UB Reads, with Professor Donna Oropall

Welcome to UB Reads!

In this ongoing feature, we talk to folks in the UB Community about what they’re reading.

In this installment, Associate Professor of Human Services Donna Oropall shares some selections from her summer reading list!

Professor Oropall

I belong to two Book Groups and have belonged to three at one time.

I read Theo of Golden, which is the UB Book Group selection. I loved this feel-good novel about an aging artist and his final years spent in a college town. I loved every bit.

However, the two books I read this month are both really worthy and very different.

Whistler by Ann Patchett is a traditional, beautifully written novel told across two timelines that has been called a tender meditation on memory, chosen family, and love’s endurance.  The novel begins at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when Daphney Fuller, an English teacher, reunites with her stepfather, Eddie Triplett, reigniting a relationship that had ended when she was nine. The story is very sweet, and it is Ann Patchett's most autobiographical novel to date.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke is a relevant debut novel that follows Natalie Heller Mills, a “tradwife" and social media influencer who with her husband Caleb runs a farm called Yesteryear Ranch. There are many themes: religion, motherhood, and social media are a few.  Critics have drawn comparisons to real life tradwife, social media influencer Hannah Neeleman at Ballerina Farm. Very fresh and interesting first novel for this promising young author.

Thanks to Professor Oropall for sharing these reading suggestions!