Leisure Reading for You!

Did you stay up late reading when you were a kid? Did you get totally absorbed in terrific books? Do you still? Good books are still out there for you, if you just pick them up.

The Good Reads section of the Gallagher Law Library, just west of
the Student Lounge. Note that this area doesn't include all of our "good reads":
we have thousands of books that might fit your interests.

Kendra Albert, now a 2L at Harvard, tried to recapture her enthusiasm for reading in the months before she started law school. You can hear her describe "The Great Book Project of 2013" at the Boston Quantified Self Meetup here. She discusses books, technology, and more in her blog, Lawspeak for L33t Speakers. (If you aren't enough of a techie to know what L33t speak is, see this Urban Dictionary entry.)

Albert's top nonfiction recommendation from her book project is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander. I thought it was great too. See this blog post.

Even though the workload in law school precludes reading huge stacks of unassigned books, many people still find it helpful to keep a book or two going—either to offer a break from all the other reading or to complement it. I could go on and on about this. Oh, wait! I already have! See Good Reads in the Law Library?, 93 Law Libr. J. 517 (2003) and Bitten by the Reading Bug, 105 Law Libr. J. 113 (2013).

And our library has a variety of lists to get you started. See, e.g.,

• Suggested Reading List for Prospective & Current Law Students
• Diversity Readings Related to First-Year Courses
• Diversity in the Legal Profession

A few of the books from our Good Reads section:

• Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic,
  catalog record
• Stephen L. Carter, The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln: A Novel,
  catalog record
• Bradley Glenn Shreve, Red Power Rising: The National Indian
  Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism, catalog record
• Bonnie J. Rough, Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA,
  catalog record
• James C. Freund, Smell Test: Stories and Advice on Lawyering,
  catalog record
• Rodney R. Jones & Gerald F. Uelman, Supreme Folly: Hilarious
  Excerpts from Actual Court Cases, catalog record
  

Photo credit: Mary Whisner