Please tell us about a book that has mattered to you while at Carleton, or a book you think the whole Carleton community should read.

If you would like to elaborate on your recommendation, please share your story!

  • Please add your Carleton class year if you are an alum.
  • e.g. Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
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Full List of Recommended Books

These are the books the Carleton community has recommended for the new “Little Free Carleton Story Core Library,” specially crafted by Professor Emeritus Cliff Clark.

  • The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson
  • Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
  • Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt
  • Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
  • Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
  • The Plague /La Peste by Albert Camus
  • Beloved by Toni Morrison
  • Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
  • Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • Moby Dick by Herman Melville
  • “Humane Endeavour”: The Story of the China War by Haldore Hanson
  • Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
  • Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
  • On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  • Dubliners by James Joyce
  • The Electric Kool-Aid Test by Tom Wolfe
  • On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
  • The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
  • Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
  • Cuba Represent! by Sujatha Fernandes
  • Rockin’ Las Américas by Deborah Pacini Hernandez
  • 12 Rules to Life by Jordan Peterson
  • Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
  • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
  • The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
  • The Aeneid by Vergil
  • The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore
  • Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
  • Crossing to Safety by William Stegner
  • Claire of the Sealight by Edwidge Danticat
  • 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Modern Democracy by Carl L. Becker
  • A Good Time For the Truth: Race in Minnesota; Sun Yung Shin (editor)
  • The White Album by Joan Didon
  • The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
  • The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
  • Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
  • Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • Crime and Punishment by Fydor Doestoyevsky
  • Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  • The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
  • The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
  • Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher
  • Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
  • The Stranger by Albert Camus
  • The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
  • The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal
  • Neither Wolf Nor Dog by Kent Nerburn
  • All We Can Save by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
  • Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
  • Flora Segunda by Ysabeau Wilce
  • The Night Circus by Aaron Morganstern
  • Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
  • Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  • The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Dead of Night by Mark Haddon
  • This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
  • Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  • Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  • Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl
  • Kendrid by Olivia Butler
  • One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
  • A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
  • Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
  • Crossing to Safety by William Stegner
  • The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys
  • Eragon by Christopher Paolini
  • My Ántonia by Willa Cather
  • Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
  • Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  • Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
  • How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher
  • The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John M. Keynes
  • The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
  • Perfectly Confident by Don Moore
  • The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
  • The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
  • Confessions by Saint Augustine of Hippo
  • Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
  • War on Peace by Ronan Farrow
  • Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
  • Middlemarch by George Eliot
  • Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
  • Driftless by David Rhodes
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez
  • Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
  • The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
  • Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam
  • Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
  • Sabrina and Corina by Kali Farjardo-Ainstine
  • The Castle by Franz Kafka
  • Shogun by James Clavell
  • The Arrangement by Elia Kazan
  • On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
  • Takuboku: Poems To Eat by Takuboku Ishikawa
  • The Home Place by J. Drew Lanham
  • Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony
  • Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
  • The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
  • Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall
  • Paradise Kiss (20th Anniversary Edition) by Ai Yazawa
  • The Short Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs
  • PrairyErth by William Least Heat Moon
  • Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins
  • Wherever You Go by Pat Zietlow Miller
  • Einstein on Race and Racism by Fred Jerome
  • Closer by Dennis Cooper
  • On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
  • American Gods by Neil Gaiman
  • Henry IV Part I by William Shakespeare
  • Tales from Jabba’s Palace edited by Kevin J. Anderson
  • Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony
  • The Kingdom of Matthias by Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz
  • The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Dead of Night by Mark Haddon
  • Chained in Silence by Talitha L. LeFlouria
  • Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
  • The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich