Lit Instructor Picks
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Title:
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Author:
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Description:
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Instructor:
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Rating:
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A Clockwork Orange (1962)
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Anthony Burgess
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A short masterpiece of 20th-century dystopian fiction. Among the books recommended to students in the Infinite Jest class, but others would enjoy it as well.
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Jackson
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Great read!
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The Song of Achilles
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Madeline Miller
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Retelling of Homer’s Iliad from the view of Patroclus, here Achilles’ lover. Not a challenging or deep read, but for me at least, deeply satisfying.
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Bahr
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Great read!
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Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso
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Dante Alighieri; translations by Mary Jo Bang
[2012, 2021, July 2025]
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The translations are contemporary, idiomatic, smooth, occasionally annoying [what interesting translation isn’t?]
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Tapscott
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Great read!
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Chimera and Goat Song
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Phoebe Giannisi (trans. B. Sneeden) and Brad Kessler
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Who doesn’t love goats, pastoralism, and thinking about human-animal entanglement?
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Driscoll
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Great read!
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Changing My Mind
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Zadie Smith
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Some of the best writing on writers and reading for our time.
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Frampton
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Great read!
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Pelican Girls
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Julia Malye
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She wrote two versions of the same book: one in French, the other in English. Story of the 18-century deportation of women from a Parisian hospital to Louisiana to become the womb of the new France.
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Perreau
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Great read!
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My Name Is Red
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Orhan Pamuk
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Are you looking for a whodunit? A deep dive into manuscript illumination? An experimental narrative with talking corpses? A meditation on art? If you’re looking for all of these, then My Name Is Red is the book for you.
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Mangrum
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Great read!
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No One Is Talking About This
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Patricia Lockwood
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A very online person is forced to confront the world’s (painful, beautiful, really real) worlding. This won the Dylan Prize in 2022 and Lockwood is one of my favorite writers – funny, weird, and utterly heart-breaking,
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Brinkema
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Both
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The Unseen World
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Liz Moore
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About a person growing up connected to a computer lab in a place like MIT and then having to negotiate an identity and discover a past by cracking a computer code.
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Perry
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Great read!
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The Dictionary of Lost Words
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Pip Williams
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About a girl at the beginning of the 20th century who collects words rejected by the OED project.
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Perry
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Great read!
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The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
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Deesha Philyaw
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What happens when you’re expected to be very mindful, cutesy, and demure, but you’re also full of questions, contradictions, and desire? If you’ve ever wrestled with your faith, your freedom, or your family—this one’s for you.
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Alexandre
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Great read!
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Entangled Life
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Merlin Sheldrake
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There are fungus among us! First book I’ve read where I thought to myself: Wow, science writing can be so literary! Sheldrake’s a great writer, and fungus are fascinating. Pairs well with the TV series, The Last of Us
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Alexandre
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Great read!
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The Fifth Season
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N.K. Jemisin
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A cracking sci fi novel that is also handbook for how to come into revolutionary consciousness – and how to bring others along with you even if your idea of a better future isn’t perfectly aligned with theirs
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Finch
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Both
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The Cabinet
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Un-su Kim
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A quirky and unsettling satire about forgotten people with strange “symptoms.” Perfect for fans of speculative fiction.
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Denecke
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Both
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Beasts of a Little Land
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Juhea Kim
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A sweeping historical novel, tracing the intersecting lives of Korean characters from all walks of life. Lyrical and gripping! Perfect for fans of history.
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Denecke
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Great read!
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A Room of One’s Own
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Virginia Woolf
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Yes, well-known, and of its moment–and absolutely foundational for modern gender studies, but also a great illustration of how to make a provocative argument with “a pen” rather than “a pickaxe” in one’s hand, and to create images and phrases that will last a lifetime…..
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Henderson
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Both
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Galileo
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Bertolt Brecht
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A play every MIT student should read (as Shelley’s Frankenstein is a novel…), in one of its three versions–he revised to fit the horrors of his time, from fascism to the atomic bomb, even as he creates a vivid drama about an energetic, flawed, remarkable genius, and the costs of doing science with integrity.
