If you were bored, I would tell you to read.
If you were feeling unproductive, I would tell you to read.
Feeling uninspired? Read.
Wanting to easily go away for a bit? Read.
And as the days of Christmas Break continue their cycle, as you slowly forget the date or the day of the week, as you settle into the comfort of doing nothing and consequently let these days pass you by, I am telling you to read. Read so that your glorious free time does not go by wasted.
I am not telling you to not spend your Christmas break binge-watching countless episodes on Netflix. I am only suggesting that you binge-watch some and read some as well, as I am choosing to do myself. You get the best of both worlds, and you'll feel much more productive in the end!
Here are 11 book recommendations for your reading pleasure:
1. "The Help"
Goodreads Rating: 4.44 out of 5
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her 17th white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
You’ve probably seen the movie, and with a killer cast like Viola Davis, Emma Stone and Octavia Spencer, how could it not be wonderful? But the book goes even further on the scale of wonderful things. It will make you laugh, cry, and contemplate lines you too would cross to do what’s right.
2. "The Opposite of Loneliness"
Goodreads Rating: 3.80 out of 5
Marina Keegan’s star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash.
As her family, friends, and classmates, deep in grief, joined to create a memorial service for Marina, her unforgettable last essay for the Yale Daily News, “The Opposite of Loneliness,” went viral, receiving more than 1.4 million hits. She had struck a chord.
Even though she was just 22 when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. "The Opposite of Loneliness" is an assemblage of Marina’s essays and stories that, like "The Last Lecture," articulates the universal struggle that all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to make an impact on the world.
Keegan’s voice was something else. My first read of a collection of short stories and essays, and I wasn’t disappointed. Her words evoke inspiration, and though I preferred her nonfiction to her fiction, I was glad to have had the chance to read the work of an artist gone too soon.
3. "The Nightingale"
Goodreads Rating: 4.53 out 5
FRANCE, 1939
In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another.
Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious 18-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences.
With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah takes her talented pen to the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. "The Nightingale" tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.
I won't lie, I cry easily. This book, like many others, made me cry. What was different about it was that even days after I finished reading it, I kept thinking about it, dumbstruck at how much it impacted me and how much it made me feel. The last sentence of the summary couldn't be more accurate, and I will always recommend this story to anyone willing to hear my praise.
4. "Outlander"
Goodreads Rating: 4.17 out of 5
The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach
— an “outlander” — in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...1743.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire — and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.
I started watching the TV show and two episodes into the first season, I fell so in love, I had to read it. Honestly, the length can be intimidating. But the detail is so incredible and the story so magnificent, you end up not wanting it to end. Lucky for us, it's part of an eight-book series! Let me add that the first book ends in a way where you can stop reading if you don't want to commit to a series, so everyone can be happy!
5. "A Moveable Feast"
Goodreads Rating: 4.03 out of 5
Begun in the autumn of 1957 and published posthumously in 1964, Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" captures what it meant to be young and poor and writing in Paris during the 1920s...
Among these small, reflective sketches are unforgettable encounters with the members of Hemingway's slightly rag-tag circle of artists and writers, some also fated to achieve fame and glory, others to fall into obscurity. Here, too, is an evocation of the Paris that Hemingway knew as a young man — a map drawn in his distinct prose of the streets and cafes and bookshops that comprised the city in which he, as a young writer, sometimes struggling against the cold and hunger of near poverty, honed the skills of his craft.
"A Moveable Feast" is at once an elegy to the remarkable group of expatriates that gathered in Paris during the '20s and a testament to the risks and rewards of the writerly life.
I love Hemingway. My dog's name is Ernest Hemingway. I also love Paris and the 1920s, so it can only be expected that I loved this book. Read it, and you'll feel like you were there, conversing with incredible people in an incredible time in an incredible place. After you read it, do yourself a favor and watch "Midnight in Paris."
6. "Chasers of the Light: Poems from the Typewriter Series"
Goodreads Rating: 4.36 out of 5
One day, while browsing an antique store in Helena, Mont., photographer Tyler Knott Gregson stumbled upon a vintage Remington typewriter for sale. Standing up and using a page from a broken book he was buying for $2, he typed a poem without thinking, without planning, and without the ability to revise anything.
He fell in love.
Three years and almost 1,000 poems later, Tyler is now known as the creator of "The Typewriter Series," a striking collection of poems typed onto found scraps of paper or created via blackout method. "Chasers of the Light" features some of his most insightful and beautifully worded pieces of work — poems that illuminate grand gestures and small glimpses, poems that celebrate the beauty of a life spent chasing the light.
For the hopeless romantic or people who like contemporary poetry, or both, this book is for you. I read one poem a day until I finished it, but the entire thing can be read in one day. This stuff is beautiful. Its content will make you blush, smile, and laugh until you can't help but turn the page and read the next poem.
7. "The Alchemist"
Goodreads Rating: 3.78 out of 5
Paulo Coelho's enchanting novel has inspired a devoted following around the world. This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and inspiring wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way. But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within. Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the story of Santiago is an eternal testament to the transforming power of our dreams and the importance of listening to our hearts.
I have yet to read this book, but it's next on my list of things to read. I've been told by more than one person that its story is "life-changing" and "absolutely incredible." Such a novel deserves to be read, so read it as I plan to.
8. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"
Goodreads Rating: 4.20 out of 5
Charlie is a freshman.
And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it.
Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mix tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But he can't stay on the sidelines forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.
"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is a deeply affecting coming-of-age story that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.
Strange, funny, sad, and perfectly lovable. I don't have many other words except that this is a book for those of us still growing up and trying to figure ourselves out as well as those of us that already have.
9. "The Kite Runner"
Goodreads Rating: 4.23 out of 5
Amir is the son of a wealthy Kabul merchant, a member of the ruling caste of Pashtuns. Hassan, his servant and constant companion, is a Hazara, a despised and impoverished caste. Their uncommon bond is torn by Amir's choice to abandon his friend amidst the increasing ethnic, religious, and political tensions of the dying years of the Afghan monarchy, wrenching them far apart. But so strong is the bond between the two boys that Amir journeys back to a distant world, to try to right past wrongs against the only true friend he ever had.
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, "The Kite Runner" is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons — their love, their sacrifices, their lies.
My dad recommended this book to me, and I'm so glad he did. This story ripped my heart in two and managed to glue it back together by the end. It's a roller coaster of emotions, but it's absolutely worth the read.
10. "The Book Thief"
Goodreads Rating: 4.35 out of 5
It’s just a small story really, about, among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery...
Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist
– books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.
This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.
I don't know where to begin or even how to express my love for this story. It is a perfect example of why I love reading and why I want others to love reading as much as I do. It is beautifully written literature, absolutely beautiful. It is not a fast read, but if you choose to give it your time, you will not be disappointed.
11. Any and every "Harry Potter" book
Goodreads Rating: 4.33 to 4.59 out of 5
Though you may not realize it, your life is dull without these books. There's a reason theme parks have been created. There's a reason people still obsess over them long after their conclusion. If you don't know that reason, you must find out. That is all.
All summaries provided by https://www.goodreads.com
