Thanksgiving Break is quickly approaching. Maybe you have a long flight home ahead of you. Or maybe Aunt Joanne always asks you at the Thanksgiving table, “What books have you been reading?” Or maybe you just want a good novel to curl up with in the comfort of your own bed at home. To simplify your book-searching needs, here are a couple of books to check out over break.
1. All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See tells the tale of two teenagers, a blind girl from Nazi-occupied France and a German boy forced to serve in the Nazi army, growing up during World War II.
2. A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad traces the story of washed up music executive Bennie Salazar, his assistant Sasha, and the people they interact with along the way. Featuring an original and deliberate narrative structure, the book follows the characters as they grow older and their lives change.
3. The Circle – Dave Eggers
In Eggers’s novel, Mae Holland is hired to work for the most influential online company The Circle, which links users’ personal emails, social media, banking and purchasing. However, as she begins to move up in the rankings of the company and meets a peculiar colleague, Mae begins to question The Circle and the threats to privacy and democracy it may pose.
4. The Glass Castle – Jeannette Walls
Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle chronicles the past of the Walls family. Poor and chaotic, the dysfunctional family moves around the country and experiences many adventures and hardships along the way.
5. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
Eugenides’s novel Middlesex traces the history of the effects of a mutated gene on three generations of a Greek family. The narrator and protagonist, Cal Stephanides, is the most impacted throughout his life by the gene. Cal is an intersex man born with feminine traits that make binary gender indefinable. Cal must learn to come to terms with his gender identity.
6. Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Marisha Pessl
In Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Blue van Meer’s family halts their tendency to constantly move and settles in a quiet town for her senior year of high school. At school, she befriends a group of popular, rich, and enigmatic teenagers called the Bluebloods, who are close friends with the film teacher Hannah Schneider. After Schneider dies, apparently by suicide, Blue is inspired to determine why and if it was really a suicide after all.
7. Meridian – Alice Walker
Set in the 1960s and 1970s, Walker’s Meridian tells the story of college student Meridian Hill, who becomes active in the Civil Rights Movement. Soon afterwards, she begins a relationship with another activist, Truman Held. As time goes by, Truman tries to make money and better himself while Meridian continues her involvement with the movement that means so much to her.
8. The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt
Tartt’s The Goldfinch follows the story of protagonist Theodore Decker who, at the age of 13, survives a terrorist bombing at an art museum in which his mother dies. Running out of the crumbling museum, he takes with him famous painting “The Goldfinch,” which simultaneously provides courage for Theo and propels him into a lifetime of crime.