Summer Reading List: Dr. Heath A. Diehl '00

What would summer be without a good reading list? Throughout the summer BGSU faculty, staff and students will share their picks for best summer reading. We hope you find time to read some of the selections and share your thoughts in the comments section at the bottom of the page!

Summer-Reading-Week-08

WEEK 8 SELECTIONS BY

Dr. Heath A. Diehl '00
Instructor, Honors Program

My reading tastes are pretty eclectic. As someone with both undergraduate and graduate degrees in literature, I can enjoy a good "classic" novel - like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice or Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd or Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. One of my favorite types of books, though, has always been the mystery novel. Since I was a kid, I have devoured mysteries - graduating from Encyclopedia Brown to Nancy Drew to Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes. These days, I read a lot of serial mystery fiction by American women, with some of my favorites being Sue Grafton's alphabet series, Earlene Fowler's Bennie Harper series, and Mary Daheim's Bed and Breakfast series.

For "serious" fiction, my tastes run toward books that delve into the darker side of human relationships. In other words, the anti-Nicholas Sparks. I appreciate books that explore how love often breeds (or is even born out of) betrayal and resentment. I like when authors make me think about how passion can be driven as much by antipathy as it can by desire. I enjoy books about regrets, lost opportunities, broken relationships, failures, obsessions, and all of the gritty, murky "stuff" that makes fictional characters come alive on the page and allows them to teach me something about what it means to be "human."

Updated: 12/02/2017 12:55AM