The Books Briefing: Campus Life Is Full of Plot Twists

College libraries may be reducing the number of books stored on their shelves, but plenty of novel-worthy plots and fascinating characters still play out on campus and congregate in the classroom. After all, challenging assignments like the drama-class trust exercises in Susan Choi’s most recent novel can influence students’ thinking for years to come. Academic characters in John Williams’s Stoner and Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim conduct research that shapes and reflects their identities. The writer Nicholson Baker, best known for his vividly detailed fiction, found more than 700 pages’ worth of quotidian dramas in the schools where he taught during a short stint as a substitute teacher.