2009 Winter Book Recommendations from the Faculty
January 05 2009
Sometimes, you just want a guaranteed good read. When you're far from home, adventuring in a new place, that may be doubly true.
Fortunately for Bennington students—who travel across the country and the globe each winter for Field Work Term, Bennington's annual seven-week internship period—Oceana Wilson has them covered.
Wilson is the director of library and information services at Bennington, and a few years ago, she began a tradition. She emailed the faculty with a simple request: “I’m looking for winter reading recommendations for students—the kind of books you would recommend to a friend.”
The faculty responded. Every year since then, they've created a rich and varied list of must-read recommendations—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, and more. And just in case you're looking for a few good reads of your own, we're delighted to share them with you.
Barbara Alfano
- Silk by Alessandro Baricco
David Anderegg
David's "all poetry, all the time" recommendations:
- The Book of Psalms: a Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter. "Even if you are not a fan of religious poetry, the footnotes on the art of translation are riveting."
- The Mad Song by Michael Schiavo. "He is a recent Bennington MFA [graduate]; the book has the look and feel of a contemporary version of Ginsberg's Howl."
- Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. "Breathtaking; a modern/classical novel in verse."
Steven Bach
- Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama. "Regardless of politics, one of the most beautifully written American autobiographies I have ever read."
- Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. "A brilliant evocation of the beginnings of World War I, the war that ushered in the 20th century."
Doug Bauer
- Nothing is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn by Alice Mattison
Tom Bergeron
- Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut
- Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President by James Hatfield
Kitty Brazelton
- Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889-1895 by Lynn Abbott & Doug Seroff
- Ragged but Right : Black Traveling Shows, "Coon Songs," and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz by Lynn Abbott & Doug Seroff
Ron Cohen
- Deaf Sentence: A Novel by David Lodge
- Closed Minds? : Politics and Ideology in American Universities by Bruce L. R. Smith, Jeremy D. Mayer, & A. Lee Fritschler
- Experiments in Ethics: Mary Flexner Lecture Series of Bryn Mawr College by Kwame Anthony Appiah
Annabel Davis-Goff
- Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane
- Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes
Kathleen Dimmick
- Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints by Joan Acocella
Karen Gover
- The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property by Lewis Hyde
Dan Hofstadter
"Two about Brooklyn:"
- Low Company by Daniel Fuchs
- Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Kline
- Towards a Philosophy of Photography by Vilem Flusser
- The Meaning of Photography by Clark Studies in the Visual Arts
- Photography, A Very Short Introduction by Steve Edwards
- The Short Story & Photography by Jane Rabb
- Literature & Photography by Jane Rabb
George Lopez
- Report to Greco by Nikos Kazantzakis
- A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Mary Lum
- Öyvind Fahlström : Another Space for Painting by Manuel J. Borja-Villel, Jean-François Chevrier, and Immanuel Wallerstein
Andrew McIntyre
- Symmetry: a Journey in the Patterns of Nature by Marcus DuSautoy
- Dreams of a Final Theory: a Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws by Steven Weinberg
Carol Meyer
- A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin. "Alessandro Giuliani recounts his experiences in WWI, providing both horrifying and captivating perspectives on war, love and fate told with such beauty that there were sentences that I would read and re-read."
Chris Miller
- Confessions of Zeno (aka Zeno's Conscience) by Italo Svevo
- Theories of Everything by Roz Chast
- The Bab Ballads by W.S. Gilbert
- Laughter: A Scientific Investigation by Robert R. Provine
- The Tunnel by Russell Edson
Randall Neal
- Sounding Art : Eight Literary Excursions Through Electronic Music by Katharine Norman
Carol Pal
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. "Everyone should read this."
- Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe. "Very deep, very dark. Science fiction by a writer who is in love with words."
- Free Enterprise : A Novel Of Mary Ellen Pleasant by Michelle Cliff. "A wonderful reimagining of a piece of American history. The novel blends the real character of Mary Ellen Pleasant, an extremely successful black businesswoman from California, with the raid on Harper's Ferry, and a Jamaican abolitionist, and...it's great!"
Ann Pibal
- Song for the Blue Ocean by Carl Safina
- Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur by Carl Safina
Mirka Prazak
- What is the What by Dave Eggers
Donald Sherefkin
- The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
- Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler
Betsy Sherman
- How to be Good by Nick Hornby
- Spending: a Utopian Divertimento by Mary Gordon
- The Magus by John Fowles
Kerry Woods
"Both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln celebrate a 200th birthday on 12 February—or, rather, we should celebrate their joint birthday by reading stuff by and about them. There's a lot of very good stuff to read."
Darwin:
- Charles Darwin : A Biography by Janet Browne. "Magisterial doesn't even begin to describe this work, but it's a good read as well—especially the first volume (up to publication of The Origin in 1859). Browne worked with Fred Burckhardt on the Darwin correspondence project."
- The Reluctant Mr. Darwin by David Quammen. "Shorter, more accessible and more idiosyncratic, but Quammen is always good."
- Anything by Darwin: "especially Voyage of the Beagle, On the Origin of Species (these are good reading quite aside from historical value)."
Lincoln:
- Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. "I probably listed this last year, but I think one of the best recent comprehensive studies of Lincoln as politician and president."
- Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words by Douglas L. Wilson. "Lincoln as orator and speechwriter and rhetorician."
- Abraham Lincoln : The Prairie Years And The War Years by Carl Sandburg. "Pure hagiography, but it's Sandburg..."
- Lincoln : A Novel by Gore Vidal. "What it says, but fun."
- Lincoln by David Herbert Donald. "Probably the authoritative biography, but not as fun as some others."