A coming-of-age story focuses on the protagonist’s journey toward adulthood, toward social, emotional, and moral maturity and finding a place in the world. It’s a genre with a lot of resonance for the UConn community, which includes a large population of young adults, and not surprisingly, the UConn Reads nomination list includes several classic examples…. continue reading

I can’t help it – one more booklist…. A few weeks ago, the Library of Congress opened a fantastic exhibition, “Books That Shaped America,” as part of their multi-year Celebration of the Book. The LoC website presents all eighty-eight books featured in the exhibition, with commentary. The fundamental criterion for inclusion in this list was… continue reading

For those of us who would like to nominate a book but can’t quite find one that seems right, Francine DeFranco, UCL librarian and member of the UConnReads Steering Committee, compiled a very helpful list of websites. I drank far too much iced coffee yesterday and was awake in the wee hours, so I decided… continue reading

Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë – is anyone surprised to find them on the nomination list? Like so many others, I discovered these authors as a young reader and go back to them again and again. Their books are life companions to me. There’s a richness of women writers on our UConn Reads list…. continue reading

Almost two hundred years ago the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe famously declared that national schools of literature were a thing of the past: “National literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of World-literature is at hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach.” The rest of us may have taken… continue reading