Culture

If you only read one book over break…

By Dan Treul ⋅ February 29, 2008 ⋅  Email this story ⋅  Print this story ⋅ Post a comment

For most of us midterm-swamped college students, it’s rather doubtful we’ll be in the reading mood over spring break, but in case you are, I highly recommend one (or all) of the following page-turners:

1. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson) - one hilarious man’s exaggerated and wickedly funny look at growing up in the 1950s; if you don’t read it, your dad should.
2. The Road (Cormac McCarthy) - not exactly beach reading, but hands down the best piece of dramatic fiction I’ve read in a long time. The terrifying, post-apocalyptic journey of a nameless man and his son pushing a shopping cart toward the coast in search of life. Hauntingly sparse but ultimately triumphant, this is post-modernism at its finest.
3. Terrorist (John Updike) - People calls it “perhaps the most essential novel to emerge from Sept. 11.” Worlds collide in these pages…
4. The Widow of the South (Robert Hicks) - based on a true story, this meticulously researched epic tells the story of a home destroyed by civil war…and the unlikely love that returns to rest.
5. Candyfreak (Steve Almond) - what better way to satisfy your mid-break cravings than by reading about chocolate? This attractively-wrapped, hilarious bar of nonfictional sweetness examines candy as it was meant to be made, and how the powers that be are trying to stop it. (Thanks to Dr. Chesley for both the recommendation and the consequent weight gain…also, be sure to attend next year’s Contemporary Writers Series, which features author Steve Almond).