There’s something about reading a novel set on a campus — college, university, boarding school, or otherwise — that makes it feel like fall, regardless of the season. From descriptions of characters wandering around historic, ivy-covered dormitories, to scenes in the dusty stacks of an athenaeum in some New England city, those kinds of books always make me want to throw on a plaid blazer, step on a satisfyingly crisp leaf, and take a big whiff of this specific candle.
The ‘campus novel’ has become a genre in and of itself, at this point, with an endless amount of books set at both real and fictional schools, coming in all shapes and sizes — fantasy, romance, murder-mystery, horror, contemporary literature, and . . . well, pretty much every other category of fiction you can imagine. You might already be aware of some of the usual suspects — The Secret History, Stoner, Bunny etc. — but hopefully you’ll give the rest of the books on this list a passing grade, too.
