Read for Pleasure at BU and Beyond: A Readers' Guide to Boston
How To Use This Guide
While Boston University Libraries focus on collecting to support academic research, we want to support your leisure reading goals! This guide is for you whether you're a voracious reader, literary wanderer, and/or if you want to make more time for mental health during the school year. Find out where you can take a reading break and enjoy what Boston (and beyond) offers:
Reading for Pleasure at BU
BU Libraries @ Howard Thurman Center
This collection focuses on leisure reading to find common ground. Our book selections are inspired by the mission of the Howard Thurman Center and Thurman's own beliefs about fostering community through empathy and self-awareness.
Science Fiction at SEL
The Science and Engineering Library has a science fiction reading corner. Visit in person, or browse in the BU Libraries spotlight collections highlighting recreational fiction and recreational non-fiction at SEL.
Children's and YA at Pickering
The Pickering Educational Resources Library supports the Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. As part of this support, Pickering has collections of children's and young adult books.
LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center
The LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center has a small lending library focused on queer stories.
Fiction at Mugar
BU Libraries use the Library of Congress Classification System to arrange our books, this means that books are grouped by topic. You can find fiction at Mugar by looking for call numbers that begin with the letters PR or PS. PR represents English literature, PS American. Most of the PR's are on the fourth and fifth floors of Mugar Library, all PS books are on the fifth floor. If you're interested in foreign language literature, you can check the LC classification table to see where that might be located.
Where to look for literature in Mugar
Browse the Mugar stacks in the following range based on the publication date of the books you're interested in reading.
- English Literature from 1770-1900 - PR3991-5990
- English Literature from 1900-1960 - PR6000-6049
- English Literature from 1961-2000 - PR6050-6076
- English Literature from 2001-now - PR6100-6126
- American Literature from 1800-1900 - PS991-3390
- American Literature from 1900-1960 - PS3500-3549
- American Literature from 1961-2000 - PS3550-3576
- American Literature from 2001-now - PS3600-3626
- Literature in languages other than English: PA-PQ
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BU Libraries SearchWe also have a large number of eBooks, so try searching for titles and authors that you want to read in BU Libraries Search to find out if we have an eBook copy.
On-campus book clubs
Interested in connecting with other Terriers who love to read? Get involved with a campus book club!
- BU Book & Ink Club: A space for readers and writers to come together and share their passion. The Book & Ink Club is a feedback-focused organization that fosters creativity and engagement with all things related to literature.
- In the Margins: Student-led book club sponsored by Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground. Contact thurman@bu.edu for more information.
- SARP book club: Organized by student ambassadors of the Survivor Advocacy, Response and Prevention office. Contact prevent@bu.edu for more information.
Common Read
Boston University is proud to announce our inaugural Common Read for 2025: Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Copies of the book are available in various formats for the BU community. Resources and events supporting the program are available on the Common Read website.
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Orbital
by
ISBN: 9780802163622Publication Date: 2024-10-29WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024 * A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER **New York Times Book Review Book Club Pick** **Stephen Colbert's The Late Show Book Club Pick** Winner of the 2024 Hawthornden Prize Shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction Shortlisted for the 2024 Climate Fiction Prize One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2024 A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in 24 hours "Ravishingly beautiful." -- Joshua Ferris, New York Times A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts--from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan--have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. Profound and contemplative, Orbital is a moving elegy to our environment and planet.
