Ever notice back in grade school how a disproportionate number of the kids who constantly had their noses stuck in a book generally wound up being pretty darn intelligent?
As the sole inhabitant of my apartment able to find time for leisure reading, it strikes me that perhaps I should share my evaluations of current literature with those who, like my flatmates, are unable to find the time to select their own non-course-related reading material. So the following is a list of books, the reading of which I am confident will broaden your horizon and stretch your brain when it wearies of doing schoolwork.
On Writing, by Stephen King, should be read by everyone even vaguely interested in putting pen to paper. Whether your interest lies in turning in your next paper on time and in readable condition or in being the next, well, Stephen King, this slim volume is well worth the cover price. In roughly an inch's worth of paper, King's hybridized biography/how-to manual explains everything the beginning writer needs to understand.
If it's period romance you crave, skip the ridiculously overdone bodice-rippers at Borders and try your best to search out some of Georgette Heyer's stunning masterpieces of Georgian romance. Heyer, whose novels have been published for decades, was quite frankly a writing machine - her novels, which are brilliantly researched and painstakingly accurate in every historical detail, number well over two dozen.
When was the last time you read a good children's book? While Eion Colfer's "Artemis Fowl" series has received (unjustified) comparisons to Harry Potter, one of the best series I can recommend for anyone looking for a light, humorous read are Lemony Snicket's "Series Of Unfortunate Events." All eight (soon to be nine) stories in the series are told with tongue-in-cheek dark humor, and unabashedly so.
Philosophically speaking, there are some much-overlooked classics which certainly deserve mention. Christopher Marlowe, perhaps best known to people our age from the brief part played in Miramax's "Shakespeare in Love" by Rupert Everett, wrote "Dr. Faustus," in which a medieval student sells his soul to the devil in exchange for all his greatest dreams. This summary, however, falls far short of the actual play - which, having seen produced, I found ten times more captivating than any Shakespeare I had seen to that point. Where Shakespeare seems to have, in many cases, written the Elizabethen equivalent of Wilde's later "pink lampshade plays," Marlowe's investigation of good, evil, greed, hypocrisy and other forces that motivate humanity kept me on the edge of my seat for three and a half hours with nary a complaint.
While the selections above are all entertaining, sometimes your brain needs a good stir. There's almost nothing better to achieve this, I've found, than the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror.
For example, I'm sure many science majors have heard of Issac Asimov - not only a famous and lauded scientist, but also one of the major science fiction writers of the 20th century. Asimov's works span from his Norby Chronicles, targeted to audiences of young readers, to the massive (and inaptly named) Foundation Trilogy. Although Asimov wrote the series' three middle volumes as his initial story, he soon added four more - both prequels and following chapters in the story of a mathematician 20,000 years in the future whose work on chaos theory allows him to accurately predict the future. While the scope of the series is mastered primarily in the three novels written first, the other volumes are to be prized for their intense characterizations and nearly flawless (for their time) scientific backgrounds.
Charles de Lint's Memory & Dream was one of the first pieces of modern urban fantasy that I became aware of. The genre itself seems to be expanding, with de Lint's numerous titles joined by the likes of China Meiville, Maureen F. McHugh, and Neil Gaiman (another pioneer in both this genre and that of graphic novel artistry). Memory & Dream takes place during the early 1990s, in the fictional Canadian city of Newford, and while it may not be the strongest of de Lint's works (that honor would, in my opinion, have to go to Trader), it is a brilliant starting point for any reader willing to spend a few hours being lulled into a fantasy realm where shadows hide creatures from other plains of existence. If it suits, there are at least half a dozen anthologies and novels by de Lint that use related characters and settings, including at least one (hard to find) young adult novel.
Poppy Z. Brite is generally known among her fans and detractors as being guilty of using prose purpler than even Anne Rice's to describe acts which many readers might find disturbing or immoral. Her characters dabble in drugs, illicit and casual sexual relationships, and all manners of mental depravities. It's just this that makes some of her earliest works so incredible. In particular, Exquisite Corpse is a horror/romance novel that details the activities of a homicidal necrophiliac, the victims he stalks, and the people he meets along the way. Although disturbing, it's a vivid and entrancing picture of activities most people wouldn't even be capable of imagining without Brite's assistance.
Although most of these authors won't be found on any of your course reading lists, their works are some of the most inspiring and imaginative pieces I've come across in the last few years, and they're definitely worth your time.
