After a soul-crushing semester, winter break is a time for relaxation and rejuvenation. However, during this time, it’s easy to do nothing but watch Netflix. Although that is an absolutely noteworthy way to spend your break, there are other ways to entertain yourself— while you keep working your mind. Specifically, I suggest reading books. Whilst in break, I like to do three things: watch TV (specifically Netflix), take an unprecedented number of bubble baths, and read. Alternating these three activities keeps me sane. So, for you guys, I prepared a list of books, including fiction and poetry, that I’m reading over winter break— and I suggest you read a couple of them too. I haven’t finished all of them, but I’m positive they are all good (I have been gathering this list for a while now).
1. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast.
The New York Times describes this book as a “literary thriller” and by that they mean, “The term literary thriller might make you scoff, but Ng has set two tasks in this novel’s doubled heart — to be exciting, and to tell a story bigger than whatever is behind the crime. She does both by turning the nest of familial resentments into at least four smaller, prickly mysteries full of the secrets the family members won’t share.”
The Times is absolutely correct. Having read this book last year, I am rereading this because it is, to put it simply, a tour de force of emotion and drama. This book literally covers everything: race, sexuality, the quandaries and struggles of growing up, the ups and downs of marriage, what it’s like to be a sibling, what it’s like to be pushed by your parents, lost dreams, grief, hope, I could go on for a while. I suggest everyone read this wonderful book--if not for its literary merit, then for its ability to enthrall.
2. Pansy by Andrea Gibson
I’ve been remembering way way back
to the moment they told me Jesus walked on water.
How I knew whatever I’d grow up to believe
I would never try to wrestle a miracle
away from anyone’s reason to live.
I’ve been remembering how I wrestled a miracle
away from your reason to live.
If only shame could wash me clean,
but that is never how healing works.
Nobody ever won anything from anyone
thinking the whole world was out of their league.
I’m sorry you know
what I look life when no one is looking.
I don’t expect anyone to believe
in justice and forgiveness at the same time.
from “Lens”
I just finished this book of poetry a few days ago and to be completely honest, I have not fully recovered. This book covers topics such as sexuality, mental health, feminism, and white privilege, but overall, it is a combined love poem, apology, and callout post for the human experience. That may seem generalized (what even is the human experience?), but that’s what it is. Once you read it, I think you’ll get it.
3. Wrong Side Of A Fistfight by Ashe Vernon
I can be a stomping ground for old lovers
who loved only the parts of me they could
put their fingers in--I’ll be
the sycamore behind the high school soccer field.
They’ll carve their names in me with the stems
of broken wineglasses and call it love.
They can sit in circles and drink fireball whiskey
and brag about how bad I wanted to be touched.
Yeah. I wanted to be touched.
Guess my soda fountain heart was
bad at being a wishing well; all those
copper pennies only ever tasted like blood.
from “HERE IS YOUR ALTAR FOR WORSHIP”
Ashe Vernon is a fairly young poet, and many people who don’t know poetry probably don’t know her. However, as a reader, you get what the title suggests--a punch in the face. This book thoroughly annotates emotional journeys, linking childhood experiences to those of adults, and does so through beautiful and intentional diction. I have yet to finish the book, but from what I’ve seen so far, it’s definitely worth your time.
4. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
I know Simon and I will always be enemies…
But I thought maybe we’d get to a point where we didn’t want to be.
Two words: gay wizards. That’s it. Now go forth and read.
5. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
I don’t know, maybe your experience differed from mine. For me, growing up as a human being on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century was a real kick in the teeth. Existentially speaking.
Told from the perspective of teenager in 2044, this book explores what the world would be like if virtual reality took over physical reality. This virtual reality includes many puzzles that are based on pop culture and if the person figures out the puzzles, they will be rewarded. My dad recommended this to me and I think, especially as an everyday internet user, it would be beneficial to read this book.
6. The Sensualist by Daniel Torday
Stephanopoulos was in his early seventies and had taught at that same school for forty years, and there was no end to the emasculating aphorisms he has developed to remind young men of their insecurity and weakness. He had served for three years in the European Theater, having enlisted when he was seventeen. He took this former bravery and paired it with the paucity of experience he’d accrued in the fifty years since and transformed it into the kind of didacticism only young men in public school are made to endure, and which can only be doled out by hoary old men with war stories no one wants to hear.
Of course, I may seem biased because Dan was my professor this past fall, but this novella is unendingly captivating. His witty writing and frank depictions of everyday high school life lend to an absolutely intriguing book. I highly recommend.
7. Rise of the Trust Fall by Mindy Nettifee
With the sure hands of twelve surgeons,
the quiet need of outlaws with siphons,
the swift religion of hydrogen--
you locked in.
You made branches from my skirts.
You made poems from my alarm codes.
You made little white desserts from my lies,.
With no one to observe the tree of my resolve,
the forest of my reasons,
my axes stopped their grinding.
I fell without making a sound.
from “Please Send Instructions On How You Did That”
I haven’t finished this one yet either, but Nettifee is always masterful with her words. Swiftly and deftly, she constructs marvelous images that convey love, grief, and loss.
8. I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson
“Yes!” she cries. “We still got it, yes we do!” She jumps to her feet. “We can watch the Animal Channel tonight. Or a movie? You can pick.”
“Okay.”
“I want to--”
“Me too,” I reply, knowing what she was going to say. I want to be us again too.
(Portrait, Self Portrait: Brother and Sister on a Seesaw, Blindfolded)
She smiles, touches my arm. “Don’t be said.” She says it so warmly, it makes the air change color. “It came right through the wall last night.” This was worse when we were younger. If one cried, the other cried even if we were on different sides of a Lost Cove. I didn’t think it happened anymore.
In regards to this book, the New York Times said, “On a line-by-line level, Nelson is bold, even breathtaking. You get the sense her characters are bursting through the words, breaking free of normal metaphors and constructions, jubilantly trying to rise up from the prison of language…” I read this book this past fall, which was my first semester of college. Amidst the copious amount of work I had to do, I couldn’t put this book down. At one point, I stopped reading it for a couple of days because I didn’t want it to end. This book is intimate and meticulous, leaving the reader blown away. I’d really suggest you read it over winter break—I don’t think you’ll regret it.
