{"id":211,"date":"2021-07-27T16:58:07","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T20:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/researchbdev.wpengine.com\/zorina-khan\/?p=211"},"modified":"2022-01-14T20:30:54","modified_gmt":"2022-01-15T01:30:54","slug":"between-the-covers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/a-few-of-my-favourite-things\/between-the-covers\/","title":{"rendered":"Between the Covers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"Utamaro<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
\n

I\u2019ve always thought that being in college is the greatest obstacle to a good education, because nobody has time to read outside of class. Economists are not fond of Thomas Carlyle, a curmudgeon who called Economics \u201cThe Dismal Science,\u201d and classed us with \u201csophists and calculators.\u201d But I do agree with him that \u201cWhat we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.\u201d<\/p>\n

For my first entry, I have decided to attempt the impossible, and present a list of my favourite works of fiction, biographies and essays. The list is in no particular order. If I have to recommend just one to Bowdoin students, I\u2019d select Marguerite Yourcenar\u2019s\u00a0Memoirs of Hadrian<\/em>. She of course most inspires us with her ability to survive the endless winters in a small town in Maine, but she was also the first woman inducted in the French Academy. And for good reason.<\/p>\n

(Print: Utamaro Kitagawa)<\/em><\/p>\n

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS<\/strong><\/p>\n

West with the Night \u2013 Beryl Markham
\nVol de Nuit; Terre des Hommes; Le Petit Prince \u2013 Antoine de Saint Exupery
\nPortrait of the Artist as a Young Man \u2013 James Joyce
\nWoman in the Dunes \u2013 Kobo Abe
\nWay of All Flesh \u2013 Samuel Butler
\nLe temps, ce grand sculpteur; M\u00e9moires d\u2019Hadrien; Nouvelles Orientales \u2013 Marguerite Yourcenar
\nAlexandria Quartet \u2013 Lawrence Durrell
\nLord of the Rings \u2013 Tolkien
\nGoldbug Variations \u2013 Richard Powers
\nVillette; Jane Eyre \u2013 Charlotte Bronte \/ Cranford \u2013 Elizabeth Gaskell \/ everything by Jane Austen \/ Middlemarch \u2013 George Eliot
\nMagister Ludi & Siddhartha \u2013 Hermann Hesse
\nThe Pearl \u2013 John Steinbeck
\nCandide \u2013 Voltaire
\nSons & Lovers \u2013 D. H. Lawrence
\nSmall World \u2013 David Lodge
\nThe Big Sleep \u2013 Raymond Chandler (\u201cLos Angeles was just a big dry sunny place\u201d)
\nEarthsea Trilogy \u2013 Ursula Leguin
\nHis Dark Materials \u2013 Philip Pullman
\nMake Way for Ducklings \u2013 Robert McCloskey (a picture book for young children set in the Boston Public Garden; I used to live on the other side of the street)
\nWinnie ille Pu (it\u2019s in Latin; after all, you don\u2019t want the public to know that you\u2019re reading Winnie the Pooh) \u2013 A. A. Milne
\nThe Wind in the Willows \u2013 Kenneth Graham
\nFarenheit 451 \u2013 Ray Bradbury (about burning books: each person in a radical group memorizes one book. Interesting to think about which book one would choose. Most likely a short one!)
\nDay of the Triffids \u2013 John Wyndham
\nAutobiographies & Diaries: Baghdad Burning \u2013 Riverbend; Unended Quest \u2013 Karl Popper; Diaries of Anais Nin, Sarah Morgan, May Sarton, Sylvia Plath; The Road from Coorain \u2013 Jill Ker Conway
\nThe Republic; Statesman \u2013 Plato
\nLa Peste, L\u2019Etranger \u2013 Albert Camus
\nHeart of the Matter \u2013 Graham Greene
\nSophie\u2019s World \u2013 Jostein Gaarder
\nMeditations of Marcus Aurelius \/ Handbook of Epictetus
\nShort stories: Somerset Maugham, Soseki, Guy de Maupassant, O. Henry, Chekhov
\nEnder\u2019s Game \u2013 Orson Scott Card
\nPerfume \u2013 Patrick Suskind
\nBeauty & Sadness \u2013 Kawabata
\nDo Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?; Ubik \u2013 Philip K. Dick
\nWide Sargasso Sea \u2013 Jean Rhys (a riff on Jane Eyre, about the first Mrs. Rochester)
\nZen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance\u2014 Robert Pirsig
\nGolden Gate; A Suitable Boy \u2013 Vikram Seth (a poetic economist!)
\nNorwegian Wood \u2013 Haruki Murakami
\nBoda de Sangre \u2014 Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca
\nThe Pillow Book \u2013 Sei Shonagon
\nL\u2019\u00e9l\u00e9gance du h\u00e9risson \u2014 Muriel Barbery
\nThe Three-Body Problem \u2014 Liu Cixin<\/p>\n

And, of course,\u00a0The Statistical Abstract of the United States<\/a>!\u00a0 (Yes, I know that it is not fiction, but I just couldn\u2019t resist\u2026).\u00a0 The federal government stopped publishing this indispensable resource, to the horror of librarians everywhere.\u00a0 Fortunately, the reliable free market came to the rescue, and continued its publication.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve always thought that being in college is the greatest obstacle to a good education, because nobody has time to read outside of class. Economists are not fond of Thomas Carlyle, a curmudgeon who called Economics \u201cThe Dismal Science,\u201d and classed us with \u201csophists and calculators.\u201d But I do agree with him that \u201cWhat we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[15],"class_list":{"0":"post-211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-a-few-of-my-favourite-things","7":"tag-literary-musings","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}