My book group is reading Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. What a book such as Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass is to science (PopSci – allowing the reader to empathize with the main character and their skillful explanation of science) Black Cake seems to be for sociology. My only trouble is keeping track of all …
The Great American Songbook is not a single or immutable collection. Rather, it refers to the body of popular songs composed during the first half of the twentieth century that gradually coalesced into a canon of “standards” for singers and jazz musicians. Admired for their polished music and lyrics and written during the era when …
Bowdoin Reads|Watches|Listens began in 2008 as a way to celebrate readers, listeners, and watchers in our community. 2021 presented a host of challenges, tragedies, and perseverance … and through it all we read, watched, and listened. We hope this recap of the most-viewed recommendations of the year will spark inspiration for you to fill your …
I run when I need to clear my mind. The pandemic has been good to me in only one way—it has increased my running and, with it, my time alone for uninterrupted thinking. Left to its own devices, though, my brain can run itself ragged hopping down one unproductive rabbit hole of worry after another. …
It might seem surprising that a sci-fi novel about alien conflict could provide solace during quarantine, yet somehow Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem inspired an interesting shade of hope for me in the depth of winter. As the first installment in Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, this book offers a novel take on the …
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood has gotten a lot of hype since it was published in February of this year, and for good reason, in my opinion! It is a masterful exploration of form, and one of the most interesting (and accurate) commentaries on the contemporary moment’s online existence that I’ve …
I confess that I read so much for research and teaching, that I end up reading embarrassingly little for pleasure. That’s why I was excited when I was asked to contribute to the “Bowdoin Reads” series, as I told myself that I couldn’t read anything that deals with my current work. I ended up choosing …
While my time spent on Bowdoin’s campus may have been brief this fall, it was certainly not lacking in formative experiences, my trip to the Special Collections and Archives chief among them. Having spent the former part of the semester voraciously consuming each of their “Beyond the Reading Room” virtual events from the isolation of …
Often one to enjoy self-help resources, after completing my first season as a head coach while managing an assistant coach for the first time I thought how can I make this opportunity more enjoyable and successful for not only me but, the people around me too. After recommendations from my partner in addition to friend, …
Most summers, I go to Japan or China for research, but the pandemic this year has made fieldwork abroad all but impossible. To escape lockdown without ever having to leave Brunswick, I read Stranger in the Shogun’s City, written by my brilliant friend and colleague, Amy Stanley, a history professor at Northwestern University. Stranger in …