Book cover of Moo

Book description

Brilliantly funny satire set in a contemporary American university.

Deep in the wheatfields of the American midwest, Moo University is in a state of disarray...

In this witty and biting comedy of manners, Jane Smiley turns her wryly perceptive eye towards a community where men and women, the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Moo as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I’m an academic, and it is always fun to read a novel that skewers our eccentricities and egotism (there, I admitted it).

What’s great about Moo is that it gives us an academic satire in an unexpected setting—not an eastern liberal arts college but a state university in a Midwestern state that couldn’t possibly be Iowa (or could it?). Leading characters teach botany and animal husbandry. One of them is a very large pig—a real pig, not a metaphorical one. And the book is very, very funny.

If you love Moo...

Book cover of Layla

Layla by Celine Keating,

A young woman embarks on a life-changing cross-country trip to face a family secret rooted in America's most turbulent decade. Layla James, a recent graduate and budding photographer, never knew anything about her father except that he named her for the iconic song by Eric Clapton.

Her mother—steeped in a…

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Hemingway's Goblet by Dermot Ross,

Hemingway's Goblet is a rollicking read about a mismatched relationship between a middle-aged commitment-phobic university professor in London and one of his female students, a Korean 15 years younger than him. He is accused of sexually harassing her, but somehow their relationship survives as they join forces to seek to…

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