Summer reading list part II

I come bearing more summer reading recommendations this week.

Riane Eisler’s “The Chalice and the Blade”

Hailed as the most important book since Darwin’s “Origin of Species” by anthropologist Ashley Montagu, this book weaves the fascinating tale of human prehistory from the unconventional perspective of shifting gender hierarchy.

From ancient matriarchy to modern patriarchy, using evidence from art, archaeology, religion and more. A must-read if you’re interested in anthropology, gender, religion or
really anything at all.

J.D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey”

If you like Salinger and/or are moderately angsty, you’ll love this quirky, two-part novella providing a glimpse into the lives of the title characters — siblings in their 20s who are, in their unique ways, undergoing nervous breakdowns.

Though both characters are at times obnoxious — again, in their own unique ways — the story feels real in a way that most novels don’t.

Joyce Carol Oates’ “Wild Nights! Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway”

If you don’t think your summer attention span can handle an entire book, the short story is undoubtedly the most satisfying alternative.

This collection of singularly uncanny stories about long-dead authors coming back to life and doing very strange things is sure to please those who are fond of ghost stories or any of the writers in the title.

“Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape”

This collection of essays was edited by Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman. Friedman spoke at IU’s spring 2012 Culture of Care Week. The collection explores every contributing factor imaginable to rape culture in American society and conceives solutions radically different from models used in the past.

Everyone, women and men and trans folks alike, should read this book. If you’ve ever been to a college party, if you’ve ever heard the word “slut,” if you’ve ever felt uncomfortable talking about sex, you should read this ground-breaking, astonishing book.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “100 Years of Solitude”

There’s a reason — rather, many reasons — that this is considered one of the best novels of all time. Reading it is like watching a dazzling, ethereal movie.

Marquez’s surplus of outlandish characters float in and out of a nostalgic world in which imagination becomes reality as successive generations of a family struggle to escape their bizarre, often self-inflicted problems.

This one does, however, require a decidedly long attention span.

­— ccleahy@indiana.edu