Reading a book for class can feel grueling at times: just another extended task to add to an already long to-do list as an undergraduate student. Even if you’re like me and have pretty much always enjoyed reading, it can feel like pulling teeth — particularly when books are assigned for courses that aren’t of genuine interest to you. I have found that, despite this fact, there’s always one book in every course that has made me not only think deeply and authentically as a reader, but that has challenged me to be a more open-minded reader overall. As a lover of learning and education, this rush that I get from finding a new media interest only fuels the fire of my interest in a particular text. Here are five books that I have fallen in love with during my undergraduate English program.
Human Matter by Rodrigo Rey Rosa.
Human Matter by Rodrigo Rey Rosa is a meta-novel that follows an archivist as he slowly begins to uncover the true depth and severity of the cascading effects of the Guatemalan dictator, Efrain Ríos Montt. The main character, Rodrigo, travels to the Historical Archive of the Guatemalan National Police and begins to dust away the secrets and silence instilled by the previous regime, attempting to bring the stories of activists, indigenous people, and others harmed to the forefront of Guatemala’s collective consciousness through documentation and synthesis.
This novel was breathtaking and harsh at the same time. At many points in my reading I found myself having to take breaks, do research, and then dive back in. I loved, and continue to love, the narration: it is written in such a way that you feel like you are learning alongside the narrator and that you are only able to know what he is allowing you to know, or what the government is allowing you to know. By the end of the novel, you are left feeling like you need to reread to see the peaks of truth among the weariness of his reportage. I absolutely love that feeling as a reader, and I have since gone back to read it again. The themes of discovery and justice are empowering and go to show readers just how much the sharing and uncovering of knowledge can alter a community’s healing after a collective trauma.
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward.
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward is the story of a family as they travel through Mississippi, described as a “tour de force” by Oprah Daily. The main character Jojo is a 13-year-old boy whose mother, Leonie, is a drug addict. Jojo relies on his grandparents and his younger sister, Kayla, as he begins to grow into his identity and understanding of the racial tensions, not only within his family, but within Mississippi’s history as well. Told through magical realism, Jojo speaks to ghosts and animals as he hears the stories of those lost and now found, to relieve them of their ties to slavery, hardship, love, and loss.
Sing, Unburied, Sing is heart-wrenchingly descriptive in all of its imagery. There were times I felt as though I was there alongside the narrators because they, and the world around them, felt so incredibly real. Ward constructs her characters like no other author I have read before, and as a reader I have returned to read this book just to give them life. Sing, Unburied, Sing is a novel that I will never forget and will sit on my bookshelf forever.
Normal People by Sally Rooney.
Normal People by Sally Rooney follows two characters, Connell and Marianne as they transgress from their teens into adulthood in a tangle of miscommunication, bad timing, and internal walls. Marianne is awkward, smart, and overlooked. Connell is outgoing, jock-ish, and anxious. The intricacies of their families cause their paths to cross in ways that perhaps wouldn’t have happened given their social positions in school and their adherence to these “social rules.” As they navigate their own lives, they’re also navigating what it means to care for someone else alongside themselves. They learn how to come back and apologize, and to be real despite these pressures.
Normal People is heart-wrenchingly real, awkward, and emotionally charged. As a reader, you feel as though you are breaking down their walls with them (and building them back up). Rooney has a special way with tension and resistance through dialogue. What draws my interest to this novel is the lack of description at times, allowing the reader to fill the space with their own interpretations, experiences, and reactions — and somehow, Rooney does this in such an authentic way that it leaves you feeling even more connected to the characters. This novel sits on my shelf and stares at me, begging me to crack the spine and feel something.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
While I don’t typically get into this time period of literature too often, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein sure does convince me to dip my toes in. This novel follows Victor Frankenstein as he toys with the bounds of life and death and in doing so, creates the Daemon. Victor attempts to teach and mold him into a “human,” but what he does not expect is that he will feel the pressures of our most human desires at the request of the Daemon. The Daemon learns what it means to be human, arguably more so than Frankenstein himself. Frankenstein is a tale of the intricacies of science, but also of life and its meaning.
Frankenstein strips you of what you believe to be the tangible human experience and challenges you to think about your deepest desires as foundational to your everyday interactions. This novel left my judgments laid bare and continues to be a story that I reach for years after reading. If you walk into a college level literature class, you’re going to hear this title repeated over and over, and it is for good reason. Frankenstein is foundational to the science fiction genre, but also our understanding of humanity.
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell.
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell is not a book that I would traditionally reach for. While listed as a self-help book (which typically turns me off), I was surprised to dig in and read so many personal anecdotes written so beautifully. Odell critiques the creative implications of the digital age and teaches readers how to fight against exploitative and capitalistic productivity, as well as how to reclaim their attention away from digital claws.
While this book is among less than five self-help books I have ever read, in my mind, it wiggles itself out of the internal boxes and judgments that I have placed the genre in and found its way among the list of books I have fallen in love with. This book introduced me to so many new ways of viewing my creative and curriculum-based work. After reading this book I was left feeling motivated, yes, but also ready to advocate for the dismantling of current systems that, honestly, I had not realized could cause so much harm.
Out of the hundreds of books that I have read, if I were to recommend any five to a large, unspecified audience, it would be these. All of these books sit on my shelf like trophies significant to my development as a reader and as an individual. The feelings that these books brought to me have yet to leave, sweeping over me at random moments where I’m reminded of their beauty.