With July just around the corner, incoming freshmen start to plan for their first year of college. For some, this means reading a required book selected by the school. Thankfully, my school did not require this, but my brother who heads off to college in August got sent his summer reading book and has dreaded opening it ever since. There are millions of books out in the world and thousands of books worth reading, but somehow colleges seem to find the worst books to have students read.
I’ll give you a hint about the life changing book my brother’s premiere liberal arts school believes all incoming freshman must read before embarking on some of the most important years of their lives, the title involves the world's “translation” and “medicine.” I hope everyone is still awake because I found myself falling asleep before I even got past the cover page. After looking at the book and seeing my brother’s eye roll after asking my mom “Wait, I have to, like, read this?” I could not help but agree with him. I mean come on *prestige liberal arts school,* this is the best you could do? This is the one book all 18-year-old boys and girls need to read?
Now, I know that some schools have picked fairly acclaimed and popular books that students would actually enjoy reading like, "Bad Feminist," "All the Light We Cannot See" and "Slaughterhouse Five" to name a few, but these are the minorities in this summer reading book club. It’s almost as if most administrators search online, “books that 18-year-olds would hate to read” and say to themselves “oh, this one looks fantastic” when the blandest title that appears.
I can only imagine the conversation going on in the faculty meeting where the “one read book” is selected. “Hey, what about *well-known book*?” “Well, what if they have already read that?” (Hint: they probably haven’t and honestly who cares if they have?!? Half your class isn’t going to read it, to begin with so you might as well have a few already ahead of the game) “What about *controversial book*?” “Well didn’t you see what was happening at Duke, kids were refusing to read the book, and we can’t have that.” (Hint: they probably won’t anyways, so if it’s controversial at least they’ll have to speak up about the reason they didn’t read it.) “Okay, well, in that case, we’ll have to select *boring book that has only sold 1 copy on amazon*” “Perfect, they’ll love it!”
So to the administrators, faculty, and staff selecting books for students to read over the summer: Pick. Good. Books. Quite frankly, it isn’t that hard, I do it about once a month in Barnes and Noble. Students do not want to read books anyways, so if you pick a decent book you might pick up a few of the people who would not read the books otherwise. And the whole goal of this is to spark critical thinking and discussion right? Well if no one reads or enjoys the book, good luck getting the awkward, nervous freshman to say a single word the first day of class.
