On The Road – Cross-Country Roadtrip
“What is he aching to do? What are we all aching to do? What do we want? She didn’t know. She yawned. She was sleepy. It was too much. Nobody could tell. It was all over. She was eighteen, most lovely, and lost.”
I read this book in my last few months of high school when I was still deciding whether or not to take a gap year. Going to college seemed really “doable” while the idea of traveling the world left me with a void at the end of the thought. Where would I go? What would I do? What do I want to do? Traveling was a dream, and I had no idea whether dreams could fit into real life.
On the Road taught me that they do. Kerouac and his gang of deadbeats rocket from state to state with the jetfuel of pure excitement. He bravely curbs the norm of settling down and starting a family for a life spent racing from dream to dream.
Into The Wild – Misadventure in Alaska
Krakauer’s journalistic writing paints the story of Christopher McCandless with honest reflection. McCandless’s intuition, curiosity, and unquenchable thirst for life are endlessly inspiring, yet they also served as a pitfall for his untimely death.
If you’re like me and broke the cardinal rule of reading the book before watching the movie, my advice would be to read the book anyways. The book will give you a better sense of who McCandless was, and Krakauer supplements the story with other tales that are equally intriguing.
For the good folks who plan on reading the book first: check out the movie’s soundtrack. It’s entirely composed by the lead singer of Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder.
A Room With A View – Love in Florence
Picture someone you love. Are they in a room, or are they outside?
Does it really matter? E. M. Forster would say that it most definitely does.
Like Kerouac and McCandless, Lucy Honeychurch yearns for adventure. Yet Lucy is different in the way that she struggles to free herself from society. Some people are able to combat other’s expectations by deciding simply not to care. I’m not one of those people. Neither is Lucy. Her transition from living a subdued lifestyle to a one of adventure is slow and delicate.
The Poisonwood Bible – An American Family’s Development in Africa
When I imagine Barbara Kingsolver writing a novel, I imagine her leaning over a cauldron, tossing in characters, settings and themes. All she does is stir the pot, and a book is born.
The Poisonwood Bible follows the childhood of four sisters from the U.S. as they grow up in the Congo in the 1960’s. Their father is a preacher bent on spreading Christianity. In this piece of historical fiction, Kingsolver explores the morality of foreign aide, and she teaches a lesson that is difficult to learn: there is danger of good intentions.
The Life of Pi – A journey of spirituality.
Disclaimer: I haven’t finished reading this one. I’m forty pages in and I know three things about Pi Patel: He is devoutly religious, he grew up in a zoo in the southern India, and he was named after a swimming pool. I’m hooked.
