@VaBluebird, it was the CC Book Club selection in August 2021, if you’re interested in perusing the comments: This Tender Land - August CC Book Club Discussion
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Thank you!!
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I would either go new or pretty old. A classic title is “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” by Annie Dillard.
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I enjoy cheesy genre fiction when it’s well-written and self-aware. I’ve really been enjoying C.S. Harris’s (Candace Proctor) Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series about a viscount who solves murder cases in Regency London at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The author is a historian and she deftly weaves historical context with the classic whodunit plot. This is the kind of book I want to write when I’m retired. No highbrow pretense here, just fun, but knowing and literary (Jane Austen and Richard Sheridan are bit characters).
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I adore the St. Cyr mysteries and I really appreciate that there’s always a historical note where she tells you about the real events and any small changes she made for the sake of the plot. I don’t consider her cheesy genre fiction at all!
I find a lot of contemporary fiction is trying too hard to be edgy and then it’s populated with nothing but unpleasant characters to boot. Life is too short.
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Looking for suggestions. I am teaching a general education course, “Literature and the Law,” in the spring. This is a 200-level course (students have taken first-year composition courses). I’ve taught this course before, and my books have been The Oresteia (I always teach this, will not replace, it is essential); The Merchant of Venice (ditto); Twelve Angry Men; The Children Act (Ian McEwan); Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Garcia Marquez); Noon Wine (Katherine Anne Porter); Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (Stephen King; the students love this). I would like to teach Killers of the Flower Moon but it is too long. Any suggestions for this topic that are 200 pp. or fewer?
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Maybe Ernest Gaines “A Lesson Before Dying”? I taught it in a lit-based comp class many years ago and students liked it. Might be dated but I don’t recall too well as it was a long time ago.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?
Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane is probably less literary than you’re seeking, but is framed by the Boston bussing laws of the 70s.
Nickel Boys? Just Mercy?
I’d love to take your class!
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Witness for the Prosecution (but I think the movie is probably better than the story - but it is a short story)
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For an exceptional memoir, try Christian Coopers’ Better Living through Birding. This was a book group suggestion, by the Central Park birder who was accosted for protesting an off-leash dog the same day as the George Floyd murder. It is a black while birding story, a gay coming out story, the well told story of an exceptional man and most of all, a picture of the joy and fascination of birding.
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I want to take your course! I’d have suggested Antigone if you didn’t already have The Oresteia.
I wonder if something related to women and the law would be good. I’m thinking of the issue of inheriting property in Pride and Prejudice for example, but less focussed on the romance. I feel like I’ve read another book where it was more front and center, can’t think of the title.
If you want to throw in some sci fi Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation (an updating of an older novel called Little Fuzzy) gets into the issues of colonialism, policing corporations, exploiting planets and planetary law, and how we define sentience. It would be fun to discuss. And Scalzi is a very fun writer.
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Thank you for all of these great suggestions. It is challenging to find novels that are short enough. I can’t get away with assigning more than ca. 80 pp. of reading a week for this group if I want them to actually do it, and I find that if I spend more than 2.5 weeks on one text, they lose interest. I am very open to journalism/memoir (the one genre I don’t have yet). I was considering Just Mercy but it is a little long. I might be able to cut it.
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Would The Other Wes Moore work? It’s a little over 200 pages but I remember it going quickly because it was really engrossing. It would be in the memoir category.
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Literally just yesterday bought that for my daughter for Christmas.
Bleak House maybe? I took a very similarly named course a long time ago and that was used as kind of the scaffolding for the rest of the course. Too long for these purposes though.
I haven’t actually read Bleak House, but possibly.
Bleak House is one of my two favorite Dickens novels. I agree with @Juno16 that it looks like it would fit the parameters of the course, but it is definitely too long. Wonderful book though!
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Loved this book. Heard the author speak once and wow.
Bleak House is of course perfect for the theme. The sad fact is that my students will never be able to read it. I have to bow to reality here.
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Seconding The Other Wes Moore
… Small mercies or Nickel Boys (perhaps not in full although students may well choose to read it all because it’s engrossing).
What about Maid? Not from a lawyer’s point of view but definitely shows impact laws have on people’s lives, advocacy, etc. Plus you could potentially show them the show’s trailer.
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