Via Chelsea Spanier at the Concordian

It isn’t something we’re proud to admit, but even the most avid of readers dislikes their textbooks. At some point or another during the semester, we all toss the required pages on the shelves or in backpacks, dreading homework time.
However, there is a cure for this lamentable disease: kicking back with a book of your choice. Although none of us have time for heaps of pleasure reading, everyone could benefit with a few additions to their bookshelves.

Not quite your mother’s trashy romance novel, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is enjoying tagging along on the tails of it’s feature film release. Audrey Niffenegger has decided to combine scientific paradoxes with a sugary sweet love story of (what else?) a time traveler and his wife. Choppy, cliché, and yet strangely compelling, you can’t help but remind yourself this is most likely the product of a Nicholas Sparks book accidentally being written into the script of a British science fiction production.

Looking for guilty vampirical pleasure but to desperately stay away from anything that sparkles in the sunlight? Try the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris, or the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. These authors freshen the genre with female characters who aren’t going to wait around to be saved and give a realistic perspective to what might happen if the supernatural was a normal fact of life.

More Suggestions here

I noticed this when I was in college. The only bookstore in town was the Barnes and Noble that had a bigger section for textbooks than anything else, and was only open til six on weeknights (and closed on Sundays) because it was such a huge college town. No one on campus (of 12,000) did any reading other than what was required of them. Which I always found incredibly sad.

Which books made you enjoy reading?