Better Beach Books

Editor’s Introduction: Many colleges and universities are assigning a book to be read by incoming freshmen during the summer or outside of class as a common reading project. One book is usually chosen by committee or vote and promoted on college websites and elsewhere as an effort to foster community, create shared experiences, and encourage discussion. The National Association of Scholars study Beach Books 2013–2014: What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read Outside Class? surveys the books that are currently being assigned at over three hundred colleges and finds that the books chosen are, on the whole, less than the best, often of transient value, on trendy PC topics, and in easygoing, less demanding genres such as the first person memoir. We asked a number of booklovers for their suggestions for better reads. We left it open as to fiction or nonfiction, classic or modern, although we did suggest 1990 as a cutoff date for the latter, since the study found that only five books before that date had been assigned in 2013–2014, with over half of the total selections published after 2000. Acad. Quest. (2015) 28:147–158 DOI 10.1007/s12129-015-9492-1

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