Skip to main content

Reading List #1

This is our first recommended reading list!!!  We will put out a new one every Friday.  All the books on this list are flawless and majestic and the reading of these books should become your #1 priority from now on.


The Cold Awakening Trilogy 

1. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys: This is about a 15-year-old girl named Lina who is taken to a labor camp in Siberia under the rule of Stalin. 
2. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green: The love story of two teenagers with terminal cancer - but, the characters' words, this book should not be mistaken for a 'cancer story.'
3. Before I Fall By Lauren Oliver: A girl who dies in a car crash finds herself repeating the day of her death until she figures out what really important. 
4. On Writing Well by William Zinsser: This should be every writers' Bible.
5. Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitchell: While very long, a timeless classic about southern views throughout the Civil War. 
6. The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins: I don't even think this entry needs a caption...
7. If I Stay by Gayle Forman: A gifted high school-age cellist loses her entire family in one tragic car crash, and has to decide whether it's worth it to go on living.  
8. The Cold Awakening trilogy by Robin Wasserman: A story about the divide between humans and robot humans set in a future where the human consciousness can be downloaded.
9. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman: A beautiful story set in an alternate world where witches rule the skies, bears can talk, human souls take the form of animal daemons and ordinary people struggle to understand the nature of magical elementary particles called Dust.
10. Every Day by David Levithan: This book explores themes of identity, sacrifice and love at its purest through the eyes of a being who wakes up every day in the body of a different person.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Junkie Metaphors and Books About Our Inner Crazy

    So, recently I was doing a spot of (mandatory) community service for my gym teacher when I experienced a rare instance of karmic payoff.      Me and a bunch of other temporary bond-slaves were unloading this huge file cabinet onto the gym floor, sorting everything from Dance Revolution DVDs to pamphlets on Your First Visit to the Ob-Gyn! into neat piles, when I uncovered quite by chance a crumbling copy of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs.  Elated, I carried it around for the remainder of the period until my teacher took pity on me and offered to let me borrow it. It's falling apart before my very eyes I swear...      I fell in love with this book the moment I heard its title quite a while ago - Naked Lunch ?  What the hell kind of weird awesome twisted name is that?  I am only now realizing how twisted it really is.  The book is a compilation of notes that Burroughs took while under the sick influence of heroin. ...

Book Review: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Alex's drink of choice is milk spiked with drugs. Classy!      This book left me conflicted and disturbed, as all good books should.  It's set in a future world where teenage gangs terrorize the streets while the Government attempts to control and reform them.  The protagonist, who refers to himself as Your Humble Narrator, is a rat bastard named Alex who spends his free time looting and raping with his friends.  (Keep in mind that there are lots of graphic and violent scenes in this book.  Don't read it if this will upset you.)  At the tender of age of 15, he is a proud sadist and his society doesn't know what to do with him.  His story is a meandering answer to several tough questions: Is it better to choose to do bad or to be obliged to do good?  Can the price of goodness ever be too high?      The best part of this book is probably that it dares to deal with such controversial questions.  The next best part ...

Goals for Book-Loving Losers

A mini-library in Park Slope, Brooklyn - GOD it's so cute      For me, this time of year means nonstop action - essays, tests, cross-country practices, holidays, and rushed, chilly walks to the subway.  I like being busy, but often when I'm studying and hurrying I find myself fantasizing about the all reading I'd do if I had any spare time.  I think I would be much more educated and cultured if my teachers just shut me up in a room with a load of books, rather than expecting me to come to school.  Oh well.      Here are my fantasy reading goals for sometime when I have more time.  (And if you happen to have a lot of time right now, why not attempt one?) 1. Read a ridiculously long book - War and Peace , or the Bible, or the entirety of that endless series about feral cat colonies, Warriors - and admit to yourself that you're mostly reading it so that you can tell people you read it. 2. Go camping/sit in a shed/climb up a tree/ac...