Prof. Steve Wermiel

Reading: Suspect by Scott Turow

Watching: Under the Banner of Heaven, a seven-part drama starring Andrew Garfield, based on a book by Jon Krakauer

Prof. Ira Robbins

Reading: The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession by Alexandra Robbins

Prof. Heather Hughes

Reading: Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. It’s gorgeous. Now, I’m reading Our Oldest Companions: The Story of the First Dogs by Pat Shipman.

Rachel Cara, OCPD

Reading:  Fuzz by Mary Roach; Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center; Smashing Statues by Erin L. Thompson; Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller; The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker; How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

Listening to: National Parks After Dark; Dolls of Our Lives (two historians reread the American Girl series, book by book!); Ologies; You’re Wrong About

Doing: Becoming a plant mom; knitting badly; hiking with my roommates and surviving; exploring DC by going from independent bookstore to independent bookstore

Prof. Caroline Wick

Reading: Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee; I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

Doing: My next project is to try making kimchi at home.

Prof. Ezra Rosser

Reading: Jason DeParle, A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves (2019), which is a great account of the lengths a migrant family will go to provide for loved ones. My next books are Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, By America (2022) and David Enrich’s Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice (2022)

Prof. Khelani Clay

Reading: Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Kathleen Gordon, Clinical Program

Reading: I recently read and loved Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch by Rivka Galchen. Though I read a lot more fiction than nonfiction, I couldn’t put down Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, by S.C. Gwynne, though it did take a while to get through it. This weekend, I’m looking forward to diving into Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.

I also love all the Laurie King mystery novels, especially the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes ones.

In my giant TBR pile: Babel by R. F. Kuang ; Lone Women by Victor La Valle; Carnegie’s Maid by Heather Terrell

Watching: My favorite guilty pleasure series is Outlander – I visited the Culloden battlefield in Scotland last summer, and the Fraser stone is covered with flowers and trinkets.

Tahniat Saulat, PIJIP

Reading: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

Watching: Over the summer I hope to watch Derry Girls on Netflix.

Prof. Shannon Roddy

Reading: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (dedicated [to] the librarians then, now, and in the years to come)

Prof. Bec Hamilton

Reading: Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F Kuang

Watching: Extrapolations on Apple TV by Scott Z. Burns

Prof. Elizabeth Keith

Reading: Once I’m done with grading the students’ appellate briefs, I plan to re-read Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, which I read last summer, and then read Bright Young People – The Lost Generation of London’s Jazz Age by D.J. Taylor and “The Whalebone Theater” by Joanna Quinn.  

Watching: My family just finished watching “Clarkson’s Farm” on Amazon Prime (two seasons), which is a docuseries about modern agricultural farming in the English Cotswolds.

Rachel Gordon, Office of Academic Excellence

Reading: Small Game by Blair Braverman

Prof. Jamie Abrams

Reading: We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian

Prof. Ripple Weistling

Reading: The Missing Years by Lexie Elliott; A Man with One of Those Faces by Caimh McDonnell. It’s the first book in the “Dublin Trilogy”, which is now up to 7 books, I think J

Watching: Perry Mason (2020 series) streaming on HBO – much more film noir than the one with Raymond Burr; New Tricks, funny BBC detective series from the early 2000’s,  Acorn, Brit Box, Hulu, Amazon Prime

Assistant Dean Daniela Kraiem, OCPD

Reading: Liberation Day by George Saunders

Watching: A Spy Among Friends

Doing: Learning Tai Chi and trying to stem the weeds in my garden

Prof. Paul Figley

Reading: The Book Spy by Alan Hlad; The Boys by Ron Howard

Prof. Brandon Weiss

Reading: Matthew’s Desmond’s Poverty, by America; Bill Bryson’s The Body: A Guide for Occupant’s; Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year

Watching: I am currently watching the final season of Succession (a real nail-biter). I also recently watched the mini-series Maid on Netflix. And I have been enjoying the guest hosts on the Daily Show in the wake of Trevor Noah’s departure.

Emily Sommers, OCPD

Reading: Latinx by Paola Ramos (available in Spanish and English); La Inercia del Silencio by Sara Buhó

Prof. Bill Snape

Reading: The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and An Epic Journey, by Deborah Cramer (Yale Press, 2015)

Prof. Susan Carle

Reading: I’m trying to read all of the early authentic American novelists writing before 1850. I am amazed at how modern these writers are.  So far I’ve read several novels by James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne, have Melville at my bedside, and thinking about who else to tackle.  

Prof. Adeen Postar

Reading: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver; Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny; Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Watching: The Night Agent; Jack Ryan; Extraordinary Attorney Woo

Doing: Walking and playing with our pups, Lexie and Gracie

Prof. David Hunter

Reading: Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by Jonathan Slaght; The Good Hegemon: US Power, Accountability as Justice, and the Multilateral Development Banks by Susan Park; Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty; Shining City by Tom Rosenstiel; The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America by Saket Soni; The Good Lie by Tom Rosenstiel; and How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith