Looking for literary love? The OWU English Department has you covered. Blind Date With a Book is an annual Spring semester event for bookworms of any majors. It is coordinated by the English Department Student Board and Beeghly Library and is in its second year. Books beloved by students and English faculty are pulled from the library stacks, wrapped up like gifts and placed around the library’s Bayley Room with notecards of description on them. If a student is intrigued, they unwrap the book at the end of the event and check it out.
Read on for English faculty members’ book descriptions from this year’s event!
Photo credit: Reader’s Digest.
Old fashioned Southern Gentleman seeking someone of either sex who can help me to forget my sister. Do you have Time for me? (The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner).
Interested in spending some time in an Italian villa in the countryside with a young Indian soldier, a young Canadian nurse and a mysterious European burn victim? Watch the Axis powers retreat as you consider relationships, beauty, memory and loss with this wayward crew. (The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje).
Photo credit: NPR.
Mystery slips into conspiracy, and conspiracy gives way to something even darker. If you want a strange psychological thriller that digs into the monstrous movies of a reclusive cult filmmaker, I’m yours. (Night Film by Marisha Pessl).
Goldfinger? He’s got nothing on on me. True, I’m not a Bond villain–just a hard-boiled, blue-collar Chicago guy with a steady hand (and a bad habit…). (The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren).
Dear Reader, I hesitate to recommend myself, abandoned as I have been by the women in my life, my students (with the exception of those seeking letters of recommendation for everything from prestigious fellowships to part-time positions in backwater institutions whose relationship to higher learning seems dubious at best), the administration at my university and, apparently, my colleagues, who have decamped, leaving our building to the not-so-tender mercies of the crew which is remodeling the upper floor into a veritable Versailles for the Economics Department. However, I’ve been given to understand by a host of sycophants (see above) that I write a superb letter of recommendation, which in itself seems a not inconsiderable recommendation. (Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher).
Boy grows up amongst strife-torn Sri Lanka. Boy meets boy. Boy falls in love. (Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai).
Photo credit: Amazon.
There’s a part of the world where the old rules have ended, where everything is changing, where nothing you see can be trusted. If you want to read about a group of scientists exploring the inexplicable and the terrifying, I’m the one for you. (Area X by Jeff VanderMeer).
You think your family is weird? (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris).
Ever wonder how the small and the everyday can stand with or beside the grand narratives? Who writes our history? How do we remember? Choose me to explore the gap between rhetoric and reality with beauty and grace. (In a Time of Violence by Eavan Boland).
Me: Multi-dimensional, a little nerdy and unafraid of numbers. You: Adventurous and fun-loving, but with a clear sense of your own boundaries. (Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott).
Race, class, power and geography unfold in this scientific mystery. An unknown (and true) story that has affected your life in many ways. (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot).
Am I a gothic romance? A horror-tinged domestic drama? An acidic critique of man’s fear of powerful women? Depends on who you ask. Just, whatever you do, don’t ask my husband about the woman who came before me. (Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier).
Dyke with screwed-up family seeking soulmate with same. Let’s compare notes or drawings. (Fun Home by Allison Bechdel).
It’s not Halloween yet, but it’s always a good time for something eerie. My short stories about madness, chance encounters and women pushing at the boundaries of societal acceptance will have you gasping, sometimes with shock, sometimes with laughter. (The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson).
For more book recommendations and event notifications, follow OWU English Department (@owuenglishdepartment) on Instagram.