Recommended by Madison Williams.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles follows Gene Forrester, a 16 year old boy attending a prestigious boarding school during World War II. The novel details his close friendship with fellow boarder Finny. Their friendship quickly evolves from mutual admiration to intense rivalry culminating in a shocking event that explores the idea of moral ambiguity.…

To celebrate Black History Month, Dr. Nancy Comorau (the resident postcolonial specialist of Sturges) teamed up with Kirsten Whitford and Carrie Kubicki (the resident Instagram gurus of Sturges) to share a book by a Black author every few days.

Books ranged from plays by Afro-Carribian British actors to volumes of poetry about being a Jamaican woman in the US to nonfiction works by journalists investigating the Black Lives Matter movement.…

When I entered my Modern British Literature course with Dr. Hipsky, I was expecting to read works that were written with the express purpose of being different for the sake of being different. After all, the “Modernism” era had a good bit to do with breaking away from traditionally accepted styles. …

Recommended by Madina Sargand

I wanted to read this summer and I love fiction, so when I got an email from Dr. Livingston with a list of recommended books and saw the title The Box Man, I knew this book would be really interesting. The Box Man is a story about a protagonist who quits his identity and the trappings of a normal life to live in a cardboard box: he wants to become a box man.…

Recommended by Emily Shpiece

The play is a retelling of Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly in which a French ambassador, Rene Gallimard, falls in love with opera star Song Liling. They meet after Gallimard sees Liling portray the title role in Puccini’s opera and, inspired by his womanizing friend, Gallimard begins to test the limits of Liling’s confidence and pride believing that she, a Chinese woman, will eventually bend to his domineering Western position.…

Recommended by Elizabeth Anderson

I read this novel on the back porch of my childhood home in a sleepy  suburb of the Pacific Northwest over the summer, and was struck by the nearby history that I had never learned. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is based on and takes place during the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle; its take on the historical facts of the event is painted by Yapa’s poignant, lyrical phrasing.…

Recommended by Jordan Waterwash

Christopher Moore’s ability to transform history into fantastical comedies completely mystifies me every time I read one of his books. Sacré Bleu is no exception. I’ve always been a fan of art, so it seemed natural for me to read what I thought would be an interesting tale about the lives of made-up artists during the Impressionist period.…

Recommended by Anna Davies

I’m always fascinated by how childhood, adolescence and the transition to the workforce is viewed in different cultures, and I’ve wanted to read Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha for quite some time. I picked up my copy for two pounds at an Oxfam shop while abroad, and finally had some time to read over break.…

Recommended by Catharine Boyle

I recently read The Kite Runner. People have been recommending it to me since I was in high school so I finally read it and found it has become one of my favorite books. It tells the story of two very close friends named Amir and Hassan.…

Recommended by Professor Allison

In his dystopian novel The Circle (2013), Dave Eggers casts a skeptical eye on Silicon Valley messianism. The breathless self-importance, the self-satisfied (and superficial) cosmopolitanism, the naïve faith in a technological fix for humankind’s every ill—Eggers knows his target, and his criticisms are as thought-provoking as they are funny.…