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BACK TO SCHOOL IN 52 BOOKS

No pop quizzes, no student loans

Two facts that are not related, but seem as though they ought to be:

1) Autumn is my favorite season

2) I love both campus novels and campus thrillers

What’s not to love: brisk weather, fresh notebooks, hungry, impressionable minds, maybe a murder or two… So, to celebrate the return of fall and all its academic possibilities, here is a back-to-school reading list for you: 52 adult fiction titles winnowed down through the same process of blood, sweat, tears, alcohol and research as defined my own years of academic rigor.

It’s a “something for everyone” bridge mix list of classic and contemporary titles in a variety of treatments: traditional campus novels having a laugh at pompous academics, nostalgic coming-of-age school days, comedies about the hopeless bureaucratic tangle of academia and politics, plus some murder and light cannibalism.

Whether you are going off to school yourself or are the proud parents of students, whether you remember your long-past school days with nostalgia or relief, there are bound to be a few books here with something to teach you, and you don’t even have to get out of your pajamas for this class.

Brutal Youth

Dear Committee Members

Zuleika Dobson: Or, An Oxford Love Story

The Lessons


Skippy Dies


The Campus Trilogy


The Devil and Webster


Cow Country


Welcome to Braggsville


A New Life


The Idiot


Wilberforce


Pnin


The Rebel Angels


The Likeness


As She Climbed Across the Table


The Secret History


Handmaid of Desire


Porterhouse Blue


Gaudy Night


Shadow of the Lions


The Furies


The Reluctant Cannibals


Moo


Loner


If We Were Villains


Election


Prep


Straight Man


Small Admissions


I am Charlotte Simmons


Love and Friendship


Penelope


A Good School


The Headmaster's Wife


Wittgenstein Jr


On Beauty


Pictures from an Institution


Brideshead Revisited


The Groves of Academe


Blue Angel


The Lecturer's Tale


Lucky Jim


My Education


This Side of Paradise


The Year of the Gadfly


The Marriage Plot


Starter for Ten


Wonder Boys


The History Man


The Art of Fielding


The Rules of Attraction

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