8 Obscure Books You Should Read over the Break
Mar 31, 2015 • 8List
If, like us, you have reached that point in life where you have read all the titles on your bookshelves and the rest of your reading list holds no appeal, a four day weekend can quickly turn from a blessing to a bane. What do you do with all that time that doesn’t involve your smartphone screen or, perish the thought, actual human interaction?
We’ve come up with a few lesser-known books that will keep your hands, hearts, and heads busy this break whether you’re lounging on your couch or in transit. Enjoy!
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If you’re new to the Reading For Fun Club, test the waters with this collection of short stories. Written by BJ Novak of The Office fame, this collection is sure to leave you with lots to think about even after the holiday. You’ll learn how February got its name, how the Hare finally beat the Tortoise, and how to give great advice, among many others. It’s guaranteed to grip you, in humor and in wonder, from its first few pages ‘til the very last, where you will most likely become overwhelmed with sadness that its over.
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If you like character-driven novels with quirky, out of the box characters, Miranda July’s debut novel is the book for you. Armed with equal amounts of wit, humor, and shameless self-discovery, July’s protagonist will have you cringing and rooting for her at the same time.
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What’s better than Russian science fiction? Detective Russian science fiction! Let the Brothers Strugatsky introduce you to the wonderful world of sci-fi with their tale of a police inspector’s vacation-turned-investigation. The novel takes place in an inn up in the mountains that may or may not be housing a ghost, a murderer, and a corpse.
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Let the title of this book set your expectations. Or not. The wonderful thing about Eggers is that you could completely loathe him one chapter and love him the next. His memoir is full of laugh-out-loud, sob-into-your-sleeve, trains-on-a-collision-course honesty that it’s difficult to look away, let alone put down. Don’t be afraid to lose yourself in his relentless stream of consciousness. Or don’t (and keep your heart intact).
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Prepare your heart and steady your hands for this book/work of art. Foer took blackout poetry to another level and created this beauty of a book, cutting words out of his favorite book, The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, and carving from its remnants an entirely different story, fresh and new and possessing a cadence and poignancy all its own.
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Lena Dunham, every girl’s favorite from HBO’s Girls, collected essays, lists, and emails for a book that reads like you’re talking to your best friend or to yourself in the mirror, in the middle of the night where no one can overhear you, with an Ouija board in front of you as you try to exorcise your demons. This book is brutally honest with a grain of salt, and refuses to be put in the corner.
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Pictures with books? Yay! For those new to the world of graphic novels, or for those who like more novel than you do graphics, Adrian Tomine’s work will serve as more than ample introduction. For those of you who are comics connoisseurs and have yet to read anything from Optic Nerve, Shortcomings is a great place to start. At all times irreverently funny and completely honest, Tomine’s anti-hero and his unheroic journey in search for happiness (and redemption?) is by and large despicably relatable.
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In memory of the late and very much great Sir Terry Pratchett, we suggest you begin your odyssey into the world of Fantasy with the first book in the Discworld series. There are numerous guides available online that will help make sense of the multi-verse that Pratchett created over the span of 40 books (as of his death earlier this year), but we suggest you take a leap of faith and dive right in. We promise you won’t regret it.
Got any other obscure books you think we should read? Share them in the comments!
