Summer Reading – Provost David Whalen

This summer we’ll be asking different professors, staff, and departments for their summer reading lists. Here are Dr. Whalen’s picks!

*  *  *

1. The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis
   “What better time than summer to read a novel about Christmas, especially Christmas as experienced by people trying to avoid it?”
2. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
   “Short, intense, dense and lyrical at once, this is as thoughtful a book as it is beautifully done. Substance and style are one.”
3. The Age of Exuberance: Backgrounds to Eighteenth-Century English Literature by Donald Greene
   “Originally published in 1970, this small gem would be considered dated by now. But then, so would the eighteenth-century.”
4. The Four Men by Hilaire Belloc
   “A whimsical, elegiac, outrageous and profound meditation on many things wrapped in a tribute to Sussex, England.”
5. Parochial and Plain Sermons by John Henry Newman
   “Good for the soul.”