PHILADELPHIAespite technological advances, the book has remained a constant source of both comfort and intellectual growth. Nearly everyone has a favorite book or books. Usually these books reflect an individual life or represent a significant moment in someone life.

At an Ivy League institution such as the University of Pennsylvania, tradition is important but so are an evolution of media and the communication of ideas. The Kelly Writers House of Penn has compiled an eclectic reading list that, as Writer House director Kerry Sherin suggests, "reflects the changes in the literary canon that we don always see on best seller lists or on lists of the century."

The list began as a single e-mail from Penn graduating senior and writer Tahneer Oksman to the Writers House Planning Committee, a group of about 90 students, faculty, staff and alumni of Penn, known as the "Hub." Oksman asked what she should be reading now that she was free to read whatever she like. A flurry of e-mail messages generated a long list of books and readerscommentary. In the hope s of inspiring others to find and read these books, as well as inviting the public to contribute lists, the Kelly Writers House has preserved the original e-mail discussion and the list generated by the Hub at http://www.english.upenn.edu/~wh/.

PENN READING LIST

as compiled by the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania

• The Theater and its Double, Antonin Artaud
• Yo!, Julia Alvarez
• Poetics, Aristotle
• The Salt Eaters, Toni Bambara
• England, England, Julian Barnes
• Mother Courage, Brecht
• Autobiography of Red, Ann Carson
• Don Quixote, Cervantes
• Collected Poems, Robert Creeley
• Drown, Junot Diaz
• Bleak House, Charles Dickens
• Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry
• One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse
• Tumbling, Diane McKinney-Whetstone
• Up in the Hotel, Joseph Mitchell
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
• A Humument, Thom Philips
• God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
• The Life of Poetry, Muriel Rukeyser
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
• Miss Lonely Hearts and in the Day of The Locust, Nathaniel West
• Night, Elie Wiesel

ABOUT THE KELLY WRITERS HOUSE

Founded in 1995 by a group of students, faculty, staff and alumni, the Kelly Writers House is an actual 13-room house in Philadelphia at 3805 Locust Walk on the University of Pennsylvania campus that serves as a center for writers of all kinds and from all disciplines. Each year the Writers House produces about 300 public programs and projects, including poetry readings, film screenings, live internet webcasts, seminars, web magazines, lectures, dinners, radio broadcasts, workshops, art exhibits and musical performances. The Writers House Planning Committee, a group of about 90 student, faculty, staff and alumni of Penn, whose intellectual curiosity guides the House, sponsors all of these events and projects. Equal parts writing collective, alternative learning community and public literary arts center, the Writers House is a unique program at Penn and across the country.