Students in Upper School Book Club are excited to keep the momentum going through June, July, and August through A Dam Good Read. Students can opt-in to this summer community reading program here, and in the fall, we’ll have student-led discussions about the books (or podcast!).
So, what are the content options?
- Beach Read by Emily Henry (fiction)
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (fiction)
- Educated by Tara Westover (non-fiction)
- White Album by Joan Didion (essays)
- The Man Who Effed Up Time by John Layman (graphic novel)
- Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo (podcast)
You can find all these titles at your local library, or independent bookstore—or use one of the many ways to access free books through Beaver! The podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts (Apple, Spotify, Overcast).
More about these titles
Beach Read by Emily Henry
A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters. One hazy evening they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern Black community and running away at age 16, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?
The White Album by Joan Didion
Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.
The Man Who Effed Up Time by John Layman
Sean Bennett is just your everyday, ordinary lab worker in a high-tech lab with a prototype time machine. And, yeah, he’s got the same temptations any of us would have about going back in time, just a bit, to correct mistakes of the past and right old wrongs. So when he meets a version of himself from the future who encourages him to do just that, Sean takes the temporal plunge. Only … can you guess what happens next? Did you read the book title? Yup. All of TIME is f#&%ed up now, and it’s up to Sean to correct it—or else!
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far and if there was still a way home.
Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo (podcast)
Where is Cleo? Taken by child welfare workers in the 1970’s and adopted in the U.S., the young Cree girl’s family believes she was raped and murdered while hitchhiking back home to Saskatchewan. CBC news investigative reporter Connie Walker joins the search to find out what really happened to Cleo.
Sources: Barnes & Noble, New York Times Book Reviews, Apple Podcasts