Readers love to read anything, everywhere, all of the time. Their books become an extension of their person and the desire to bury their noses in worlds of fiction cannot be quelled by the imposition of midterm exams. Students find themselves in a tug of war between their school work and their beady-eyed bookshelf full of books begging to be read. They often find it difficult to read for enjoyment on top of the workload required of them during a school semester.
With midterm exams in full swing, easy reads or “palate cleansers” that don’t require an exuberant amount of brain power, are the best way to keep the love of reading alive while attempting to fight off the exam season slump.
Need an Escape?
Amelia Wilkinson, an English major at the University of Utah, has trouble maintaining her affinity for reading during her already reading-heavy class load. She is making it a point to prioritize personal reading time this semester in an effort to keep her book lover heart burning. She started “This is How You Lose the Time War”, a collaborative novel by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, early this semester and has found it to be a captivating palette cleanser.
The story is structured as a set of epistolary letters exchanged between two time-traveling secret agents representing rival dimensions. Red comes from a cybernetic dystopian world while Blue stands for a natural future cradled by wildflowers. El-Mohtar and Gladstone managed to create a compelling sci-fi-inspired story underscored with poetic prose making it a page-turner from start to finish.
Wilkinson mentioned “Piranesi,” a novel by Susanna Clarke, as another mindlessly exciting read. The story is set in a labyrinth called the House where the titular narrator, Piranesi, is trapped. Within its walls, he is forced to confront the sinister truths behind his captivity.
“My boyfriend read it in a day, and everyone that he has lent it to has read it super fast,” Wilkinson said. “It’s really easy to get into.”
Although the novel is based on the 18th-century Italian artist and architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi, its brisk pacing and rate of reveal make it the perfect book to pick up during the semester.
We Live For The Drama
If you are a reality TV enthusiast who aches for that same feeling in a book, “Magnolia Parks” needs to be added to your repertoire. The novel and accompanying series have been described on social media as “Gossip Girl meets London high society” but that meta comment does not do it justice.
The story focuses on two interwoven tumultuous relationships and watches as they curl in and around each other, getting all twisted up. The short chapter lengths that each end with epistolary text messages between the characters make “Magnolia Parks” a Gen Z student’s haven.
Reading about scandals in a fictional world makes it far easier to forget about real-life problems. Taylor Jenkins Reid writes scandal like no one else in her historical drama novel, “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” The story chronicles the secret life of Evelyn Hugo, an Old Hollywood starlet, who has maintained a cone of silence around her love life for decades. At age 79, she confides in Monique Grant, an unknown journalist who she allows to write her biography.
There are layers and layers of drama baked into this novel with the end being the biggest shock of all. It is a page-turner that is just as enticing as any reality show.
Not as Bad as You Think
By looking at the cover, one would think it is too academia-coded to be a palette cleanser but “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh is quite the opposite. The novel follows an incredibly unlikable and unnamed narrator in her attempt to sleep for a complete 365 days. It is the epitome of an intense first-person point of view that delves deep into the narrator’s interiority and allows the reader to live vicariously through her.
If nothing else, this novel serves as an almost laughable reminder that whatever is going on in your life, however stressed you are, however difficult your next exam might be, this narrator’s life is probably worse.
