The Dog Ear: Great reads all around

Judging by the amount of books I brought with me to UConn (books to read for fun, not textbooks), I was very optimistic about the amount of time I would have to read. After receiving the syllabus for each of my classes, I feel that, unfortunately, much more time will be spent reading about science than fantasy adventures. However, I will try, as I always do, to read as much as possible this semester and not forget the joys that reading for fun can bring. Here are the books I hope to power through.

The books I am aiming to read first this semester are “The Hunger Games” series. I read “The Hunger Games” and saw the movie but somehow, I missed reading “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay.” I know, I don’t understand how I missed reading the rest of the series either. I thought the first book was excellent, and I could hardly put it down. Knowing how much everyone enjoyed the rest of the series makes me look forward to completing it even more.

Last fall was my first semester of college. There were so many different things happening all at once and so much to adjust to that it was a little overwhelming. I found solace in “The Book of Awesome” by Neil Pasricha and I was careful to ensure that the sequel, “The Book of (even more) Awesome” was packed when I moved in for round two. Pasricha’s writing is extremely entertaining and makes you appreciate the little things that can often be overlooked.

Over the summer, I was in the mood for reading a classic, so I reread “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which I had originally read in high school. I was thinking about other books I read in high school that I might want to reread and realized that in all my English classes, I was never assigned a book by John Steinbeck. Since he is such an important figure in American literature and I like to consider myself a well-read person, I feel this is a major gap in my reading that needs to be filled. While at a used book sale, I bought a copy of “East of Eden” and look forward to experiencing his writing.

The last book I brought with me is “The Tiger’s Wife” by Téa Obreht. One of The New York Times 10 Best Books in 2011 and a finalist for the National Book Award, this novel comes with credentials ,and with that, high expectations. Since critics praised the novel so heavily last year, I felt compelled to discover the cause of the hype. The back of the book only has one small paragraph explaining what the book is about but that is enough to intrigue me.

I sincerely hope that I will be able to read all of these books this semester, and more. Each book I brought with me is completely different from the others, which will help mix things up as the semester progresses. Hopefully I’m not the only one who brought books for fun with me to college and reading, as I wished for in my column last week, can carry on past the summer.