Some people read for leisure, others read because there's a midterm coming up in history on the 17th, but I think it's a rare treasure to find a book that will make you think. It's those books that you go into thinking you'll be going on a lighthearted adventure, but by the end of the book you find yourself questioning what you once knew and vowing to change some aspect of your life after having a revelation when you close the book.

Here are five books that are sure to have you scratching your head in amazement once you reach the last page.

1. The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom.

   
   
   
   This book is one that has stuck with me all throughout high school. It follows Father Time and his mission to help two people: a teenage girl wanting to end her life, and a businessman wanting to make his life last forever. Albom is known for his books that involve these magical realistic planes of existence. He contemplates heaven and mental illness at depths that are rarely explored. His eloquent writing matched with these topics that I have never before seen written about from this angle just made me stop and think. This book preaches about using your time wisely, and it's as much of a story about people finding themselves as it is about time's progression. Albom is a masterful world-builder that even now I wonder if there's really a Father Time wasting away in a dungeon deep in the bellows of the Earth, listening to our sighs about time slipping through our fingers.
   

2. A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

   
   
   
   This book is split into two perspectives. The first is a middle-aged woman on the US West coast living with her husband a rather uneventful life, and the second a collection of diary entries from a young girl in Japan who struggles underneath the weight of caring for her suicidal father and being bullied. These two's paths cross when one day, the Japanese girl's diary washes up on the beach inside of a plastic container with many other mystery trinkets inside to solve. This book, besides being endlessly fascinating, was one that I was constantly putting down in order to consult Google. Never before in my life have I wanted to research more about what I was reading, but this book portrays Japanese culture so uniquely that I was drawn in and wanted to know so much more than what the reader is teased with. Not only does it incorporate a lot of Japanese history that was really compelling to learn about, but the entire topics of suicide and bullying are portrayed from an angle that is so tragic and realistic, it's hard not to feel affected by this book's rawness even months afterward.

3. Here by Richard McGuire

   
   
   
   This is by far the most interesting graphic novel I have ever read. Here is unique because it doesn't have a typical plot and selection of characters like a normal book would. Instead, this book's 300 pages focus stationarily on one location, the corner of a room. Then with every flip of the page, the reader is shown that exact location over thousands of years. One page you may see the corner of a 1920s home, the next, a barren forest in the 16th century, the next, an underwater ecosystem from the year 3000. At some point in your life I'm sure you've questioned "I wonder what happened on this exact plot of land three hundred years ago," and Here answers that question in a series of pictures that will have you flipping through in one sitting, and then instantly wishing to read it again and pick up on the fine details.
   

4. The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan

   
   
   
   Marina Keegan graduated from Yale with honors on her way to becoming a writer when three days later, she tragically lost her life in a car accident. This book is a collection of her short stories and essays which she finished before her death, and they are singlehandedly the most affecting piece of literature I have ever read. There is a lot of controversy about if post-mortem writing is given too much credit because of the reader's knowledge of knowing that the author is dead, but dead or alive, Keegan is one of the best young authors that I've had the pleasure of reading. The title essay from this anthology, The Opposite of Loneliness, is the speech she gave at her graduate that preaches of opportunity and hope for the future. The ironic tragedy was enough to bring me to tears just reading about her optimism, but the essay as well as the entire book made me both mourn and appreciate how we spend our days after college.
   

5. Stolen by Lucy Christopher

   
   
   
   This novel follows a young girl who is kidnapped in an airport and taken to the Australian Outback by her captor. The entire book is told in a second perspective as "A letter to [her] captor," and it describes the lifestyle she had to live as she was isolated with the man who separated her from her family but yet promised to take good care of her. This books is one of the most haunting novels I have ever read, not only because of how terrifying the actual concept of abduction is, but because the abductor isn't a "typical" psychopath. This book messes with your feelings and as you read, makes you feel mortified, confused, anxious, and empathetic. This book reads very quickly with pacing like a thriller, and I am not responsible for the paranoia that may occur afterward. Because after all, this book is a great indicator that anyone could be dangerous, even the gentlest of men who seem to have good intentions.