Summer reading list includes novels celebrating a centenary, new titles that explore the classics and a book about speaking to snakes.
COLUMBIA, KY. (05/29/2025) Memorial Day is the unofficial marker of summer, and it’s also when many turn their attention to a summer reading list to accompany them on vacation or while enjoying the longer hours of natural light.
Members of the Lindsey Wilson College School of Arts and Humanities faculty have assembled a diverse — and verified — list of authors and titles they either plan to read or recommend to anyone looking for summer reading recommendations.
Included in the list are one of this summer’s big books, classics that you might have neglected or put off, murder mystery series, novels that were the basis for popular films, and a well-known author’s lesser-known work. Regardless, there is more than enough to read long after the final coal in the grill has burned out and all of the fireworks have launched.
Rereading classic and modern titles
English professor Kerry Robertson was inspired to reread Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women after watching the musical adaptation of the 19th century novel performed in April by the Lindsey Wilson Theatre Department. Then she plans to turn to contemporary crime stories.
“I think I will start reading my way through Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins detective series,” said Robertson. “The first, Devil in a Blue Dress, was made into a movie with Denzel Washington as Easy. The movie was good, but the books are much better.”
History professor Elizabeth Tapscott rereads Betty Smith’s semi-autobiographical A Tree Grows in Brooklyn every year. Tapscott calls the 1943 novel, which tells the story of growing up in poverty from the perspective of a child through a collection of vignettes, an “often-overlooked American classic.”
“Smith paints images that are simultaneously terribly heartbreaking and profoundly beautiful,” said Tapscott. “One of my all-time favorites, I reread this book every year and find something new every time.”
If you have plans to spend time near the water or on a boat, English professor Kendall Sewell has the perfect recommendation — Herman Melville’s epic Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.
As Sewell points out, the closest many readers get to Moby-Dick is patronizing a Starbucks store, whose name was inspired by a character in the 1851 novel.
“I know what most people are thinking: really? That book? This summer?,” said Sewell. “It’s a big one, and trying to tackle it has become something of a joke. I think that’s a mistake, however, because this is not just one of the most innovative novels in American literature but also one of the most rewarding, full of iconic characters and perennially-relevant moral, social and philosophical questions.”
Moby-Dick was also the favorite novel of the late Mark Dunphy, one of Lindsey Wilson’s legendary English professors who Sewell studied under as an undergraduate.
“Dr. Dunphy told me he read Moby-Dick not just once a year but four times a year, once per season,” said Sewell. “Each time, he was fond of saying, he found something new to love.”
Sewell has read Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, four or five times “and it gets richer with every return.” Although Atwood might be better known for her 1985 futuristic dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, her 2003 novel is also about the future. Oryx and Crake is set a few years into the future, featuring an environmentally devastated world where corporations are more powerful than countries and technology that increasingly outpaces social ethics.
“If you dig it, Oryx and Crake is the first novel in a loose trilogy, but you can also read it as a standalone book,” said Sewell.
Summer events, anniversaries and murder
Of course, a summer day is the setting for James Joyce’s Ulysses, which tells the story of three Dubliners over the course of June 16, 1904, in a rewrite of The Odyssey. As English professor Karolyn Steffens notes, Ulysses is “one of the most challenging, rewarding and frequently banned works of 20th century literature.” She recommends tackling The Gabler Edition of the 1922 book, which is regarded as among the greatest novels.
If you want to read Homer’s The Odyssey, Steffens recommends Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of the classic Greek epic by Homer.
“It is fast-paced and incredibly easy to read, making the ancient epic accessible for a whole new generation of students,” she said.
With a new film adaptation by Christopher Nolan starring Matt Damon scheduled to appear in 2026, Steffens said The Odyssey “is speaking to us yet again in our contemporary moment, telling a tale of perseverance, resilience and overcoming the odds.”
Summer is also the setting of most of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which celebrated its centenary in April. History professor Lucas Somers, who recently reread it, said he was reminded “why many consider it among the great American novels.”
“I was also shocked to realize how relevant its messages about class difference and the American Dream remain to our society today,” he said. “Along with being a relatively short read, it tells a story about fancy parties, romance, the underground world of bootleggers, complicated love affairs and murder. What else do you need in a summer book?”
If you would like to read even more about murder, English faculty member Kristyne Gilbert suggests Midwest author Susan Van Kirk of Monmouth, Illinois. Gilbert said that the three titles of Van Kirk’s arts center murder mystery series (Death in a Pale Hue, Death in a Bygone Hue and Death in a Ghostly Hue) and her endurance mystery series (Three May Keep a Secret, A Death at Tippitt Pond, Marry in Haste, Death Takes No Bribes and The Witch’s Child) are all “cozy murder mysteries, well-constructed, quick reads.”
Another book celebrating its centenary in 2025 is Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.
“Joyce’s contemporary, fellow modernist and feminist writer Virginia Woolf responded to Ulysses with her own day-in-the-life, stream of consciousness novel,” said Steffens. “Mrs. Dalloway rewrites The Odyssey and Ulysses but from the perspective of Clarissa Dalloway, a wealthy socialite and shell-shocked World War I veteran Septimus Smith as their paths intersect on a 1923 day in mid-June.”
Steffens said that an accessible and much easier read than Woolf or Joyce is American writer Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel, The Hours, which was turned into an Academy Award-winning film starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.
