6 T hings About BB&N:
Our Faculty Recommend Some Summer [4] Reading
[ ONE ] Rob Leith, Upper School English teacher: Middlemarch, by George Eliot I think Middlemarch is the greatest novel in the English language (which I taught this past year in my senior elective “The Greatest”). For most of the reading public Middlemarch is not a typical summer read, not a book that easily withstands the grit of a sandy beach or the grime of hands greasy with sunblock. But for the right kind of reader, most easily identified as someone who enjoys Jane Austen’s work, Middlemarch will be an enormous and unforgettable treat—and one that rewards multiple readings too.
[ TWO ] Mark Lindberg, Upper School theater teacher: Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace This novel by the late David Foster Wallace is a little daunting for a summer read. But if you can stay with it for 100 pages, you’ll get hooked, revel in the descriptions of Greater Boston and Cambridge (it almost mentions BB&N), and be forever in my debt.
[ THREE ] Linda Kaufman, faculty emerita/Upper School history: Just Kids, by Patti Smith Much shorter and different in every way from more established literature is this memoir by Patti Smith. She and Robert Mapplethorpe were a young couple in New York City—they both went on to considerable renown, but she writes about their time together in the early ‘60s in Greenwich Village when they were each discovering their talents. I know this is hardly a “book review” term, but it is a sweet story. (And probably not what anyone would expect me to recommend!) ex
[ FOUR ] Lynda Dugas, Lower School librarian: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, by Timothy Egan Being a New Englander, I never grasped the scope and extreme environmental devastation of the Dust Bowl years. The author captures the heartbreaking yet not spirit-breaking stories by following some families through this period. Did you know that some of the dust clouds reached NYC and other Eastern cities? Given the environmental disasters and climate change we are experiencing today, I guess this would be my pick. Very readable, hard to put down, and unforgettable.
[ FIVE ] Bill Rogers, Middle School history teacher: World Lit Only by Fire, by William Manchester Perhaps the best single book I can remember reading. Manchester is one of the great popular historians of the last 100 years, and this trip through the Middle Ages has both remarkable research and compelling storytelling. If I were teaching college, I would assign it. Basic knowledge of the Middle Ages and Catholic Church is helpful, but not required.
[ SIX ] Parrish Dobson, Upper School photography teacher: Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann On August 7, 1974, Phillipe Petit, French tightrope walker extraordinaire, walked between the two towers of the World Trade center in what The New York Times called an “unsanctioned act of divine delight.” In McCann’s novel, a variety of characters from across all sectors of life in NYC, whose lives are full of grief, accident, tragedy, loneliness, and love, make their way through the gravity of their lives touching their own moments of grace. And the documentary film about Petit, Man on a Wire, is a mesmerizing portrait of an artist. 88