How We Pick the Books

The Freshman Common Reading Selection Committee members volunteer their service each year. CSUN students, staff, and faculty who would like to join next year's committee are welcome to contact Cheryl Spector on campus at x3932 or via email at cheryl.spector@csun.edu before mid-October. CSUN freshmen have offered crucial advice in recent years and are warmly welcome to help us select next year's book.

The Committee typically meets twice: once in late October to choose a short list of four to six finalists from the list of nominated titles; and a second time in January to select from the short list the winning title for the upcoming academic year.

Got opinions about next year's nominated titles? Blog with us.

If you'd like to share your opinion about any of the books nominated for 2014-2015, please do! (The growing list will be posted soon.) You can submit your opinions for posting on the CSUN Common Reading Blog: http://csunreading.tumblr.com/

Cover of "Garbology" by Edward Humes showing piles of e-waste (old computers, TVs, and so on) and brightly colored plastic waste.

Selection Committee Members (Oct. 2012-Jan. 2013)

These people helped choose Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash as CSUN's Freshman Common Reading for 2013-2014. Names marked with an asterisk (*) are CSUN undergraduate students.

Selection Committee Members
  • Karen Abramowitz
  • Sister Rita Basta
  • Stacey Bieber
  • Erin Delaney
  • Nicole Dickson*
  • Alexa Dimakos
  • Kimberly Embleton
  • Susanna Eng-Ziskin
  • Breanne Foster*
  • Catherine Givertz
  • Kate Gurewitz
  • Lindsay Hansen
  • Melissa Cardini-Marcussen*
  • Coleen Martin
  • Debbi Mercado
  • Harmanpreet Kaur Panesar*
  • Marlene Pearson
  • Sabrina Peck
  • Ronit Sarig
  • Heidi Schumacher
  • Cheryl Spector
  • Lizeth Villanueva*
  • Cira Winarto*
  • Louise Xu*

CSUN Common Reading Archives

2012-2013: One Amazing Thing: A Novel by Chitra Divakaruni

2011-2012:The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls

2010-2011: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

2009-2010: The Soloist by Steve Lopez

2008-2009: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

2007-2008: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien