Favorites
This page will feature will feature various "favorites" sent in by members of the Boston College Retired Faculty Association membership.听 The section will include favorite books, movies, TV shows, and streaming entertainment content.听 Retired faculty are encouraged to submit their own favorites by sending them to either Alec Peck (51成人动漫ARF President) or Peter Olivieri (Website Editor).
The current "Favorites" are books read during the pandemic.
Recommended by Dan Kirschner, Biology
Recommended by Marie Brisk, Lynch School of Education
Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn A must read for our current state of the country. John Twist鈥檚 Bell Country deserves the highest praise for its knowledge of cotton farming in the early Twentieth Century amidst improving, but far from just race relations. Others have commented favorably about the book鈥檚 plot and pacing (as others have commented, it is a rare book that is truly hard to put down) - but the miracle of this book is how the author treats fairly the good and bad qualities of its characters, both white and black, while subjecting New Dealers鈥� attempts to overcome centuries of injustice by rewriting through abrupt changes in It finds admirable traits among some of the whites a plantation鈥檚 social contract.. The book treads carefully on father-son rivalry, while providing what I understand from readers who hail from the Deep South is a remarkable objectivity and humanity. 鈥淛anie,鈥� a young black woman through most of the book, is an unforgettable character too often overlooked in novels of the South and so needed for future racial relations. This is a book that rewards and inspires the reader. (Bill Brisk Amazon review)
Recommended by Eileen Plunkett, Nursing
The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donaghue --set in Dublin, a harrowing tale of the life of a a midwife during the pandemic of 1918. Well written, timely, with some suprising twists. When All Is Said by Anne Griffin--another Irish setting, this time a pub. One man's story is told through his interactions with five significant people in his life. The hero is a great lover in the best sense of the word and the writing is evocative. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson--The Kentucky Pack Horse Library Service of the 1930's inspired this book. The heroine is a blue-skinned woman who survived prejudice against both her color and her gender.
Recommended by Bill Torbert, Organizational Studies, SOM
Recommended by Bob Taggert, Finance, SOM
During the pandemic, I've been reading some of the older novels and memoirs that I had never gotten around to before and also re-reading some that I read so long ago I could no longer remember much detail.听
Recommended by Mary Joe Hughes, A&S Honors
Mark Helprin, Paris in the Present Tense. Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other: a Novel Booker Prize winner. Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety. Anna Burns, Milkman. Set in the Troubles in Ireland, original, with a unique nuanced style, and powerful but grim, leavened by humor. I tend to read novels but also really enjoyed Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom, by David Blight
Recommended by Matilda Bruckner, RLL
John Le Carr茅, A Perfect Spy. I don't usually read detective or spy thrillers but when Le Carr茅 died, Philippe Sands wrote an article about their friendship and named A Perfect Spy as his favorite, in part because of the autobiographical aspects. The writing is superb and the B51成人动漫 version is also terrifc.
The Organs of Sense: A Novel by Adam Erlich Sach
A book of sly philosophical听humor about Leibnitz and a blind astronomer for those with a taste for word play and the Kafkaesque.
Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald
If you enjoyed her听H is for Hawk听you will also take great pleasure in reading this series of essays on myriad听topics that engage her involvement with nature and the human condition.
Recommended by Lois Haggerty, Nursing
Barack Obama's A Promised Land. Its long and somewhat wordy but extremely well written.
Recommended by:听 Harold Petersen, Economics
I have been reading books by Marie Benedict, who听writes historical fiction.听 Marie Benedict is a pen name for Heather Benedict Terrell, who is a 51成人动漫 graduate who now lives in the Pittsburgh area.听 Two of my favorites are:
The Only Woman in the Room, which is the life of Hedy Lamar, who was an extraordinarily accomplished inventor as well as a movie star.
Carnegie's Maid, which is about a woman who comes from Ireland to become听a maid to the Carnegie family. 听 The portrayal of Carnagie is true to what we read in other biographies, and the story of the maid is fascinating.
Next on my list is听Lady Clementine, a story of the wife of Winston听Churchill.
Recommended by:听 Mike Malec, Sociology
Tokarczuk, Olga: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Set in modern Poland, an eccentric woman who has a love of wild animals sets out to discover who has been killing some of them. Later, some of these hunters die in strange ways. Tokarczuk received the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature.
I loved the eccentric lead character, and the ending totally and delightfully surprised me.
McBride, James: The Good Lord Bird. Winner of the 2013 National Book Award for fiction. Now a film. Abolitionist John Brown "captures" a 12 year old slave and carries him off on Brown's madcap adventures.
Great characters. Some laugh-out-loud funny scenes.
听
Recommended by:听 Paul Spagnoli, History
The End of Vandalsim by Tom Drury Sheriff Dan Norman runs for reelection and navigates life in fictional Grouse County in rural Iowa.
Drury's vivid characters are just as strange as most of us, and he recounts their lives and foibles in a deadpan style which I often found hilarious, although their experiences also shared the sadness that often afflicts the human condition. I came back to this 1990s book for the second or third time because it was perfect pandemic reading. I also recommend Drury's two later sequels with many of the same characters: Hunts in Dreams and Pacific.
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips Two children goes missing in Kamchatka, an isolated region along the Pacific Coast of Russia. Phillips traces the impact of their disappearance on a series of characters over a year's time.
Vivid descriptions of this isolated region which was previously familiar to me only from the game Risk, and of its ethnically diverse people. Beautifully written.
All Aunt Hagar鈥檚 Children听by Edward P. Jones A collection of short stories about the Black population of Washington, D.C. A sequel to Jones's previous collection,听Lost in the City, which I also recommend.
Before reading it I probably knew about as much about Jones' subjects as I did about the people of rural Iowa or Kamchatka, but Jones made me feel part of the same human community with them. Like Drury and Phillips, Jones is able, seemingly effortlessly, to evoke in me feelings of compassion for and connectedness with his characters, something I especially appreciated during these bleak months. And each of the three authors creates a vivid sense of place.