A Different Look
Reading, the best way to both avoid life, yet it is also a way to see life through eyes other than your own.
There are many books that give a great perspective into worlds that are very different than our own and challenge the way we see things in our own lives. From the very real, to the highly fantasized, these are the novels that will challenge you to think a little differently.
A Burning by Megha Majumdar: This book is set in India and it is a lot. There is so much happening in this novel that can make your emotions go through an extreme rollercoaster. It is a wholly different country, with different laws, values, and systems. When I read this book, it really had a profound effect on me and how I see my own world. It is rough to read. Like really rough, so beware when cracking it open.
Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde: This book takes place in an entirely fictional “dystopian” world after the “something that happened” and everyone is classified by what color they can see. Yep, the color they can see. Society is ordered into a class system and this system does not like being questioned. You follow the rules, or you suffer the consequences. A great commentary in a very creative setting.
Ready Player One and Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline: Now hear me out on this one. While it has a lot of similarities to the Matrix, and other such films and books, when diving into the world of Wade Watts and stripping it to his character, personality, and motivations, these books give a different view of someone who’s entire life is based in the virtual world, rather than the real one. Wade openly admits and accepts that he is an addict. Addiction to a world he can control. Yet it is not real. He finds friends and a sort of family in the Oasis, but as they begin to live lives outside of the oasis and he stands still he goes deeper into the addiction than before. It is easy to apply this form of addiction to many people living today. Internet and gaming addiction are things that are very real and stripping away the plot and flushing out the characters, you are now in their world.
Opium and Absinthe by Lydia Kang: This book is not only about the life at the end of the nineteenth century, but another look into addiction. But this one is different than the previous, this book is more about accidental addiction, along with grief. Tillie loses her sister on the same day she breaks her clavicle, and it does not take long before she is hooked on Laudanum. And just for fun, lets thrown in the very real vampire scare. Yes, that did happen.
Classical favorites that you are usually forced to read in school are also really worth taking into consideration and perhaps worth reading again as an adult: To Kill A Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, and of course The Handmaid’s Tale.
Banned books lists are always a great place to look for a book that will challenge your worldview, and give a look into a world you may know nothing about.
These are just a small handful, there are many, many more. And I know there are great ones I have not read, so leave me suggestions.
Books on my TBR that involve a different world view:
The Sun is Also a Star
Ghost Boys
Caste
The Removed
