A Beggar In Jerusalem:  A Novel by Elie Wiesel—The novel follows the stories and memories of a Holocaust survivor as he returns to Jerusalem in the wake of the Six-Day War. Along with the beggars and madmen who spend their nights at the Western Wall, the narrator takes you through European literature, Hasidic wisdom stories, and the late twentieth century to search out the origins of all people and the source of all of our sanity—the ability to tell stories.  (Gardiner)

The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid—The author once again takes the reader gently in hand to explore an extraordinary story of a simple woman.  Poetic in style and gripping in detail, you will be haunted by her opening line: "My mother died at the moment I was born, and so for my whole life there was nothing standing between myself and eternity;  at my back was always a bleak, black wind.”  (Shepherd)

Beowulf:  A New Verse Translation by  Seamus Heaney—This new translation puts the story and the poetry back into this epic. The dual language edition also provides a fascinating look at the reconstructed "original" text of this poem and highlights Heaney's post-colonial take on this English epic. Don't be bothered by all that though and just enjoy the monsters and the blood.  (Gardiner)

The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe— The New York Times called this Book Prize nominee and Irish imes award-winner "part Holden Caufield, part Huck Finn, part Hannibal Lecter." Follow Francie Brady through 1960s Ireland as he eludes "bogmen and mucksavages," police named "Sergeant Sausage" and the insect-headed "Father Bubble" on this way to get his "Francie Brady Not A Bad Bastard Anymore Diploma."  (Gardiner)

Descent of Man by T. Coraghessan Boyle—This early collection of seventeen short stories from T. C. Boyle depicts primate researchers falling for their chimps, archeologists in search of an Aztec beer can (Quetzalcoatl Lite), Lassie abandoning Timmy for a coyote, Norse poets with "bard block," any questions?  (Gardiner)

East of the Mountains by David Guterson—Guterson sticks with the Washington State setting he sketched so well in Snow Falling on Cedars to tell the story of a dying doctor who takes a final, solitary journey into the Cascades to come to terms with both death and life.  It’s a fine story, but also a great novel of place—so if you can’t make it to the mountains this summer, Guterson’s book may be a decent substitute.  (Bradway-Hesse)

The Hours by Michael Cunningham—Beautifully interweaves three different eras, protagonists and tragedies, with the poetic assistance of Virginia Woolf.  (LaFeber)

Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel by Binchy, Boylan, Donoghue, Haverty, Dhuibhne, O’Riordan, Purcell—Seven Irish women collaborate on a tale of the once infamous Finbar’s Hotel.  Each chapter is a separate story about the occupants of various rooms yet the stories are intertwined.  The authors refuse to identify which chapters they wrote.  (Shepherd)

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke—It's deep, it's in paperback, and it can be read on the beach in an hour.  Stunning poet Rainer Maria Rilke responds to letters from serious young writers; he advises you, among other things, to avoid love poems.  It's one of those little books that's often quoted by scholars and, when you find it in the original, turns out to be actually fun to read.  (Bradway-Hesse)

Liner Notes to Bleecker Street: Greenwich Village in the '60s by Anthony DeCurtis, Astor Place Records—A contemporary compilation of the work of Jerry Landis, Bob Dylan, Tom Rush, John Sebastian, Leonard Cohen, and other figures prominent in the Village folk scene. It's good reading & better listening since you've got the work of some of the best poets of the last quarter of the century on the "text."  (Gardiner)

Living Downstream by Sandra Steingraber—This well-researched book about environmental conditions in the midwest will make you want to avoid long baths.  If you read it, you'll find out why.  Steingraber, a Pekin native (and an Illinois Wesleyan graduate, but let's not hold it against her), researched the effects of water, air, & other pollutants on humans (us).  Through a mix of hard research and personal essay, she discusses the links between the pollutants we so take for granted (like field fertilizer) and cancer.  Not a light read, but one that should motivate anyone with an activist mentality.  (Bradway-Hesse)

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather— Cather writes that Nebraska was "nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made." In this novel, her protagonist Alexandra Bergson, the daughter of immigrant farmers, comes to terms with the her world and herself against the backdrop of descriptive passages rivaled at this time in literature only by D. H. Lawrence.  (Gardiner)

Outlaw Machine: Harley-Davidson and the Search for the American Soul by Brock Yates—Hunter S. Thompson fanatics might find this a too-tame look at the all-American outlaw instinct.  The rest of us learn all about the history of big, hunky motorcycles and their ugly riders.  Born to be  wild!  (Bradway-Hesse)

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver—Think Heart of Darkness a couple of generations later; here, Kingsolver tells the tale of white missionaries in the Belgian Congo from a postcolonial and female perspective.  The book raises some really complex issues of political, religious, and gender identity, and part of Kingsolver’s accomplishment is that she squarely addresses those issues and tells a very compelling story at the same time.  And if you’re reading in this vein, you may also want to look at C. S. Godshalk’s Kalimantaan—a sort of semi-fictional, semi-historical prequel to the stories that Conrad and Kingsolver tell.  (Gunzenhauser)

