The Honors Book Club was founded in order to enable and encourage Honors students from all disciplines to read and discuss literature in an informal, non-classroom setting. The college provides free books for members and suggestions for our reading are made and voted upon by the members themselves.

The Honors Book Club meets once or twice each month throughout the fall and spring semesters, and typically chooses a longer read for the summer. Student members are encouraged to participate actively in discussions, and are often given special opportunities to attend readings and talks given by our living authors.

Any interested student is welcome to join the Book Club; please email the Book Club Coordinator, Sarah Timmons, for more information and to become a member.

Below is a list of the books read to date by the Honors Book Club.

Spring 2023

Sense and Sensibility, , Jane Austin
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
Nectar in a Sieve, Kamala Markandaya

Fall 2022

Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Book of Hope, Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy

Spring 2022

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey, Amber Ruffin & Lacey Lamar
Joy In The Morning, P.G. Wodehouse

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin & Lacey Lamar

Fall 2021

Emma, Jane Austen
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
Saving Us, Katherine Hayhoe

Spring 2021

Falter, Bill McKibben
Wild Belief, Nick Ripatrizone

Fall 2020

All We Can Save, collected authors
News of the World, Paulette Jiles

Spring 2020

Educated, Tara Westover
My First Summer in the Sierra, John Muir

Fall 2019

Tales of the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Calypso, David Sedaris
State of Wonder, Ann Patchett

Summer 2019

Horizon, Barry Lopez

Spring 2019

The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman

Winter Break 2018-2019

Don Quijote, Miguel de Cervantes

Fall 2018

Lab Girl, Hope Jahren
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz

Spring 2018

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World, Andrea Wulf
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain

Fall 2017

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

Summer 2017

The Magus, John Fowles
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

Spring 2017

Suite Française, Irène Némirovsky
Salvation on Sand Mountain, Dennis Covington
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith

Fall 2016

Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
Maus (Vol. 1), Art Spiegelman
Père Goriot, Honoré de Balzac

Summer 2016: Loveable Villainesses

Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Gregory Maguire
Lady Susan, Jane Austen

Spring 2016

Our Man in Havana, Graham Greene
Go Set A Watchman, Harper Lee
A Year in Provençe, Peter Mayle

Fall 2015

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
Castle Rackrent, Maria Edgeworth
Getting to Grey Owl, Kurt Caswell

Summer 2015: Food

Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Spring 2015

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
If on a winter's night a traveler, Italo Calvino
Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Quiet, Susan Cain

Fall 2014

Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape, Bill McKibben
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Summer 2014: Adventure

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin

Spring 2014

The Silver Star, Jeannette Walls
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Under A Lucky Star, Roy Chapman Andrews
And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini
The Fifth Season, Lisa Ohlen Harris

Fall 2013

Summer of the Big Bachi, Naomi Hirahara
About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory, Barry Lopez
My Ántonia, Willa Cather

Summer 2013: Mystery

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie R. King
The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl
Inferno, Dan Brown
The Sunday Philosopher's Club, Alexander McCall Smith

Spring 2013

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
The Thin Man, Dashiel Hammett

Fall 2012

The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas

Summer 2012: Mystery

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Braddon
Whose Body?, Dorothy Sayers
She, H. Rider Haggard
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe

Spring 2012

Towards Zero, Agatha Christie
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, John Boyne
The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde

Fall 2011

The Help, Kathryn Stockett
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
The Lost World, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Summer 2011: Books Adapted to Cinema

The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Stardust, Neil Gaiman
The Princess Bride, William Goldman

Spring 2011

The Haunted Hotel, Wilkie Collins
Half-Broke Horses, Jeannette Walls
Things I've Been Silent About, Azar Nafisi

Fall 2010

Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Persuasion, Jane Austen

Summer 2010

The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
Empress, Shan Sa

Spring 2010

Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

Fall 2009

The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
The Importance of Being Earnest and other Plays, Oscar Wilde
The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Summer 2009

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

Spring 2009

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
Amsterdam, Ian McEwan
The Writing Class, Jincy Willett

Honors College

Address

McClellan Hall, Box 41017 Lubbock, TX 79409-1017
Phone
806.742.1828
Email
honors@ttu.edu

Honors Students