The Sem-break Book List

The Sem Break Booklist

With a few more days, a hop, a skip, a turn and it's semestral break! Three whole weeks off of school, away from the pressures of deadlines and alarm settings spanning two hours, away from the dread and worry and overall exacting stress of school. Three weeks of leisure and free time -- lots of free time. Lots of free time I don't know what to do with after the go-get-em pace of the past few months.

Yeah, family time and barkada time and a little out-of-town trip would definitely take out a huge chunk but let's face it, how much TV time could we really tolerate? Unless you're that guy who studies in advance, you'd be facing a lot of blank space, and you'd probably be reaching out to grab a book or two to leaf through while waiting for the next crazy vacation event. If you do, here's a list of interesting titles of various genre you might want to try. Happy Sem Break everyone!

1. The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks

#TimelessRomance

Question: How do you learn to trust another human being after being stabbed in the back by someone you trusted two or three times over? Here's another: How can you tell if a new spark was just a rebound or the real thing? Ask Sophia.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the time continuum, Ira, a war veteran who relives his love story as he fights off the icy hands of death in a ditch, struggles with his own question: How can you tell the world your love story and make them understand?

Told in the subdued yet powerful narrative that is the signature Nicholas Sparks, this is the story of two couples seemingly worlds apart only to be bound by a single moment of human kindness -- sort of like a legacy of timeless love.

2. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

#TeenageStruggle #BipolarDisorder

A poignant story of the battle a teenage boy silently wages against undiagnosed Bipolar Disorder -- a classic 'misunderstood' story that starts with Finch (the weird guy with Kool Aid red hair ) and Violet (the cheerleader), as different as highschool social strata can get them, meeting on a ledge in school, serendipitously disrupting each other's suicide attempt. As their story unfolds, you'd find yourself asking two questions: (1) Can love/friendship save us from ourselves? -- the answer to which as disturbing as the characters -- and (2) How many Theodore Finches are there in my world exactly?

Riddled with quotes of Cesare Pavese, this book can sure leave marks after you've turned the last page.

3. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

#BadAssGenius

If you think the movie's cool enough, wait until you've read the book! Personally, I think the movie didn't quite do justice to the characters Stieg Larsson created. Nonetheless, if you're into universal justice and/or meting out just retribution, throwing in a mix of socially dysfunctional emotionally broken weirdness masking pure genius of the eidetic memory and upper class hacking kind... OR if you're simply into total bad-assness, this book is screaming 'YOU'. ;)

4. The Someday Jar by Allison Morgan

#UTurnHere

At which point in our lives is it welcome to get the chance to be reminded of the life we wanted and realize 'Hey, this right here is not it!'?

For Lanie, it came a month before her 'ideal' wedding to the perfectly 'ideal' guy, in the form of an old jar full of scribbled dreams she wrote as a kid and had hoped someday she'd fulfill. But she learns pretty quickly that Someday Jars have an effect on one's life similar to a tornado set lose on a quiet field. Is this a second chance at life or will the jar just blow up her perfect life to a million irretrievable tiny pieces?

5. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

#PsychoThriller

From the author of Gone Girl comes another thriller that'll truly mess with your idea of idyllic family life.

Rachel's life couldn't get any lower. She just lost her job. Her ex-husband's mistress-turned-second-wife is having a baby, and Rachel has no one but a bottle whiskey -- which becomes the very reason why the police doesn't trust her when she reports a murder she figured out on her daily train ride.

Once again, Paula Hawkins shatters the deceptively calm confidence we have in the people we supposedly know.

6. The Bartimeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud

#FantasticalSarcasmofEpicProportions

This was a series I read about 5 years ago, and up to now, whenever someone comes up to me asking about fantasy books, this just flows out of my mouth like a knee jerk. And I've gone through dozens of fantasy books since, so... yes, I really recommend this. ;) This cynically witty, ironically humorous, difficult, wily, totally amazing and sarcastic djinn's adventures with a young wizard is guaranteed to sweep you off to a wholly magical world (without unicorns and butterflies) and crack you up all night. P.S. Enjoy the footnotes!

7. The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

#MemoirofResilience

I don't usually go for memoirs. I find them tedious and labeled all over with hubris. But Anita Diamant is a compelling force all her own (atleast based on the few books of hers I've read and her reviews). She didn't fail to deliver.

The Boston Girl is a beautifully written story of a surprisingly interesting life of a Russian-Jew immigrant's daughter who found friendship and passion for life in a group of women bound by literature -- the Saturday Club.

Sweeping from 1915 to 1985, Addie Baum's story, told in her voice, is a poignant, though a bit feministic, reminder of the time-old human strength and resilience and our uncanny ability to "rise above". What's interesting about the book though is it doesn't move you until you get to the end and the story wraps itself up… Typical Diamant!

8. The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson

#HumanEvolutionandDestruction #lgbt

This book was first published in 2007. It begins unpretentiously in a dystopic world with the discovery of a new planet where humans can thrive. Then the story evolves to become surprisingly moving in its astute observations and convincing theories. It tells of the fate of mankind and the worlds we create and destroy. It tells of our second chance with a new planet and our seemingly inevitable nature to destroy. Yet at the same time as it struggles to define what it means to be human, it also tries to define love and its part in humanity as the story of Billie and Spike, the Robo sapien, unfolds. Reading Jeanette Winterson is like reading the daughter of Ayn Rand with its allusions to collective thinking and loss of individuality. Definitely a thought-tweaking read!

9. Still Alice by Lisa Genova

#AlzheimersDisease

Alice was a Harvard Psychology professor who was happily married to another Harvard professor and they had three kids: a lawyer who was trying to get pregnant, an amateur actress trying to find her own voice to the frustration of Alice, and a promising medical student. When early-onset Alzheimer’s hit Alice, it took away her career first, then her friends and colleagues, but it met a challenge when it went for her family. Still Alice is a rare looking glass into the lives of Alzheimer’s patients. If it's true that we are nothing without our memories, just imagine the struggle of the Alzheimer’s patient. Well, you can do that, or you can just read the book. ;)


10. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

#Fairytale

This is the story of little Nobody Owens -- Bod -- who was raised by a group of ghosts and a vampire in a cemetery after his parents were murdered when he was a baby. In the lyrical powerful prose that is Neil Gaiman, unfolds a story that questions the boundaries of family and potentialities as we know them. A bed time story for children? Think a light but enlightening story for the grownup mind who forgot the wonders of fairytales. :)

-Iza Lacadin