Students and alums dig into summer reading

Read any good books lately?

Wheaton's incoming freshmen have. During the summer of '09, they have been reading Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, a two-volume graphic novel about a young girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.

Each year, Wheaton assigns a reading for incoming students, who later explore the book's themes and content in their First Year Seminar (FYS) classes. While a novel in comic-book format is a departure from the typical summer assignment, its substance is no less compelling, freshmen say.

"I greatly enjoyed Persepolis," said Margaux Charpentier '13, "and was pleasantly surprised. I couldn't wait to see what would happen next, all the while gaining a greater sense of Iranian events."

The FYS Steering Committee chose Persepolis partly because Iran has lately become a central focus of international attention, says James Mancall, associate dean of studies.

"The recent protests on the streets of Iran are, in many ways, echoes of events described in the graphic novel," he said. "We hoped that Persepolis would help students learn about the Iranian Revolution and provide some historical context for recent events."

The committee members also hoped the book would ring true for students on a personal level.

"Persepolis is the story of a young woman leaving home for the first time and trying to fit into a new culture. We thought that many of our students might relate to this story as they head off to college," Mancall said.

Those of us who aren't college freshmen have the liberty of choosing our own summer reading. What are you reading this summer? When Wheaton posed that question on its Facebook page, the responses from alums and students were many and varied.

Some people are exploring classic fiction by the likes of Jane Austen, Vladimir Nabokov and Virginia Woolfe. Others are opting for contemporary fiction, such as The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a first novel by the Dominican-American author Junot Díaz (the choice of Scott Tarlow '12).

In the nonfiction realm, Susan McClure '86 selected Richard Muller's Physics for Future Presidents: The Science behind the Headlines, while her classmate Heather Corbett picked up Renegade: The Making of a President by Richard Wolffe.

Meredith Finn Naughton '00 chose a quintessential beach read, The Appeal by John Grisham. And Rebecca Epstein '00, who read Man in the Dark by Paul Auster, said she thanks English Professor Sam Coale for her love of that author.

Curious to learn more? Visit Wheaton's Facebook page to read the full list and add your own summer reading recommendations.