For many college professors, summer is their only chance to read extensively “just for pleasure,” as the saying goes. Here are the Top 10 novels that academics are enjoying this season, according to a recent survey of 200 faculty members across the country by University Life:
Dead Man Talking: A sophomore taking a Zoom-based course in Renaissance Poetry suspects that the instructor he sees on his PC screen is actually a hologram of a scholar who was murdered a decade ago. He confides in his faculty advisor, who proceeds to close the office door and whisper, “this is not an issue you want to pursue. Trust me.” The student is undeterred, initiating an investigation that takes him all the way to an underground AI bunker in Moab, Utah.
Red State, with Spots: A mutant strain of measles strikes the unvaccinated population of Waco, Texas, quickly spreading across the nation in apocalyptic fashion, with millions of victims gruesomely scratching themselves to death. An adjunct biology instructor at Northern Virgina Community College has discovered a cure, but her insecure, unemployed boyfriend is standing in the way (“You’ll become famous and leave me!”). She loves him…but children are dying.
The Adventures of Trans-Man (Graphic Novel): A trans college lacrosse player hides his background as he uses the transfer portal to switch schools every semester. When he ends up at Duke University in the spring term of his senior year, the coach of an opposing team becomes suspicious and hires a genitalia detective to find out the truth, just as the Blue Devils are about to play in the semifinals of the 2025 NCAA tournament. A startling revelation in the final chapter will have you rethinking everything you thought you knew about North Carolina barbeque.
The Closing: An epic tale in the Stephen King tradition. The Core Curriculum Committee of a beleaguered New England college fails to notice that the school has gone bankrupt and closed during a marathon meeting of the Committee in the basement of the Humanities Building. The structure is bulldozed, burying the Committee’s 14 members, who — 11 years later — emerge as zombies that proceed to terrorize the small town of Peddler’s Crotch, Maine.
You Say Mulatto, I Say Gelato: It’s 2075, and virtually everyone in the United States is bi-racial. In Bayonne, New Jersey, a full-blooded Italian male falls in love with an Alfa Romeo convertible. Can this relationship survive in the face of intense prejudice and discrimination? Will their children resemble Tesla Cybertrucks? A story of passion and hope.
Riot in Cell Block 42: Members of the MS-13 Gang who sit together in the cafeteria at California State Prison overturn tables and revolt after the warden announces that their segregated dining habits violate the federal ban on DEI activities. People die.
The Hill Next to the Woods by the Stream: A physics professor who loses all of her grant funding during the Trump administration leaves her university to become a shepherdess in Austria. She learns to play the flute, takes many lovers, and lives to be 104.
The Oddest Couple: Wendy, a postmodernist sociology professor, becomes enamored of Kyle, a MAGA-spouting driveway paver who likes to hunt bears. They go on a camping trip where she insists on wearing her favorite pepperoni necklace in their shared sleeping bag. Wendy discovers that bears are not a social construction. Not for the squeamish.
Blowhole: In a world in which people have stopped reading books, a pod of dolphins establishes a university in Key West devoted to the Western canon. Within 15 years, dolphins rule North America, enslaving all humans. Things go surprisingly well.
Gentleman’s C: After his son at Harvard receives a low grade in an elective course on the History of Meat, a disgruntled father employs a hit man to dispose of the instructor. Little does Dad know that the instructor, an adjunct, is also a hit man. The nail-biting finale unfolds in an abandoned power plant on the campus of what used to be Columbia University, which has been in ruins for a decade.
Happy reading, everyone!
