Everyone has that one book that reminds them of summer, the one they pick up at the beach every year or perhaps only recently read for the first time. Even at a law school, it can’t all be briefs, textbooks, and journals. Dive into some of these summer read recommendations from Maine Law faculty and staff!
Emma Ambrose
Director of Communications and Websites
Title: A Room with a View
Author: E.M. Forster
Why this is a favorite summer read: I picked this book up for the first time at summer camp and spent an entire day devouring it by the lake. The setting, the romance, the movie adaption, everything about this book signals summer and takes me back to my thirteen-year-old self, nervous and shy at sleep-away camp, and the escape it afforded her.
Scott Bloomberg
Associate Professor of Law
Title: Waiting to Inhale: Cannabis Legalization and the Fight for Racial Justice
Author(s): Akwasi Owusu-Bempah and Tahira Rehmatullah.
Sara Cressey
Visiting Professor of Law
Title: Joyland
Author: Stephen King
Why this is a favorite summer read: This was the first Stephen King book I ever read and is probably still my favorite of his (I’m a wimp about scary things and this is more mystery/spooky than scary). The book takes place at an amusement park during a summer in the ’70s where the main character, a college student getting over his first real heartbreak, is working for the summer. The story is full of quirky characters and amusement park jargon, on top of a fun mystery.
Kathryn Masters
Special Assistant to the Faculty
Title: The Moorings of Mackerel Sky
Author: M.Z. (Emily Zack)
Why this is a favorite summer read: This is my favorite book this summer. It blends a Maine fishing village’s centuries-old mythology with the contemporary realities of living in a rural town. The vivid imagery and raw emotion make it a great book to read by the ocean (perhaps while also keeping an eye open for a stray mermaid hiding in the waves.)
Charles Norchi
Benjamin Thompson Professor of Law
Title: The Corporation that Changed the World
Author: Nick Robbins
Title: The Anarchy
Author: William Darlyrmple
Why: Each book is about the English East India Company— it’s relentless rise, how it introduced the mechanism of joint stock ownership, shaped the modern multinational corporation and was a brutal player in European colonialism.
Stephen Salhany
Law Librarian
Title: The Runes of the Earth
Author: Stephen R. Donaldson
Why this is a favorite summer read: Every year, we travel to Aruba, and every year I use the opportunity to get to a big doorstopper book I’ve been putting off. This year I took the plunge into the first book of the Third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, a long running fantasy sci-fi series. While not exactly a light read, going on vacation gives me the perfect opportunity to fully give my attention to a complex and psychologically challenging story.
Leigh Saufley
President and Dean
Title: Hawaii
Author: James Michener
Why this is a favorite summer read: As we prepared to leave for the summer after my freshman year of college, one of my professors urged us to avoid what he called “summer fluff” and read something of import. Wanting to impress him, I chose Hawaii, by James Michener. I remember that it began unexpectedly, with the geological origins of the island, but soon drew me into a fascinating multi-generational story that I could not put down. It is one of those books that I remember being sad to finish.
Emily Wheeler
Academic Affairs Coordinator
Title: All of them (someday)!
Author: Agatha Christie
Why this is a favorite summer read: I found an old paperback copy of an Agatha Christie mystery at a camp my family had rented one summer when I was a kid, and it’s become a tradition to read one of her novels or story collections during a camp vacation every year since. Reading a few chapters between swims and canoe trips and board games is summer at its purest, at least to me.
Anya White
Administrative Coordinator for Career Services
and Field Placement Programs
Title: Homegoing
Author: Yaa Gyasi
Why this is a favorite summer read: I first read Homegoing two summers ago while on a break from my studies at USM. It reignited my passion for fiction and was a nice break from my assigned course readings. Homegoing is the story of two half sisters from 18th century Ghana, one is sold into slavery and the other is married to a wealthy slave owner in Ghana. The novel tells the story of the parallel lives their ancestors lead for the next eight generations. This book, simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful, gives unique insight into the African & African American experience.
Kerry Wyler
Desktop and Classroom Support Technician
Title: Lost Children Archive
Author: Valeria Luiselli
Why this is a favorite summer read: Lost Children Archive – described by one reviewer as “a powerful, urgent story about what it is to be human in an inhuman world” – is a really engaging, beautifully written, and moving novel. I love beautiful language, and I’m interested in the plight of refugees everywhere, so I was drawn to it as soon as I read a review. Additionally, it was interesting for someone who chose not to have children to read about the joys and struggles of parenthood. Favorite quote: “Children force parents to go out looking for a specific pulse, a gaze, a rhythm, the right way of telling the story, knowing that stories don’t fix anything or save anyone but maybe make the world both more complex and more tolerable. And sometimes, just sometimes, more beautiful. Stories are a way of subtracting the future from the past, the only way of finding clarity in hindsight.”
Nicole Vinal
Chief Operating Officer and Chief Business Officer
Title: You Like it Darker
Author: Stephen King
Why this is a favorite summer read: The book is the latest Stephen King Book to hit the shelves. I’ve read a Stephen King book every summer since I was thirteen years old. I think it is best to read his stories when the days are at their longest and when other people are around to assure you that the noise you hear is from the actual cat, not the cat in the pet cemetery or worse, Cujo!
