Books. Aaahh. Any book lover will tell you what the joy of opening a new book, smelling the fresh paper scent, reading the first words and knowing that whatever happens, you cannot come out of this world, is.
Here are 10 books, classic and Young adult, you should be reading this spring.
1. Autobiography of Malcolm X – As told to Alex Haley
It is a book about the struggles of an African-American Muslim Leader, Malcolm Little or El-Hadji Malik El-Shabazz or simply, Malcolm X. It is a result of collaboration between Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. The Autobiography is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X’s philosophy of black pride, Black Nationalism, and pan-Africanism.
2. The Girl On The Train – Paula Hawkins
This story has more fun with unreliable narration than any thriller since Gone Girl. Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.And then she sees something shocking Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?Compulsively readable, The Girl on the Train is an emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller and an electrifying debut.(Goodreads)
3. The Harry Potter Series – J.K. Rowling
No reading list can ever be complete without these popular series. For the uninitiated, Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the life of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The main story concerns Harry’s struggle against Lord Voldemort, the Dark wizard who intends to become immortal, overthrow the Ministry of Magic, subjugate non-magic people and destroy anyone who stands in his way.
4. The Nightingale – Kristin Hannah
‘In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.’
With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France–a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator’s father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explains the novel’s impact by writing, “In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism.”
6. The Infernal Devices and The Mortal Instruments series – Cassandra Clare
Even if you don’t like the two series (third one coming up), you can’t deny the fact that Cassandra Clare is an amazing author. Some passages are deeply philosophical and even poetic in nature. They are fantasy series about a world where shadowhunters are required to save mankind from the destruction caused by demons.
7. Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
This hugely popular book is chilling and with a lot of back-stabbing, none of it literal. Nick Dunne has the entire media spotlight focused on him when he discovers that his wife Amy Dunne, protagonist of the children’s series, Amazing Amy, has gone missing on the day of their fifth wedding anniversary. Her friends and her diary reveal that she was afraid of her husband and he had tried to kill her more than once. Is Nick behind her disappearance, or is it something else entirely?
8. All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
All The Light We Cannot See is a deeply moving story, again based in Germany occupied France. It tracks the journey of two people whose lives are so different a meeting was impossible. One is an inquisitive German boy, Werner, who has a knack of repairing radios and is employed to track down all the illegal radios the French have. The other is a blind French girl, Marie-Laure, whose happy life in Paris has been thrown in disarray and she and her father have to move to live with her half-mad grand-uncle, Etienne because of a supposed myth of the ‘Sea of Flames’. Despite their independent lives, they still have a chance meeting and still fall in love.
9. The Scarlet Pimpernel – Baroness Emmuska Orczy
‘They seek him here, they seek him there,
The Frenchies seek him everywhere,
Is he in Heaven, is he in Hell?
The demmed, elusive Scarlet Pimpernel.’
The Scarlet Pimpernel is the name of a chivalrous Englishman in the time of the Terrors in France, who, with his band of gentlemen, rescues aristocrats before they can be killed by the violent government in revolutionary France. He is known by his symbol, a simple flower, the pimpernel. He succeeds by masterful use of disguises and strict secrecy of the group’s movements. His identity is secret to all but his men. Marguerite Blakeney, French wife of a wealthy English dandy, is approached by the new French envoy to England with a threat to her brother’s life if she does not aid in his search for the Pimpernel. She aids him, and then discovers that the Pimpernel is also very dear to her. She sails to France to stop the envoy.
10. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children’s voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden’s voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.(Amazon)
Fade Into Oblivion 