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Community Reading List: 2023 Fiction

Each year the library compiles reading recommendations for the Winter Break.

Benjamin Anastas

Faculty - Literature

This year's National Book Award winner in the fiction category.

This year's National Book Award winner in the literature in translation category.

Yoko Inoue

Faculty - Visual Arts

Japanese Science Fiction: The eponymous heroine of Tsutsui's novel is the alter ego of brilliant and beautiful psychotherapist Atsuko Chiba, one of the leading brains in the Institute for Psychiatric Research. When treating private patients, Atsuko transforms herself into the guise of Paprika to mask her true identity. Components in the academic field of Psychology in this novel is fantastic, which is not captured in its Anime version.

The DVD to go with the novel recommended.

Lua Piovano-Marcotte, '23

This book made me feel like a child engrossed in a fantasy novel.

This book has everything! Necromancers, lesbians, comedic narration, swordfighting, and more!

This and the other two books in the Southern Reach trilogy are really amazing works of weird ecofiction. Come for things like the dolphin with human eyes and stay for the rather beautiful commentary on being human in a rapidly changing environment.

Allen Shawn

Faculty - Music

Reading these spare, unexpected stories you start to forget you are reading at all. You simply start to experience the things Banana Yoshimoto's characters experience, and become one with her exceptionally subtle outlook on life. You close the last page with regret, realizing you were very lucky to have found this book.

Candy Cuthbert

Registrar's Office Assistant

The story of a young refugee woman who left Somalia and traveled through South and Central America and the US, eventually reaching a remote monastery in Vermont. She requests sanctuary during a blizzard, before going on to Canada. The intersection of the lives of Sahro, Brother Christopher, and Teddy, an Afghan War veteran, and how each struggles to respond to this situation, makes a fascinating, memorable read. Although fiction, the book relies on extensive personal research conducted by the author into the lives of refugees in Vermont.

Camille Guthrie

Faculty - Writing

Winner of the International Booker Prize 2022!

Jen Liu

Wanda McEwan, '25

Sue Rees

Faculty - Drama and Visual Arts

Donald Sherefkin

Faculty - Visual Arts

Short Stories, a section titled "Impossible Architectures" especially "The Other Town"

Jared Della Rocca

Director of Library Services

Maurice Hall

Provost

Dina Janis

Faculty - Drama

The latest in the Slow Horses Series which is just plain fabulous and addictive and laugh out loud funny.

Fascinating historical fiction that is as usual, brilliantly crafted by a true master.

Great characters, great story- interesting premise and much fun.

Well- so beautifully written as always investigating such intimate and internal lives lived.

Carly Rudzinski

Associate Registrar

This book is so fun and innovative; it takes a look at tale of the Odyssey from the point of view of Penelope, Odysseus' wife. I'm not a huge Atwood fan, but I really enjoyed this - it's a quick and easy read, and very entertaining.

Oceana Wilson

Dean of the Library
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