The Hours rewrites Mrs. Dalloway but traces the life of three women from different eras as they go about their day in mid-June: Virginia Woolf as she writes Mrs. Dalloway in 1924 and struggles with her mental health; 1950s housewife Laura Brown who plans her husband’s birthday party while she struggles with gendered expectations for women; and socialite Clarissa Vaughn who plans a party to celebrate her friend’s poetry as he is dying of AIDS in 1999.
History, nonfiction and speaking Snakish
With the 150th anniversary of the end of Reconstruction two years away, Somers recommends a 1988 classic by Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.
“As a historian of the Reconstruction era, I will always recommend Foner’s Reconstruction to anyone with the free time to digest this 600-page masterpiece of scholarship,” he said. “This book solidified the way historians have interpreted the impact of the American Civil War and the fraught period of Reconstruction that followed for nearly four decades. Foner provides a clear narrative of how the U.S. transitioned to a society without slavery, explains why Reconstruction was a period of revolutionary change, and shows how many of the issues facing the country remain relevant today.”
Somers also recommends Percival Everett’s James: A Novel, the recipient of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
“This was one of my favorite books from the past year,” said Somers. “Everett brilliantly retells the classic story of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the perspective of the enslaved man, Jim. The humor and drama of the story are enough to keep you captivated and on the edge of your seat until the end. But this book by an accomplished scholar also provides a glimpse into antebellum America while allowing the enslaved African-American character to tell his own story.”
Speaking of Twain, few people know the American author better than Robert Brock. That’s because the theatre professor has performed a one-character show of Twain more than five dozen times, including at Twain’s Hartford, Connecticut, home and at the church in Vermont that poet Robert Frost attended.
Brock hopes to learn more about Twain this summer when he reads Mark Twain, a 1,200-page biography by the highly decorated author Ron Chernow.
“At this point I feel like I have spent a long time with Mark Twain and I know my life is richer for it,” said Brock “There are hundreds of things I could point to about him, and none of them put him on a pedestal. For me, he is a model of transformation. He left home when he was young — arrogant in his ignorance, carrying all the flaws, prejudices, and myopia of his upbringing. By widening his experience, he widened his point of view and learned to see the humanity in all the people around him.”
School of Arts and Humanities Allison Smith plans to focus on nonfiction titles this summer.
“I find inspiration in people’s adventures or misadventures,” said Smith, who also teaches English. “They’re great summer reads, too, because they can either inspire you to get off the couch and go find your own trouble, or, for me, they make you feel better about timidly lounging on the beach.”
Smith’s three favorite non-fiction books are Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Into the Wild and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild.
“They say the face of Mount Everest is littered with the bodies of highly motivated people, and Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, which is about the 1996 Everest disaster of which Krakauer was a team member, will explain how that phenomenon so easily happens,” said Smith. “You’ll sleep warmly and soundly under your covers when you finish that one.”
And if you have always wanted to read an Estonian novel, Tapscott has a recommendation: The Man Who Spoke Snakish, published in 2007 by Andros Kivirahk.
“This one is a little more out there,” she said. “Set in the forests of Estonia, in an imaginary medieval past, this is the story of Leemet, a man who is watching his culture and community disappear. With touches of magical realism — including talking snakes and bears — it imagines what it would be like to be the last of your people, standing in the face of unstoppable change. How often can you say you’ve read a book from Estonia?”
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Summer Reading List by Lindsey Wilson College School of Arts and Humanities Faculty
Titles listed alphabetically by author.
* Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
* Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
* Mark Twain, by Ron Chernow
* The Hours, by Michael Cunningham
* James: A Novel, by Percival Everett
* The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
* Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, by Eric Foner
* Silk Roads: A New History of the World, by Peter Frankopan
* The Odyssey, by Homer (translation by Emily Wilson)
* Ulysses, by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition)
* The Man Who Spoke Snakish, by Andros Kivirahk
* Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer
* Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer
* Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution, by R. F. Kuang
* Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
* Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, by Herman Melville
* Easy Rawlins detective series, by Walter Moseley
* The Library: A Fragile History, by Andrew Pettigree and Arthur der Weduwen
* A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
* Wild, by Cheryl Strayed
* Susan Van Kirk’s Arts Center Murder Mystery Series (Death in a Pale Hue, Death in a Bygone Hue and Death in a Ghostly Hue)
* Susan Van Kirk’s Endurance Mystery Series (Three May Keep a Secret, A Death at Tippitt Pond, Marry in Haste, Death Takes No Bribes and The Witch’s Child)
* Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
Contributors: Lindsey Wilson College School of Arts and Humanities faculty members Kristyne Gilbert, Kerry Robertson, Kendall Sewell, Allison Smith, Lucas Somers, Karolyn Steffens and Elizabeth Tapscott.
Lindsey Wilson College is a vibrant liberal arts college in Columbia, Kentucky. Founded in 1903 and affiliated with The United Methodist Church, the mission of Lindsey Wilson is to serve the educational needs of students by providing a living-learning environment within an atmosphere of active caring and Christian concern where every student, every day, learns and grows and feels like a real human being. Lindsey Wilson — which will become Lindsey Wilson University on July 1 — has an enrollment of more than 4,000 students, and the college offers 28 undergraduate majors, five graduate programs and a doctoral program. The college’s 28 intercollegiate varsity athletic teams have won more than 120 team and individual national championships.
(Duane Bonifer -Lindsey Wilson College)