Introducing Bibliophilia:
a recommended reading list for book lovers.
Bibliophilia is a weekly post of recommended reading for law students and lawyers. The list will comprise both fiction and non-fiction with as much variety as possible. We’re also happy to take reader submissions from you so get reading!
Title: The Partner Track
Author: Helen Wan
Genre: Fiction, contemporary, drama, law
Ingrid Yung is a step away from becoming the first minority woman to make partner at a venerable law firm. When an offensive incident at the summer outing threatens the firm’s reputation, she is commanded to spearhead the new Diversity and Inclusion Intitiative. Ingrid begins to wonder whether the prestige of partnership is worth breaching her ethics.
Title: Infinite Jest
Author: David Foster Wallace
Genre: Fiction, satire, meta, tragicomedy, absurd
Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, the book features the most charmingly screwed-up family in fiction. This 1079 page epic explores what entertainment is and why it has come to dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.
Title: Sightseeing
Author: Rattawut Lapcharoensap
Genre: Fiction, cultural, slice-of-life, political
Debuted in 2005 by an award winning Thai-American author. A collection of contemporary short stories set in Thailand filled with rich characters and raw emotion. Bleak yet beautiful; an outstanding reading experience that offers a candid and diverse insight into a small country struggling with the inevitable tide of Westernisation.
Title: Asian Legal Revivals: Lawyers in the Shadow of an Empire
Author: Yves Dezalay, Bryant G. Garth
Genre: Non-fiction, law, analysis
Drawing upon the insights of Pierre Bourdieu, the book explores the transformation of the relationship between law and state into different colonial settings. The authors show how nationalist legal elites in countries such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and South Korea came to wield political power as agents in the move towards national independence.
Title: Narcopolis
Author: Jeet Thayil
Genre: Fiction, surreal
Drugs, sex, violence, addiction, love and death. Poverty, pimps, opium dens, poets and gangsters. Every character yearns to escape in this book. Shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, this novel takes you on a lush and dreamy journey into a sprawling underworld written in electrifying prose that captures the seedy squalor of Bombay in the 1970s.
Title: Supreme Ambitions
Author: David Lat
Genre: Fiction, contemporary, law, realism
This book details the rise of Audrey Coyne, a recent Yale Law School graduate who dreams of clearking for the U.S. Supreme Court someday. Audrey mvoes to California to clerk for Judge Christina Wong Stinson, a highly regarded appeals-court judge who is Audrey’s ticket to a Supreme Court clerkship. While working for the powerful and driven Judge Stinson, Audrey discovers that high ambitions come with a high price.
Title: The Partnership
Author: Steven J. Harper
Genre: Fiction, thriller, law, realism
When gifted trial lawyer Ronald Ratkins $100 million client defies protocol by interrupting the sacrosanct Executive Committee meeting, all seven attorneys are suspicious. The news, Ratkin suspects, could upset his ongoing billion-dollar trial, send stocks plummeting, and destroy his client, his law firm and his personal wealth. But the wily Ratkin has a foolproof plan. Or will his own greed and that of his fellow partners undo him?
