Guilty pleasures, the paperback edition
Yesterday we were confessing our guilty tv pleasures, today it’s paperback books.
We’re heading into summer. And in keeping with our books vs. gas discussion, we’ll keep the vacation reading cheap. So here’s the question: what book can we buy right now in paperback that will take us away from life as we know it and give us a laugh or a cry, some romance or adventure, something we can really disappear into?
No hardbacks, nothing too heavy, just a good, fun read.
I’ll start:
For romance and laughs: Ain’t She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Former queen bee, now down on her luck, returns to her home town to live among the people she abused in high school. There are some scores to settle and a surprising (and very hot) romance to enjoy.
For true-adventure terror: Hunted by David Fletcher, about a rash action that puts Fletcher on the wrong side of a grizzly, who then hunts him relentlessly over cliff and ice in one of the most harrowing tales I’ve read.
For true-adventure inspiration: Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously by Bill McKibben, about a man finally deciding to commit fully to one thing in his life, and do it for a complete year. If this doesn’t get you off the couch, nothing will.
For true-adventure laughs: Road Fever by Tim Cahill. Hilarious account of Cahill’s attempt to break the speed record for driving from the southern tip of South America to the northern edge of Alaska, powered by beef jerky, milk shakes, and a gut-rotting delicacy known as roto coffee.
For life-changing self-help: Loving What Is by Byron Katie. This will forever change your perspective on who you are, what to do with your life, and how to stop trying so hard to change people or to make them like you. (Okay, maybe it isn’t exactly light reading, but it’s great reading, and what better time to tackle self-improvement than over the summer?)
For total fantasy escape: His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Hands-down the most creative, brilliant fantasy I’ve found–even more imaginative than (brace yourselves) Lord of the Rings, which I also love to death. The first book in this trilogy is being made into a movie right now, so do yourself a favor and beat them to it. These books will blow your mind.
Now it’s your turn. Pick any or all categories, or add some of your own. What paperback would you hand to your best friend before he or she heads off on vacation, and say, “Here. You have got to read this”?
Technorati Tags: Reading, Books, Philip Pullman, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Bill McKibben, Byron Katie, The Work, David Fletcher, Tim Cahill
May 8th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
help,
i’m going on vacation soon (sun, sand and surf) and need some reads. any suggestions for “meaty” paperbacks, for someone whose taste in fiction leans towards “one hundred years of solitude”, “rain of gold” and “a suitable boy”–you get the drift. in non-fiction, any true life adventure, historic or contemprary would be swell.
thx
May 8th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
For beach reading Happiness Is Finding a Thrift Shop that sells Paperback Books by the BAG for circa five bucks. I know of three. I’ve hit them all over the past two weeks. Yeah, I know, I should support writers and buy books new, which I do more than occasionally, but with the “habit” I’m feeding buying everything I read new is just not possible within my budget . . .
Within those three bags is a Pat Conroy I haven’t yet read (amazing!), a Candace Bushnell, an Anchee Min, a Jonathan Kellerman, an Elmore Leonard, and even more amazingly, a Len Deighton and a John D. MacDonald. You’ll notice, if you’re a voracious reader, that at least one of these authors has been dead for awhile. That’s the other joy in thrift shopping– finding the things you missed when they came out a few years ago.