Read Like A Longhorn: Book Recommendations

Recommended by Sarah, UT Libraries staff in Teaching and Learning Services​: I listened to this book driving through the Hill Country, and it was an INCREDIBLY Texas experience. Prof. McConaughey is a part of UT, and this book lets you into his brain, just a little. It is a sometimes bonkers journey that I would describe as alright, alright, alright.

Recommended by Annah, UT Libraries staff in Teaching and Learning Services​: Ortberg (formerly of The Toast) uses humor and astute literary analysis to explore his relationship with religion, his gender identity, and life in general. With chapter titles like "Captain James T. Kirk Is a Beautiful Lesbian, and I'm Not Sure Exactly How to Explain That" and "The Matriarchs of Avonlea Begrudgingly Accept Your Transition / Men of Anne of Green Gables Experience", Ortberg captures you from the beginning and then spends the rest of the compilation challenging you.

Recommended by Elizabeth, UT Libraries staff in Borrower Services: This half prose, half poetry book-length essay sprawls; from Buffalo, NY to a farm in the hills of Tennessee to Iceland, T Fleischmann weaves together memories of nights spent with lovers, a review of Félix González-Torres’ life & work, their hormone replacement therapy journey, Greek myth, an anti-colonialist take on the Public Universal Friend, and meditations on love and ice in their breathtaking commentary on what it is to have a body and what it means to create. If you love art or have a body (or hopefully both!), you can’t miss this one. ​
TL;DR: non-linear, queer, trans rumination on art & life

Recommended by Elizabeth, UT Libraries staff in Borrower Services​: Even when silvery fish after fish / comes back belly up, and the country plummets / into a crepitating crater of hatred, isn’t there still /something singing? The truth is: I don’t know. / But sometimes, I swear I hear it' Ada Limón knows that poetry won’t save us from the myriad of everyday horrors that plague us, but, hell, that doesn’t mean she won’t write verse beautiful enough to try. This collection has carried so much for me over the past few years. Read it if you need words to carry something for you, too.

Recommended by Vy, UT Libraries staff at the Research Help and Checkout Desk: I love the way that the author talks about the stages of a relationship, the bad and good, through poetry.

Recommended by Adrian, UT senior: Nabokov's masterpiece isn't exactly a novel ... it's a 999 line poem paired with a critical (and hilarious) commentary for that poem. This book makes the reader a detective, and while some books may have a surprising twist at the end, Pale Fire has several moments where the reader has to rethink what's really happening. A must read for lovers of experimental fiction.

Recommended by Lea, ​Staff, Texas Digital Library: My partner studied poetry and writing with the author, Craig Arnold, before he disappeared in 2009. Craig's poetry inspired both of us to think differently about writing and life. Craig's life lessons continue to stay with us after his disappearance while researching a poetry volume about volcanoes. His mysterious disappearance on a small volcanic island in Japan makes so much of his life and work feel even more poised for eruption, change, and magic.