Dear readers, It may come as no surprise, given that I work at a place like the Book Review, that I loved school. College in particular holds a very fond place in my heart. I loved “shopping week” at the start of each semester, where you browsed course catalogs, sat in on the classes that interested you and figured out what you wanted to learn for the next few months. I loved the classroom discussions in which my peers and I joined forces to unpack a text together. And, as dorky as it may sound, I even loved my homework. Granted, I was an English major, so most of my homework involved reading novels and essays, then preparing to talk about them — an activity I enjoyed so much that I went on to do it for a living. But I’m not a student anymore, so to channel that spark, here are two of my favorite books that showcase the joy and the chaos of school. —MJ “The Idiot,” by Elif BatumanFiction, 2017
Have you ever, maybe in a science class, gotten to view ordinary objects under a microscope? If so, then you know that when magnified, even the most commonplace things can become strange, beautiful and new. That’s what “The Idiot” does with academia — it zooms in tight on one student’s college experience, rendering it so intimately that it feels fantastic and surreal. The book follows a young Turkish American woman, Selin, as she makes her way through her freshman year at Harvard in 1995. The events of the book are delightfully quotidian: Selin attends class; Selin tries to make friends; Selin gets and then quits a job as a math tutor; Selin reflects on literature; Selin discovers email; Selin begins a fraught romance of sorts (what we’d now call a situationship) with an older math student. All the while, she thinks and thinks and thinks, and that is where the true drama and the true pleasure of the book lies. The book is a portrait of one young person vigorously processing her first steps into adulthood. That journey would be interesting enough on its own, but Selin delivers the facts of what she experiences and how she feels about it with a hypnotic wryness: “In Constructed Worlds,” she tells us of one class, “we took turns presenting our constructed worlds.” Elsewhere, while spiraling over a boy, she declares: “I tried to think positive thoughts. Only one thought brought me comfort, and it was: What is man.” The result is a funny and poignant novel that spotlights the strange new world of college and what it offers: a space to learn, struggle and figure yourself out. Read if you like: “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” by David Foster Wallace; the absurdist side of Russian literature; sitcoms like “The Office.” “On Beauty,” by Zadie SmithFiction, 2005
OK, this book probably won’t make you nostalgic for school — academia is a special kind of hell here — but “On Beauty” is a shining example of the campus novel. In it, Smith transforms E.M. Forster’s classic “Howards End” into a deliciously knotty story about one family ensnared in the various dramas of a college town. We follow the lives and struggles of the Belseys — the patriarch, Howard; his wife, Kiki; and their three kids, Jerome, Zora and Levi. All are navigating contentious, frequently overlapping challenges. Howard, a professor who fears his career may be in decline, is in the middle of a feud with his academic rival, Monty Kipps. Kiki, feeling sidelined and disrespected as a Black woman and a nonacademic in this town, strikes up a friendship with Monty’s wife. Jerome is recovering from his breakup with a Kipps daughter, who is now competing with Zora for another boy, and Levi is fighting to break free of his genteel upbringing. It’s a lot! And I didn’t even mention the affairs. Rather than the focus, academia is more of a stage here, but Smith uses the school setting superbly to unpack a host of pressing existential and cultural ideas, involving race, class, love, infidelity, beauty and self-respect. The story is layered, and part of the fun is seeing how all of the plotlines thread together, but it’s Smith’s characters — all of them robust and compellingly flawed — who make this novel sing. “On Beauty” shows how much life a campus can hold. Read if you like: Beyonce’s “Lemonade,” “Howards End” (the book or the movie), “The Bee Sting,” by Paul Murray. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Friendly reminder: Check your local library for books! Many libraries allow you to reserve copies online. Like this email? Sign-up here or forward it to your friends. Have a suggestion or two on how we can improve it? Let us know at books@nytimes.com. Plunge further into books at The New York Times or our reading recommendations.
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