Summer Reading List: Dr. Marcia Salazar-Valentine

What would summer be without a good reading list? Throughout the summer BGSU faculty, staff and students will share their picks for best summer reading. We hope you find time to read some of the selections and share your thoughts in the comments section at the bottom of the page!

WEEK 10 SELECTIONS BY

Dr. Marcia Salazar-Valentine
Executive Director, University Outreach

Simply stating, style is the "hook" that makes me choose a book when I am browsing at a bookstore or at Amazon.com. Whether it is fiction or nonfiction, the author's choice of words, the tone of the narrative, an unusual description, the underlying irony, the sense of humor, a dialog that flows naturally - this is what gets my attention and makes me turn to the second page of a book or turn to another book cover.

Here are a few books I have read or reread recently that in my opinion are examples of great writing.

• Persuasion by Jane Austen
  My favorite book in the novel category. Writing about second chances in love, Jane Austen uses superb language to describe the feelings, regrets, and hopes of the book's main character, Anne Elliot.
• State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
  With an engaging plot, this novel had me at the first sentence and kept delivering with vivid descriptions that take you to Amazon forest, where the story takes place.
• Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
  Rowling used her magical way with words to bring a brand new fictional world to life and made reading fun again for many children and adults.
• Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by Jeannette Walls
  Written by the author of "The Glass Castle," the book tells the story of Jeannette's grandmother Lily Casey's adventurous life in the American frontier. The story is narrated by Lily herself in a language that reflects the character's rugged, courageous, exciting life.
• The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
  An exciting account of Roosevelt's journey into the Amazon forest with Brazil's most famous explorer, Colonel Candido Rondon, in the early 1900s. A historical narrative that reads like a thriller.