100 Books Like Campusland

What’s amazing about this book is that it’s told through recommendation letters written for students and colleagues by the main character, Professor Jason Fitger.

Each letter reveals more and more about his life, his failing romances, his dismal work environment, and his floundering creative efforts. In other words, topics that are completely inappropriate for these types of letters, which makes them all the more hysterical.  

I’ve read this book no less than five times, and it remains one of my all-time favorite books. Tartt’s literary style of writing is not only beautiful in its own right but becomes a tool to enrich the story that surrounds all things literary.

The idea of an exclusive New England college where you have the luxury of unabashedly studying the classics and taking school breaks in Italy is my ultimate idea of luxury. Where do I sign up?! Taking it a step further, the fact that these academic outcasts are stone-cold murderers hits my sweet spot.

This juxtaposition of elevation and depravation pulls me in every single time. When I went to college, I initially wanted to study criminal psychology, and this book is a perfect example of why.

This is classic, quintessential British humor, the kind of dry wit that makes you laugh out loud as you’re reading. I didn’t want it to end because of how hilarious I found the main character. Even while being funny, the book does a great job establishing the imposter syndrome the main character feels as a member of the middle class attempting to enter the elite halls of academia as an older graduate student.

He is a fish out of water, incapable of having normal social interactions with his peers, “betters,” or students. Possibly, the best-ever hangover scene in writing occurs in this book. 

We move up a generation to the next “classic,” an equally entertaining satire that now sets the American university against the British. Two professors exchange roles for an academic year, swapping not only courses but eventually also students, colleagues, and (spoiler alert!) spouses. You get to look at each place through the eyes of the other—starting with the sunny American campus (based on Berkeley) against the damp British one—which is as jarring as it is revealing. Lodge beautifully melds the academic, the intellectual, and the personal, so the story grips you personally even as it stimulates and entertains. I read this as a graduate student and somehow stayed in the business anyway!

What I found most shocking about this book is that it is still relevant.

Published in 1984 with a revised edition in 1990, Dziech and Weiner dissect the "lecherous professor" archetype and the problem of sexual harassment on campus from every angle, without pulling punches. They include real cases, quotes, and statistics, as well as warning signs and guides for students, parents, and administrators.

Reading the how and why of the way predators operate, victims respond, and universities enable the crisis let me know I was not alone! This has been known for decades, and here I was thinking I was the only one. Not anymore.

Pnin, a Russian émigré teaching at a not-wonderful college, is a remarkably endearing protagonist. I would welcome him into my home. Constantly swimming upstream, he is resolute yet humble. He takes on life in America with thoughtful determination and becomes victorious even in defeat. A stellar individual. Nabokov’s deftness with the English language enriches this short and highly accessible novel.

English professor Lila Maclean is thrilled about her new job at prestigious Stonedale University, until she finds one of her colleagues dead.

She soon learns that everyone, from the chancellor to the detective working the case, believes Lila—or someone she is protecting—may be responsible for the horrific event, so she assigns herself the task of identifying the killer.
More attacks on professors follow, the only connection a curious symbol at each of the crime scenes. Putting her scholarly skills to the test, Lila gathers evidence, but her search is complicated by an unexpected nemesis, a suspicious investigator, and an ominous secret society.
Rather than earning an “A” for effort, she receives a threat featuring the mysterious emblem and must act quickly to avoid failing her assignment…and becoming the next victim.

I love the subtle humor in Cynthia’s series. She has a clever turn of phrase that keeps you giggling along… show more.

Ezekiel Farragut is a former university professor and current inmate at Falconer prison.

A drug addict and a murderer for killing his own brother during an argument, while incarcerated Farragut must wean himself from his addiction with methadone, and suffer visits from his profoundly disappointed wife. He is also involved romantically with a fellow prisoner—the captivating Jody, who all the guys want to screw.

When Jody successfully escapes, Farragut is left to contemplate how his own failures got him to this lonely place, and how to be a better man if he is ever able to leave it. This is where the grim, dreamlike beauty of Cheever’s best-known signature works shines through.

If you like this, also check out Blake Bailey’s biography of Cheever. The parallels between fact and fiction are fascinating.

Smith is a master at depicting multi-racial families (something she knows all about, as she grew up in one).

Her narratives take up the complex nature of the relationships between parents, children, and siblings, while delving into issues of race, class, politics, infidelity, and self-knowledge. Smith is expert with her use of voice, as she composes character through idiosyncratic styles of language and expression.

Life in this novel is colorful and messy, as it cleverly investigates the impossibility of really knowing those closest to you.

In a genre full of stories of almost infinite variety, this is one that caught my eye.

A middle-aged female professor of mathematics goes on a quest with her cat to track down a former student who is the only one who can save their world from destruction. Sounds cozy, doesn’t it? Except for the world-ending part.

And the fact that Vellitt’s path lies straight through a dreamscape out of the Lovecraftian mythos in this critique/homage to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. But you don’t have to have read the latter to enjoy the journey.

Vellitt is a marvelous character, the world-building is brilliant and the cat is the perfect addition that helps set the tone for a new and different kind of quest fantasy.