How Duke Picks Summer Reading from 400 Books
Committee of students, employees spend hours debating nominations
Every September, Jordan Hale receives an annual reading list, full of fiction and non-fiction titles, from genre thrillers to historical biographies. Without fail, it is always about 400 books long.
Generated through an online survey from current and past Duke students and some faculty and staff, the eclectic list is the starting point of a six-month process to whittle the list down to just one selection: Duke’s “Common Experience” summer reading book.
Read More“There are 52 weeks in a year and 168 hours in a week,” said Hale, director of new student programs. “I’d probably say I do a total of two to three weeks of reading. You’d be surprised at how much reading you can get done before you go to bed.”
Along with 14 other Duke community members, Hale participates on an annual committee of students, faculty and staff that collectively choose a book for incoming first-year students’ Common Experience Program. The effort offers a shared intellectual experience with members of the class, with the summer reading choice for the entering first year class as a key focal point.
However, getting a final selection is nothing short of yeoman’s work.
In October, the committee convenes and discusses how to start cutting from the list of about 400 book titles. Nominations for past winners, textbooks, self-help books and religious texts aren’t considered and preference is given to authors who are alive so they can speak on campus. Initial meetings get the list down to about 90 selections, which is when every committee member is assigned a reading list. By New Year’s, they need to cut the list in half.
“Even if I love a book, I need to think if it would be compelling to an 18-year old,” said Sara Seten Berghausen, associate curator of collections for the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library and a committee member for the past nine years. “I’m looking for a book that’s thought provoking, but not overbearing.”
For example, of the 20 books Berghausen read during this year’s selection process, she enjoyed reading Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend,” a coming-of-age story with themes of class, identity and friendship between two female characters.
“To me, participating in these discussions is being a part of the core mission of the university,” Berghausen said. “We should find important issues and talk about them frankly.”
During meetings through the fall and winter, committee members then take turns cutting some nominations and pleading the case for others until a final, single-digit list of books is picked by early March. Hale said lively discussions among committee members encourage each person to share opinions on books through their point of view and challenge each other, much like how first-year students will interact.
Chris Kennedy, who’s served on the committee since 2003, picked through about 25 books this year, trying to find stories that would force readers to think deeply about what they read.
“Maybe a book isn’t the easiest thing to read or in the wheelhouse of a freshman student, but it’s important to learn how to adapt in an intellectual environment to other ways of thinking,” said Kennedy, senior deputy director of athletics and an adjunct assistant professor of English.
This year’s finalists include books about immigration, race relations in America and even a post-apocalyptic novel that touches on the importance of the arts. Ultimately, the committee chose Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption,” which relates his fight against racial and economic biases in the U.S. legal system.
Paula Ajumobi, a first-year student on the committee, said she advocated for Just Mercy because as a black woman, she felt that encouraging other students to read about stories of race would offer a perspective with which many incoming students may not be intimately familiar.
“As college students, we’re all searching and trying to find out who we are,” she said. “Looking at people with different identities and how that affects them is important and interesting.”
