Don't read this column, read a book

To save you all some time, I'll distill my message into a single, concise sentence: stop reading this column. And, no, I don't mean you should mosey your eyes over to the column next to mine-I'm telling you that it is the summer, and you need to pick up a book. And don't tell me you can't think of one. We both know that there's that one novel that's sat on your shelf for years, its spine uncracked, its pages coarse and unthumbed. Or maybe you've read enough of it to B.S. your way through conversations with people who ask you about it. Well, now's the time to finish that sucker up. Seriously-go, right now, and start reading it.

But if you are that type of person who lacks the initiative to engage in structure-free reading, the type of person who can't choose a book on their own volition-well, you're in luck! It just so happens many Duke administrators already have their summer reading books lined up, and now's the perfect opportunity to piggyback on their ideas. So I've reached out to the people who run Duke, and put together a summer reading list. Seeing as it's structured by administrators, let's call it the Interim Report on the Cross-Cultural Initiative for the Strategic Plan of the Initiation of a Summer Book Club.

We'll start at the top. President Brodhead wrote me an e-mail saying that even with his schedule, he doesn't confine his reading to a single season: "I always have a work of non-fiction and a novel going at the same time," he wrote me. Right now, his requisite non-fic piece of nightstand lit consists of "The Race Between Technology and Education" by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz. A book on growth income inequality may not be the ideal beach read, but Nicholas Kristof does call it "one of last year's most important books." Filling Brodhead's fiction quota is Joseph O'Neill's "Netherland," a novel that has also sneaked its way into the White House, as President Obama mentioned recently. If you like Gatsby-esque Trinidadian gangsters, cricket matches and the mythology of New York City, this acclaimed novel is for you.

In his e-mail to me, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said he recently finished "Drood," a novel by Dan Simmons that invents a series of events that could have inspired Charles Dickens' final, unfinished novel, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." The tale is narrated by Wilkie Collins, a colleague of Dickens, and the story follows this Edwin Drood as he lurks after the two of them through shadowy London streets. Trask has finished the book, but says he's "not sure what's next."

Provost Peter Lange wrote in an e-mail that he's checking out "House of Cards" by William Cohan, an in-depth look into the collapse of Bear Stearns-a modern-day tragedy in which Alan Schwartz, Trinity '72 and member of Duke's Board of Trustees, plays a starring role. In contrast, Lange's fiction pick is "The Skull Mantra" by Elliot Pattison. It is a novel about, in Lange's words, "a detective (sort of) who operates in Tibet and China and is embroiled in immediate crimes which are enmeshed with Chinese politics around Tibet and Buddhism."

Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta seems to be skewing toward the top of the bestseller lists: he's just finished "Outliers"-the newest bit of pop sociology from wild-haired Malcom Gladwell-and found it "easy but illuminating," he said in an e-mail. Moneta is also looking around for a good volume of Croatian history. "You'll have to do some investigative digging to find out why the Croatian history is of particular interest to me right now," he told me. When is the history of Croatia not interesting?

Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, is getting his James Bond on with "Secret Wars: One Hundred Years of British Intelligence Inside MI5 and MI6" by Gordon Thomas, he wrote in an e-mail. Also on the queue are "This Republic of Suffering" by Duke-of-the-North-President Drew Gilpin Faust-"because Civil War didn't end when the guns were silenced," he said-and "Long Lost," a gumshoe-led yarn from Harlan Coben-"because his fictional sports-agent-turned-detective Myron Bolitar is a Duke graduate."

And last, but not least, Dean Sue is masquerading as an incoming freshman by reading "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz, this year's required reading for the Class of 2013. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel follows the comic book-obsessed, overweight and unlucky would-be Lothario Oscar as he explores his Dominican heritage growing up in Paterson, New Jersey.