Need a good read? Peruse some of these:
“I watched you stuffing yourself with other people’s sadness, as though you were eating with a fork at dinner. Their grief dripped from your shin. And I still loved you because you never pretended their sadness didn’t matter. “
Stranger Than Fiction
Jeanne Murray Walker
I read this piece two years ago and just picked it back up. It is a marvelous story told through the structure of poems. The whole thing is dripping with similes and beautiful language and the story shows the intertwinement of human perception and action. It very well may be the prettiest thing I’ve ever read.
“I am at the grocery store because I feel sad. I feel sad because nobody is in love with me. Nobody is in love with me but everybody loves me. Everybody loves me because I am good at making people feel good. I am good at making people feel good because I feel sad a lot.”
Depression and Other Magic Tricks
Sabrina Benaim
This is an anthology of poems written by a spoken word poet. These works are some of the most truthful, real poems I have read. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will, most importantly, feel less alone.
“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this.”
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
I know, you probably read this in high school, but have you picked it back up? There are some astounding concepts written demonstrated through pretty words that make butterflies hatch in my tummy.
“Move beyond tolerance. We are not on this planet to tolerate one another. We are here to love each other.”
Heart Talk
Cleo Wade
This book is a guide for life mixed in with a few poems here and there. Feeling Lost? Want to improve yourself? Read this.
“You can’t compare yourself to others: if Nature has made you a bat, don’t try to be an ostrich. “
Demian
Hermann Hesse
This book was recommended to me by my high school physics teacher. It is a perfect story to read for college aged young adults trying to make sense of the worlds around them and within them.
“I have been bent and broken, but-I hope-into a better shape”
Emily Dickinson
Okay, this chick is SO talented. She wrote poetry in the 1800’s and it is STILL RELEVANT. I don’t think she gets nearly enough credit for her mastery of words.
“Monsters are our children…they ask us why we have created them”
Monster Culture (seven theses)
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
This is an essay on the role monsters we place within stories( books, art, movies, etc.) play in our lives. I had never thought about why there had to be a monster within a story, whether gory and eating brains or the mean queen of high school. This essay brings to light the importance of placing villains within works and how they make us view the world.
“There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice. “
The Short Stories
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Y’all know this joker, and I know he some times seems over hyped. He is not. I highly encourage you to read some of his works other than The Great Gatsby. Much like A Tale of Two Cities, being forced ot do an assignment on something can make it less enjoyable. However, picking up some of Fitzgerald’s writing on your own will be well-worth it.
Image Credits: Elizabeth Coate, Eleanor Ritzman, Garnette Ransone