One of the hardest parts of my undergrad was the persistent feeling that I was being slowly stripped of my love of reading. As everyone who knew me from about grade three onwards knows, I have always been an extremely voracious reader. This was something that I felt myself loose a lot as I did my undergrad in English. I still enjoyed reading, but over the course of the school year, I had to read so much for school that I found myself enjoying it less, and during the summer months, I would read far less, and what I did read would be what academia would deem "trash" (and thus, to my delight, were utterly different than the sometimes unbearably dull or outdated works I was required to read over the course of year). This was in part due to the nature of the school I went to - I choose a small school to do my undergraduate degree at, which had many benefits, but one way in which it was lacking was in terms of diversity of courses. This, combined with degree requirements that placed a greater emphasis on early works of English literature (think before the 20th, even 19th century), meant that I had little flexibility when it came to courses.
Now, don't get me wrong. I do love me some older English literature. But there is a point (that came around second year) where I was so completely, throughly, and overwhelmingly DONE with reading works penned by old, white, Christian men. The lack of diversity was stifling. My fourth year was a delightful change from this - having finished all my required early English course work, I powered through several amazing classes, including one on Horror, a Postmodernism course, African-American Lit, and a Text and Technology class that was wonderfully challenging. These courses left me with some wonderful books that I genuinely enjoyed reading and powered through in the same way I used to read everything I could get my hands on: Katherine Dunn's wonderfully disturbing Geek Love, Iain Bank's traumatizing and mesmerizing The Wasp Factory, Jesmyn Ward's haunting Salvage the Bones, and, of course, Mark Z. Danielewski's amazing, boundary-defying, and unforgettable work of ergodic literature, House of Leaves (I cannot emphasize how much you need to read this book. Right now. You cannot put it down).
Funny story about The Wasp Factory. We were talking Scottish authors the other day, a conversation which I was largely unable to participate in, but then Iain Banks came up and I was like oh! I've read a book of his. And Keira asked which one, and I replied The Wasp Factory, and her and Ali just sat there and looked at me for a minute before commenting that was a very intense introduction to his work. I replied yes, yes it was - this was the novel that I literally screamed at and then threw across the room at one point.
Anyways. now, almost seven months after finishing my degree in English, and after two months of constantly talking about books, I can feel my love for reading returning. And it is the most amazing thing. We talk about books and I want to go out and find them, I want to buy them, I want to sit in my room and read all day. I read a YA book, John Green's wonderfully heartbreaking The Fault in Our Stars, in about four hours the other day. It was wonderful.
Side note on John Green: him and his brother Hank run this hilarious and educational and generally fantastic YouTube channel called the vlogbrothers that I have become incredibly addicted to. Hank Green was also the genius behind the super cool The Lizzie Bennet Diaries which is a modern adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice as a vlog that you should totally check out (it won an Emmy!).
I can't really describe this feeling. But it is rather fantastic.
So, some book recommendations from what I've read recently:
- Read House of Leaves. Just do it.
- Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.
Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.
The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams
- Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Everyone who has ever talked about books with me is probably aware of how much I love this man and his brain, and, with his first adult novel in eight years, he has created a wonderfully strange and mythic little world that just sits at the back of your head forever.
- Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.
A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.
- John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. It is a young adult novel, which is part of the reason why I just powered through it so quickly. But it really is a fantastic novel, with a truly wonderful and hilarious narrator. Funny and sad, this book's ending is really just amazing.
- Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I haven't quite finished this one yet, but man, it is good.
- On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media--as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents--the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter--but is he really a killer?
As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn't do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?
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| Problem? Me? Nah... |
