Alumni

September 9, 2014 | Anne D'Alleva, Chair, UConn Reads Steering Committee

‘A Book That Changed My Life,’ The Long List

The UConn Reads committee makes a first cut from among the 215 nominations this year.

uconn-reads-today-graphic-date

It’s a longer Long List than most, but our 215 nominations for this year’s UConn Reads book included so many intriguing possibilities – accompanied by so many heartfelt recommendations – that it became nearly impossible for the steering committee to choose a smaller subset.

This Long List contains many fine books, any of them worth reading often, and treasuring. But what makes a good choice for a community reading project? That’s not simply a wonderful book. It should be a book that can engage and inspire our undergraduates, of course, but also our other UConn Reads constituencies: graduate students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the University. It must suggest exciting programming across a variety of fields, and be appropriate for use in a variety of classes.

A challenge, but we invite you to think about which of these books might suit, and measure your judgment against the Steering Committee’s when we announce the Short List:

HitchhikersGuide

UConnReads_Alchemist

AnneFrank

FarewelltoArms

  1. The Bible
  2. Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
  3. Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (1997)
  4. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
  5. Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (1988)
  6. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (1864)
  7. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (1947)
  8. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)
  9. Herman Hesse, Siddhartha (1922)
  10. Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010)
  11. Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)
  12. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (1998)
  13. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
  14. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
  15. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1970)
  16. George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
  17. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006)
  18. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943)
  19. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
  20. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
  21. Markus Zusak, The Book Thief (2005)

unbroken

Left Hand of Darkness

BluestEye

UCReadsWalden_Thoreau

And finally, an Honorable Mention goes to Peter F. Burns’s Shock the World: UConn Basketball in the Calhoun Age (2012) because nine people nominated it – all on the same day, so I do suspect this was a concerted effort by a group of devoted Husky fans!