Sometimes we get so swamped with reading assignments that we forget to take the time to read something for enjoyment. If you have a hard time finding a book that’s right for your taste, there are multiple students and teachers that have great literary taste and make reading their favorite hobby.  

Gabrielle Chaisson is a senior mass communication major from Thibodaux who has her own book blog. She gravitates towards young-adult literature and coming-of-age books. 

She said, “I guess what I love are the character-driven stories where the character has to go through a lot or is trying to figure out how to grow up…I like understanding why people are the way that they are. […] There’s beauty in realizing that the trials of this world are not just yours. You’re not the only one going through them.” 

Her book recommendations include:  

• “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, and “If I Stay” by Gayle Forman. 

• “Normal People” by Sally Rooney. 

This is currently Chaisson’s favorite. She said, “It’s like a love story but it’s really just about friendship and human connections and trying to navigate growing up while also analyzing what expectations have been put on you.”

• “And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer” by Friedrich Backman. A novella that visualizes the effects of dementia as physical memories slowly disappear. 

Annelle Fletcher is an accounting major, though she is sometimes mistaken as an English major because she is known to have her nose in a book. She is a fan of multiple genres such as fantasy, mystery, literary classics and religious nonfiction.

She recommends: 

• “The Red Queen” series by Victoria Aveyard

• “If You Could See the Sun” by Ann Liang

• “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde .

Fletcher said, “It was so different from all the other books I read before.”

• “The Theology of the Body” in One Hour by Jason Evert
• Anything written by Agatha Christie. Fletcher said, “Her books are so good. You could literally pick up any of them and they’re like a fun little adventure, and they’re always different.”

 

Dr. Richmond Eustis is an English literature professor. His selection of recommendations includes books he has read over this past year, and they vary from mysteries and historical fiction to graphic novels and poetry. They include:

• “The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi” by Shannon Chakraborty which is a fantasy about a single mother returning to the pirate life. “It’s funny, it reads really well,” Eustis said, “but it’s also really moving.”
• “The Vaster Wilds” by Lauren Groff. A historical fiction about colonialism which, according to Eustis, is “the best book I’ve read this year.” 
• “Shubeik Lubeik” (“Your Wish is my Command”) by Deema Mohamed. 

This is a graphic novel playing with the idea of what would happen if wishes were for sale. Eustis plans on teaching this story in his World Literature class.

• “This Afterlife: Selected Poems” by A.E Stallings. “She is just a dazzling virtuoso with form,” Eustis said. “She knows how to make old forms supple and receivable again.”

Dr. Michael Martin is an English literature professor who concentrates on nineteenth-century literature. He said, “I also like books that capture your imagination […], books that give you a yearn for something more.” He encourages people to read “anything that can move you. Be attracted to it and give it a chance.”

He recommends: 

• “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” by Henry David Thoreau which is an autobiographical piece about a trip the author takes on a canoe. Martin said that “there’s a tinge of beauty and sadness,” since Thoreau wrote this as he mourned brother’s death. 
• “The Mysterious Stranger” by Mark Twain

This early sci-fi/fantasy book has a few different manuscripts, each with different endings.

• “Typee” by Henry Melville is a story about a man trapped on a cannibal island. 

Dr. Katherine Conner is a creative writing professor who is very driven towards thriller novels. “I think it’s good,” she said, “to mix up more serious literature with literature that is more about entertainment [which she refers to as “popcorn” literature].”

Her book recommendations are: 

• “The Good Ones” by Polly Steward

• “The Writing Retreat” by Julia Bartz

• “Bunny”, “All’s Well”, and “Rouge” by Mona Awad 

Conner described Awad’s writing as “hyper-surreal” and “darkly compelling […], always unpredictable. It’s always strange and character-driven.”

• “Beware the Woman” and “The Turnout” by Megan Abbott 

According to Conner, her books are dark and twisted, confrontational about the reality of human nature, and have beautiful style

• “She Started It”  is a vacation thriller that Conner referred to as a “popcorn” thriller. She said, “I was not impressed with the writing, but I enjoyed it.”

• “Bright Young Women” by Jessica Nole 

The women in the story were based on the victims of Ted Bundy.

As for my own book recommendations:

• “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr  is a Pulitzer-prize winner, and rightly so. A mixed narrative that jumps between different characters at different times during World War II, though the pieces fit together better than a puzzle, it really gives a story of hope in such a dark time of desperation and loss.

• “Sherlock Holmes” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

I recommend each and every one of the stories about the famous detective. The mysteries in themselves always seem so strange and unsolvable, and Sherlock’s attentiveness and love for adventure keep me captivated.

• “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen 

This is a humorous and heartfelt period piece written in the seventeenth-century that engages with the complexities of romance. 

• “Story of a Soul” which is the autobiography of Thérèse Martin, better known as Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. 

She details her childhood, her entrance into the Carmelite convent and her spiritual life. She also describes her “Little Way,” a spiritual exercise of relying on God’s mercy and accepting one’s own littleness. 

Now that the semester is coming to a close, it’s the perfect time to pick up a new book of your own choosing, not one assigned by your teachers.