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester—Granted, a book about a dictionary (in this case, the Oxford English Dictionary) doesn’t sound like a particularly promising summer read.  But Winchester draws together lively characterization and sound historical research to tell the true and surprising story of Dr. W. C. Minor, a criminally insane man who was also instrumental in compiling the first edition of the OED.  Part mystery, part detective story, part a reflection on language, Winchester’s book is good summer reading.  (Gunzenhauser)

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink—This is a love story set during WWII, which attempts to transcend transgressions and time.  (LaFeber)

The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson—Hunter S. Thompson's first novel begun in 1959 but not published until 1998.  The novel is described as "an outrageous, drunken romp" but anyone who reads Thompson will find this to be the most lucid, least drug-induced fiction he has written.  The Rum Diary provides you with a glimpse of Thompson when he was young and only somewhat jaded.  (Shepherd)

Sudden Fiction and Sudden Fiction (Continued) edited by Shapard, Robert and James Thomas—These easy-to-find collections of flash fiction (or very, very short fiction) are great for brief time-out moments like riding the bus and skipping the TV commercials.  The famous and the obscure among living American writers make their appearance here.  Among them: Alice Walker, Denis Johnson, Stephen Dixon, Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie, Don DeLillo….There has to be something here you'll like.  (Bradway-Hesse)

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut—Now to get a full appreciation for this novel, you'll first need to read most of Vonnegut's other novels, multiple works by Twain, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Wilder's Our Town, Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Miller's Death of a Salesman, Melville's Moby Dick, Thoreau's Walden, poems by Coleridge and Housman, essays by Noam Chomsky, A Study of History by Arnold Toynbee, Gone with the Wind, Shelley's Frankenstein, any work by Chinua Achebe, Heller's Catch-22, and watch the ballet Swan Lake and the movies Casablanca, My Life as a Dog, and All about Eve. Even without the background, Vonnegut shows that metafiction can be way cool. (O'Conner)

Tracks by Louis Erdrich—I'm not totally into Dead White Males, though I will be one someday.  I also recommend works by Live Revolutionary Women of Color. Tracks is one of a series of Erdrich novels with shared settings, characters and concerns.  It involves the plight of a number of Chippewa families in the northern midwest.  Shapeshifting, magic and mayhem highlight a clash of cultures.  It should be read in conjunction with Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, The Bingo Palace and Tales of Burning Love.  The shared characters, families and their plights make for wonderful intertextual reading. Or Tracks can certainly stand on its own. (O'Conner)

Troping the Body:  Gender, Etiquette, and Performance by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster—Okay, so it's not light summer reading.  But it is a fascinating interdisciplinary analysis of etiquette texts and their (female) authors, from the Middle Ages to present.  Drawing on such theorists as Bakhtin and Foucault, as well as performance feminism, Foster examines the gendered body as it is constructed and positioned in  "conduct literature." A fascinating examination of an overlooked genre.  (Crowe)

When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago—An autobiography of Esmeralda Santiago.  This is a coming-of-age memoir about Santiago's experiences growing up in rural Puerto Rico and then being transplanted to New York City.  She shares with us what it was like for her to live with seven siblings and parents who both loved and hated each other.  She just published a follow-up:  Almost a Woman.  (Shepherd)

Wind from the Carolinas by Robert Wilder—After the American Revolution, many wealthy Southern families, unable to accept a new concept called "democracy," left their plantations & resettled in the unfamiliar, exotic  Bahamas.  This novel traces the lives of one such family as they undertake the impossible task of recreating Southern life in an unfamiliar location & climate, attempting to adjust to a land more foreign than they had ever imagined.  Beautiful, vivid descriptions of the early Bahamas,  Bahamian life & its people, historically accurate, and memorable characters. An excellent summer read.  (Crowe)
 
Zami by Audre Lorde—Identified as a biomythography, Audre Lorde once again lets us into her life so we come to a better understanding of what it means to  grow up in the late 50's as Zami, a Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers.  A must-read for anyone who is taken with Lorde's work.  (Shepherd)
 
 
“Companion Books:” recommended by Dr. Mihm
 
Ahab’s Wife, or the Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund—This book opens with the sentence, “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last.”  This 1999 novel give us the mid-ninteenth century in America from a women’s point of view.  It’s a spin off, of course, of Melville’s Moby Dick whose protagonist, Captian Ahab, takes us on a whale of atale.  Read one, read both. 

H., The Story of Heathcliff’s Journey by Lin Haire-Sargeant—This spin-off of Wuthering Heights traces Heathcliff’s life for three “lost years” after his love, his soul-mate has jilted him.  In another cute literary trick, the plot is resolved with references to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

Madness and Civilization:  A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault—This modern classic in cultural studies investigates Western ideas of madness (and the treatment of the insane) from 1500-1800.  It’s a wonderful companion piece to the classic modern novel 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which traces the history of a family in an insane world of incest, insomnia plagues, political revolutions, and levitation by chocolate, and the madness of solitude.