I point them to the large, framed print that hangs above the mantle in my living room: the image of a white whale created by the negative space against a sea and sky of almost microscopically tiny blue letters spelling out the novel’s first 15 chapters. Other times, however, people laugh at me, because they know I’m serious.

Listen, I get it. “Moby-Dick" is a weird book. I’ll allow that a 600-page story of a peglegged captain’s monomaniacal quest to exact revenge on the great white whale that stole his leg is a little intense. And interruptions to the novel’s plot in the form of entire chapters about whale anatomy and essays about the philosophy of whaling don’t endear “Moby-Dick” to most readers. Many of us were assigned this Herman Melville classic at some point along our educational journey, but how many of us actually read it let alone liked it?

Its early readers didn’t like it either. The book was a commercial failure when it was published in 1851, and it was out of print by the time of Melville’s death. In the 20th century, however, “Moby-Dick” gained popularity and became established as a Great American Novel. In the 21st century, an interdisciplinary course at Franklin & Marshall College called Religion and “Moby-Dick” changed my mind, too. I have come to agree with D.H. Lawrence, who called it “one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world.”

Though its primary setting is the sea, “Moby-Dick” isn’t a beach read. Rather, it is a book to inhabit for a season, as you’re immersed in its religious imagery and layers of meaning. Melville’s evocative prose invites readers to consider the metaphysical implications of the text, exploring themes like language, power, race, Transcendentalism, imperialism, colonialism, technology, gender, individual freedom, original sin, death and salvation.

So, here’s my challenge: dust off that old high school copy of “Moby-Dick” (or pick one up at the library), grab a few friends who aren’t afraid to swim in the literary deep end and dive in together.

–Emily Bingham, director of campus ministries

Moby-Dick’ isn’t a beach read. Rather, it is a book to inhabit for a season, as you’re immersed in its religious imagery and layers of meaning.

–Emily Bingham, director of campus ministries

Make friends with memoirs

Matthew Perry’s book reveals common thread

When he died later that year, I thought how odd that this book fell into my hands and how odd that I felt some sort of kinship because of our solo plane rides as children.

–Anna Seip, MBA ’24, editor

My husband bikes to work every day. On his commute home, he stops at Little Free Libraries and picks out books he thinks I’d like. Last spring, he handed me a copy of Matthew Perry’s “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.” I’d never been a huge “Friends” fan, and Perry was probably my least favorite person on the show. But, through his autobiography, I learned that he’d spent a lot of time alone on planes as a child, shuffling between his two divorced parents. He’d wanted to call the book “Unaccompanied Minor,” but the publishers wanted “Friends” in the title instead. I, too, used to fly alone as a kid, because my dad worked for the airlines, and I thought it was glamorous to go visit my grandparents on a whim. Perry and I had something in common, but we had very different perspectives of it. When he died later that year, I thought, how odd that this book fell into my hands and how odd that I felt some sort of kinship because of our solo plane rides as children."

Out of the 51 books I read last year, 15 of them were some sort of memoir, autobiography or biography. They draw me in, and I always reach for that genre. In “Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You,” singer Lucinda Williams wrote unflinchingly of her Southern Gothic childhood in New Orleans. The biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rowlings, author of Pulitzer Prize-winner “The Yearling,” described boozy afternoons with F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Florida orange groves and fishing in Bimini with Ernest Hemingway. Langston Hughes’ memoir “Big Sea” took me all over the world from Paris to Macon, Georgia. I loved joining them for the ride.

Reading allows us to live several lives. Learning about someone else’s experience, especially if it’s very different than my own, forces me to focus on just this person, in a way I might not in a back-and-forth, faceto-face conversation. In every book, I find some sort of common ground no matter how small and that makes me feel more connected to everyone as we go through life.

–Anna Seip, MBA ’24, editor