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Henderson
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Both
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Arcadia
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Tom Stoppard
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A beautiful, heartbreaking comedy, among his many–this one with something for every major, from course 6 to 8 to 18 to 21H to 21L, and beyond. Best use ever of Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra and an offstage Byron.
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Henderson
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Both
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Ordinary Notes
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Christina Sharpe
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Blending poetics, literary analysis, memoir, and media theory, Sharpe’s book blasts conventions of scholarly writing as she traces the multi-being of Black life. Best read slowly, each note invites deep contemplation even as meaning and emotion reconfigure with each new page.
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Ruffin
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Both
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Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
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Sheri Fink
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Adapted into a haunting Apple TV limited series, this exceptional work of investigative reporting chronicles one New Orleans hospital in the midst and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In addition to being a thrilling read, this story of crisis and triage raises questions of ethics in the US healthcare industry; national disaster preparedness; and the value of human life. Bonus: watch the show after the book or vice versa to practice comparative media analysis.
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Ruffin
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Great read!
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Ravensong
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Lee Maracle
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“While Stacey, a 17-year-old Native girl, struggles to save her family and community from a devastating influenza epidemic, a white classmate’s suicide hints that the village is threatened by forces more sinister and powerful than the epidemic itself. Ravensong, the first novel of celebrated author Lee Maracle, tells an extraordinary story about a young woman’s quest for answers, combining both tragedy and joy in its unforgettable depiction of an urban Native community in the 1950s.”
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Doyle
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Both
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The Master and Margarita
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Bulgakov
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“A satirical, quasi-biblical allegory that blends the grotesque with the tragic. Written in the 1930s but not published until the 1960s, the novel follows the Devil, disguised as Professor Woland, as he visits Moscow with his retinue of terrifying henchmen. Woland targets the Russian elite, particularly those in the literary world, exposing their corruption and hypocrisy through pranks and a ‘magic show.”
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Doyle
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Great read!
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The Emperor of Gladness
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Ocean Vuong
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I loved it! I plan to read his other books this summer.
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Resnick
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Great read!
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On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
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Ocean Vuong
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I loved it! I plan to read his other books this summer.
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Resnick
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Great read!
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Crooked Plow
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Itamar Vieira
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A haunting, lyrical story of two sisters in rural Brazil, bound by a childhood accident and generations of struggle. Unforgettable read. You won’t just read it, you’ll feel it!
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Terrones
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Great read!
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Horse
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Geraldine Brooks
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Sweeping saga of a racing horse in the 19th-c American South and her enslaved trainer. Gorgeous writing and a story I can’t stop thinking about.
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Kelley
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Great read!
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March
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Geradine Brooks
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Pulitzer-Prize-winning story of the father in Alcott’s Little Women who serves as chaplain in the Civil War and encounters its horrors up close.
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Kelley
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Great read!
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James
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Percival Everett
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A rewriting of Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Twain’s Jim. You don’t need to have read Twain to enjoy this funny, poignant tale.
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Kelley
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Great read!
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This Strange Eventful History
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Claire Messud
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Multi-generational saga of a French-Algerian family that spans continents and has an unexpected take on European colonialism. Unforgettable characters, with a twist at the end.
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Kelley
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Great read!
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Black Bazaar
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Alain Mabanckou
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Chronicles the daily experiences of young African immigrants in Paris; takes reader into nooks and crannies of Paris life that tourists never see. Rabelaisian humor. Finalist for 2015 the Man Booker International Prize
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Songolo
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Both
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The Most Secret Memory of Men
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Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
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Mystery novel. Search for a disappeared writer hailed as “Black Rimbaud” wanders through Europe, Latin America and Africa, where only enigmatic traces of him are found. Winner of 2023 Goncourt prize
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Songolo
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Great read!
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