‘Home’ is the theme of Three Books program for new students

Stanford recently mailed three books to freshmen and transfer students: a novel about a baseball star at a small college; a memoir about a family’s harrowing times in Cambodia; and a non-fiction look at the incursion of market forces into family life.

The books, which were selected for the 2013 Three Books summer reading program, are:

The Art of Fielding: A Novel, by Chad Harbach

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, by Loung Ung

The Outsourced Self: What Happens When We Pay Others to Live Our Lives for Us, by Arlie Russell Hochschild

“I chose these books because I really admire and enjoy each of them, and I think you will too,” Nicholas Jenkins, an associate professor of English, says in a video posted on the new online course site, titled 2013: Three Books. “Each of them also says something significant from a different angle about the profound theme of home.”

Although the Three Books course is running on the OpenEdX platform, Jenkins, who is the faculty moderator of this year’s program, said the books aren’t an assignment, but an opportunity to read, to think, to listen and to talk.

“In essence, that’s what any university, including Stanford, offers,” he said in the video. “It’s a chance to participate with others in learning about and creating something. So I hope you’ll join in. Everybody’s contribution is valued.”

On Sept. 19, as part of New Student Orientation, Jenkins will moderate a Three Books roundtable talk with the authors.

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