Chapman’s summer reading program, Community of Readers (CoR), is twelve years strong and has reached a milestone of 1,720 titles reviewed since its initial program kickoff in 2007. Back then, 18 eager participants from across campus dove into 90 book titles, including some from President Emeritus Doti’s summer reading list.

Concluding in August, CoR 2019 boasted 170 titles reviewed by 24 readers during 92 days of summer reading.

Who Participates in CoR?

Current library account holders with borrowing privileges participate in CoR each summer by reading books from the Leatherby Libraries and posting short book reviews to the CoR Blog. Participants receive prizes along the way.

Throughout the summer, we hold three lunches, where readers come to discuss their summer reading and collect their prizes.

For this year’s batch of readers, the second floor Humanities library was the most frequented area of the Leatherby Libraries (as it was last year), followed by the first floor popular McNaughton fiction and non-fiction collection, and the first floor Graphic Novels collection. For help finding these and other collections in the Leatherby Libraries, stop by the first floor Reference Desk or feel free to Ask a Librarian for more information.

A group of seated people look up at a standing man with his hand in a bowl and eyes closed

Leatherby Libraries staff member Nick D’Andrea selects a raffle winner at a CoR lunch.

CoR Hall of Fame

CoR participants may receive prizes for up to 15 reads over the summer, and three of this year’s participants emerged at the 15-book finish line: Andrew Calloway ’18, McKenna Hughes from the Center for Global Education, and Alexis Tai from the Office of Career and Professional Development.

Andrew was the first to complete (and surpass) this year’s 15-book challenge, penning a total of 17 book reviews. Robyne Kelly, from the Schmid College of Science & Technology, won the raffle for the grand prize – a brand new Kindle to keep her reading going!

A woman in a red top poses for the camera holding a wrapped Kindle e-reader.

Robyne Kelly with her grand prize of a Kindle!

The most popular books this summer, with three reviews each, all came from the McNaughton section of the library: Ruth Reichl’s memoir Save Me the Plums, Delia Owens’ bestselling novel Where the Crawdads Sing, and Hank Green’s young adult novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing.

Join us next May for Community of Readers 2020.