Eccentric Reads for the Holiday Break

By: Rylee Dahl

The extended Thanksgiving weekend is around the corner and although Hallmark is attempting to lure us in by the thousands for our necessary Christmas movie binge, I suggest a bit of a hiatus from the Holiday spirit with these oddball novels.

These four titles vary in culture, history, and humor but share a common denominator of being quirky in their own right that guarantees cover-to-cover satisfaction.

1. The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

Set in Napoleonic times and split between two-character perspectives, we enter a more romantic and fairytale approach to history that follows a soldier chef from Boulogne and a casino girl from Venice. This includes unrequited love, an impossible journey, war, and webbed feet all mashed into a borderline fantasy.

2. The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

The second title is easily described as inappropriate in the ways of swearing, sex and race relations. Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia is a coming-of-age story centered around Karim, a teenager navigating his escape out of 1970’s South London. Unexpectedly cast in a play, he finds himself in a binding situation where his desperation for life out of the suburbs and familial respect weigh against each other.

3. The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore

This next novel is The Serpent of Venice, which was written under extreme Shakespearian influence but amped with improper humor. Christopher Moore’s book follows a jester-like fool called Pocket, who has more heart than his sarcastic, comedic facade reveals. He plots his revenge against the trio of antagonists who drugged him and chained him in a concealed dungeon where a serpent visits through the Venice canals and becomes an unlikely ally.

4. Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore

The final read defies time as it’s based around a man who has been reincarnated 9,995 times and only has five lives remaining to achieve wisdom in order to go through the Sun Door: the final stage and place of eternal joy. Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore can be classified as a book of short stories in the sense that the main character’s final lives go so far in-depth, each completely opposite from one to the next, that you sometimes forget it’s all connected. Simply put, it boils down to a romance novel about a mortal in love with death named Suzie.