What Zadie Smith’s Students Are Reading

We have a display shelf in the store that showcases required textbooks for some of Columbia University’s courses this semester. We often get inquiries from students wanting to know “who’ s requiring what?” We thought it would be fun to share some of them with you. This semester author Zadie Smith is teaching a Fiction Seminar called “Sense and Sensibility”. There are 15 books listed for the course. Here are ten of them, visually displayed. Click on each book cover to learn more:

Publisher’s Picks for Holiday Gifts

Books = Gifts is a round-up of links to gift ideas from the folks at Random House. The books they link to are not just titles from their collection. They have gathered suggestions from around the web, including the Penguin Give and Get author suggestions we mentioned yesterday, plus a Writers Recommend round up from W.W. Norton (be sure to watch the cute video of Sam opening a gift!) There is a link to Book Culture’s Books of the Year list too, as well as a bunch of others, making it a good starting point for brainstorming on what books to buy this holiday season.

Michael Pollan’s Gift Picks

The folks at Penguin have asked authors to tell us what they’ll give (and hope they’ll get) this holiday season. Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and Omnivore’s Dilemma has a nice selection of book suggestions, all of which you should be able to pick up at Book Culture. Here they are:

GIVE:

A Platter of Figs

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Death of Sigmund Freud

Burdock

GET:

Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

The Bagel: A Cultural History

See what other authors recommend here.

Reminder: Book Culture’s December Sale starts this Friday!