Erica-Baum

Sitting atop the used mid-century style chair in the corner of her sitting room, Erica Baum, BC ’84, recounted how she went from her liberal arts education at Barnard to donning the walls of the Guggenheim with her artwork.

All of us have those books that have made us who we are today. Maybe we are inspired by the biography of our personal hero, or maybe we have been deeply influenced by a religious text. Maybe we're being molded by some of the pieces we're reading in our philosophy seminars, or maybe there's that one special childhood story that always seems to color our worldview. This past week, The Eye's Allyson Gronowitz discussed My Ideal Bookshelf, a collaboration between artist Jane Mount and writer Thessaly La Force to produce images of well-known figures' 100 favorite books, revealing a great deal about their personalities. There's no doubt that someone's favorite books can say a lot about them, and learning one's preferred titles can make you feel a lot more intimately acquainted with them. We thought it would be fun, then, to find out some prominent past Columbians' favorite books. Columbia, despite the nearly complete lack of American writers in the Core, nevertheless seems to foster an appreciation for American classics. Actor James Franco counts William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying among his favorites, and songstress Alicia Keys loves Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Willa Cather's My Antonia. more Our preoccupation with academia, it seems, carries over even into our pleasure reading. Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal cites Norman Rush's Mating, a novel narrated by a graduate student in anthropology, amongst her favorite books. Author Erica Jong, who graduated from Barnard, says that the Odyssey is one of her all-time favorites—proof that the Core is not the only place a love for the Classics can be fostered, folks! In fact, even if one does take the Core, it's possible that you will leave Columbia without feeling particularly influenced by any one of those texts. President Barack Obama, who famously graduated from Columbia College, does not give the honor of the top spot on his bookshelf to some political treatise. Rather, that distinction goes to Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon. Even if we're not all agreeing on Core texts, though, graduates from the University often do have some common ground in their preferences nevertheless. Both actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who spent time studying at the School of General Studies, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants author Ann Brashares, who graduated from Barnard, love J.D. Salinger's teen angst classic The Catcher in the Rye. Moral of the story: Start thinking of some impressive favorite titles now. When you hit it big after Columbia, you want your favorite books to speak volumes about you!