<p>The book thread inspired me to start another one, featuring novels with a college or more generally academic theme. So, to start with:</p>
<p>Henry James, The Aspen Papers
Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
David Lodge, Trading Places
<strong><em>, Small World
_</em></strong><strong><em>, Nice Work
Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs
Jane Smiley, Moo
Erich Segal, Love Story
Simone de Beauvoir, Les Mandarins
</em></strong>_______, L’Invit</p>
<p>Old School, Tobias Wolf (NYTimes Best-seller)- aboutprep school life in New England and the pursuit of great authors: a perfect blend of an academic theme and literature</p>
<p>And I love academic novels , great thread:)</p>
<p>btw, one small type: henry james: aspern papers</p>
<p>One of the funniest ever - ‘Straight man’, Richard Russo.
Plus Zadie Smith’s fairly new ‘On Beauty’</p>
<p>Ali:</p>
<p>Oops. I said Aspern in my head, but typed Aspen.
I’ll have to read Richard Russo. I’d never heard of him.<br>
If one wants to be cosmopolitan", Wu Jingzi, “The Scholars”</p>
<p>Antonia Byatt, Possession
C.P. Snow, The Masters</p>
<p>Great idea for a thread!</p>
<p>Jon Hassler, especially “The Dean’s List”, quite touching, at times very funny, but nothing as funny as Richard Russo’s “Straight Man”, which is S’s favorite book, has read it several times. </p>
<p>May Sarton “The Small Room”, from another era, but good sense of teacher/student ethical conflicts. </p>
<p>Haven Kimmel’s “The Solace of Leaving Early” begins with the image of a young woman walking out on her doctoral orals, and while it is not the main plot, the situation is explained through the novel. Beautiful book, faculty women’s book club favorite!</p>
<p>The Masters by C.P. Snow is great. And I love Jon Hassler - The Dean’s List was a pretty good one. A somewhat odd one is Tam Lin by Pamela Dean, with the legend transferred to a Minnesota college (which happens to be remarkably similar to Carleton.)</p>
<p>Well, I mentioned Moo and Straight Man on the other thread, but you all have now beat me from listing them here first. Those might be my two favorites.</p>
<p>A new one I enjoyed is Special Topics in Calamity Physics.</p>
<p>garland, I just finished Special Topics…, and while I found the first third of the book very well done, I thought the rest could have used some judicious editing. But I did enjoy all the allusions, and my D thought the kids were very believable.</p>
<p>CP Sow’s The Masters has been mentioned twice already. If you like The Masters you may enjoy the entire sequence of 11 books in the Stangers and Brothers series. </p>
<p>Of course there is also Anthony Powell’s Dance series of 12 novels, some of which are set at Eton and Oxford. Powell is less accessible than CP Snow, whose central theme of love, power and ambitions in the Strangers and Brothers series are more upfront and readily understood by American readers. Because of its strangeness to us, Powell’s Dance sequence is used in many advance English courses in private schools and colleges to teach literary analysis.</p>
<p>A Separate Peace, by John Knowles (prep school)</p>
<p>Joe College, by Tom Perrotta (sp?)</p>
<p>An adorable kids’ book: Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster</p>
<p>A Separate Peace was one of the first ones that came to mind, but I couldn’t remember the name. Thanks, Curiousmother.</p>
<p>Also, This Side of Paradise by Fitzgerald.</p>
<p>Pre=college:
James Hilton, Good-bye Mr. Chips
Alain Peyrefitte, Les Amiti</p>
<p>also about New England prep schools: Black ice by lorene cary</p>
<p>well if you are going to do prep schools read Prep. 
(by Curtis Sittenfeld )</p>
<p>Not exactly academic novels, but novels in academic settings:</p>
<p>Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (New England prep school)
Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris (fancy English boys’ school)
Blue Angel by Francine Prose (small college in VT)
The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld (a couple of Boston colleges)
The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer (some good chapters at Yale)
I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe (haven’t read it but supposedly about Duke)</p>
<p>College:
Mary McCarthy, The Group</p>
<p>Pre-college: Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.</p>
<p>To Serve Them All My Days by David Powlett-Jones
Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes</p>
<p>Crossing to Safety Wallace Stegner
*The Human Stain *Phillip Roth
Disgrace JM Coetzee</p>
<p>padad: I was totally obsessed with A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME when I was in my early twenties. Wrote my first conference paper about it as a grad student. </p>
<p>Amanda Cross Mysteries (actually by Carolyn Heilbrun, Columbia faculty)
David Mamet’s play Oleanna
Rule of Four
Rebels and Angels Robertson Davies
Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis</p>
<p>English Prep. Play & movie:
The Browning Version Terence Rattigan</p>