What books have you read for pleasure in the last year?
At last year's Commencement, President Freedman joked that honorarydegree recipient Maurice Sendak was probably the most widely read author among the class of 1991. We decided to find out the truth of the matter.
Among students we surveyed last fall, 11 had read John Prayer for Owen Meany in the past year—the most popular book. Seven students reported reading Robert Fulghum's All I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was read by six students. And in fourth place was Umberto Eco's Foucaulf's Pendulum, read by five students.
Popular novelists Stephen King and Tom Clancy also made the list. But look at these other titles mentioned by students:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1984, Beloved, Stranger in a Strange Land, Illiberal Education, Wuthering Heights, A Passage to India, and the Bible. Plus the slightly more bizarre Geek Love, The Mellow Pages (a guide to coffee shops in Amsterdam), and Flinx in Flux.
"Readingis no longer a popular pastime, " author Gore Vidal said when he visited Dartmouth last fall. (He himself admits never having finished Foucault's Pendulum.) But according to our survey, Dartmouth students do spend some of their leisure time reading. So then, who is the most widely read author at the College? Without a clear consensus on the matter. it's probably one of Dartmouth's own: Theodor Geisel '25, also known as Dr. Seuss.
