Winter break is the perfect time to bust out the novels you’ve been neglecting all quarter while textbooks held your attention. On cold, rainy days when you’ve already demolished your Netflix queue, turn to a great read with a mug of hot chocolate as a relaxing way to spend the day. “I’ve been reading ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ because I’ve seen the movie a million times and wanted a good memoir in my life,” said second-year M.F.A. writing student, Karon Leslie. “I intend to read James Baldwin’s ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ for no other reason than the fact that I’m obsessed with him.”
Committing to a new book can be difficult, but this breakdown takes the guesswork out for you. All you have to do is find the coziest spot in the house:
If you’re looking for romance, castles and a little bit of mystery, try:
“Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier
This classic Gothic romance is straightforward and easy to read, and checks all the boxes for a stormy love story: a gorgeous mansion with ample gardens, a handsome bachelor with a complex past, a gossiping staff a la “Downton Abbey” and a sense of dread for what’s to come. When our penniless narrator falls for the wealthy, brooding Maxim de Winter, her homecoming to his elegant estate of Manderley is not quite what she expected: Manderley is full of secrets and she finds herself treading on them wherever she goes.
If you’re looking for nonfiction that’s far from boring:
“Running with Scissors” by Augusten Burroughs
Augusten Burroughs has had an unbelievably weird, surreal life, and his memoir recalls the shocking narrative of his early teenage years. When his dramatic poet mother has psychotic episodes, she locates a zany psychiatrist named Dr. Finch, who ends up adopting Burroughs. Burroughs becomes part of the eccentric Finch family, which includes a dog food eating mother figure, daughters raised on Freudian terminology and a 33-year-old adoptive son who starts an obsessive sexual relationship with 13-year-old Burroughs. Through it all, Burroughs somehow keeps up a hilariously positive attitude, singing at mental wards to hone his star power and dreaming up a range of beauty products. In a wild true story of a childhood gone off the tracks of normality, you’ve never read anything like “Running with Scissors” and you’re unlikely to read much like it again.
If you’re looking for something quick, fun but unexpected:
“The Silver Linings Playbook” by Matthew Quick
The award-winning movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper was based on this great novel. The story is similar, but character development, narration and the ending are different: when thirty-something Pat Peoples is released from the mental hospital (“the bad place”), he attempts to put a positive spin on his life by looking for the silver lining in all things. As he tries to mend relationships with his football-loving family, his estranged wife, his helpful therapist and his moody new friend Tiffany, Pat’s humorous first-person narrative will make you laugh out loud. Somehow a book with such sad themes is actually a fun read, enjoyable and easy to love.
If you’re looking to escape the world as we know it:
“When She Woke” by Hillary Jordan
This futuristic retelling of “The Scarlet Letter” starts when Hannah Payne begins an affair with married celebrity preacher Aidan Dale. When she learns she is pregnant, she seeks an illegal abortion and is caught, imprisoned and chromed as a “Red” (murderer) before being released into a world that has taken racism into new colors. Chromed people are chemically changed to another color from head to toe, and they must survive in a society that knows they’ve done something wrong and what level (color) their crime is. This fast-paced rewrite of an old story tackles plenty of contemporary topics: conservative religion, pro-life versus pro-choice, feminism and its stigmas, a lingering patriarchal society. Written in a straight-forward style, “When She Woke” is an exciting read you can’t put down.
Honorable mentions:
-
“The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. A charming, funny epistolary novel about a British isle and its intriguing inhabitants.
-
“Wool” by Hugh Howey. A sci-fi saga about a futuristic society where the outside environment is toxic and inhabitants of a silo community realize things in their community aren’t as they seem.
-
“The Cuckoo’s Calling” by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling). A fun detective story about a private eye investigating the possible murder of a supermodel.