Summer months soothe literary hunger, nostalgia

All Things Literary

After two years at JMU, I was sad to see Zak Salih, creator of All Things Literary, graduate last spring. An avid bookworm myself, I looked forward to reading about Salih’s adventures into novels that were more cultured than those I normally read, "Dante’s Inferno" and "Moby Dick," for example.

After all, my own tastes lean toward those of the slightly less — shall we say — sophisticated nature.

However, I couldn’t bear to see Salih’s deep passion for reading and critiquing literature with others disappear, lost to the newest generation of Breeze readers.

And so, it is with great pleasure that I attempt to fill the very large and expert shoes of Mr. Salih.
Summer vacation — the opportune season for book lovers where happy hours can be spent in a blissful state of escapism. I could be found curled up on my bed, glasses sliding unnoticed down my nose, book in hand.

My reading certainly wasn’t "War & Peace." Instead, I read my guilty pleasure — John Grisham. I read his legal dramas like a reality TV addict watches "Survivor." I can’t help it.

I don’t think Grisham is a particularly well-written author, but his books are thoughtful suspense thrillers about the guy next door. All his legal jargon makes me wonder why some of these words weren’t incorporated into my list of "Vocabulary Every College Student Should Know." But I love it, mostly because Grisham pushes me to want to understand something I know nothing about.

This summer also held a high number of what I like to refer to as "girl dramas." These books fall into the "Bridget Jones’ Diary" formula.

It’s the same story every time — some city-dwelling 20-or-30-something woman rants about her singleness, shops for clothes she can’t afford, falls for a bad boy, is generally a publicist of some kind (as if this is the new "it girl" position to have) and, of course, has an annoyingly overbearing mother.

I read a good number of these hoping that for once the girl would stop getting unattractively drunk and settle down with a nice boy who wasn’t perfect.

Yes, our female protagonists may no longer wear corsets and cook for their men, but they sure know how to order a cup of coffee from Starbucks and look great in Prada.

I did read one book this summer that I have not been able to stop thinking about. "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold was an oddly startling novel about a girl who is murdered. The girl then watches for almost 10 years from heaven as her family tries to uncover her killer. This book kept me in perpetual knots, simply because it made death so terrifyingly close to home.

From Grisham to Sebold, I had several summer flings of fictional fun. No matter what I read, there is something oddly satisfying about the combination of summer and reading books.

However, while Salih no doubt is blazing a trail in the literary world, his absence from the pages of The Breeze still will leave my literary appetite wanting more.