Desserts

Desserts don't provide much in the way of nutrition, but they make you happy when you eat them.  Likewise the selections here, mainly part of a genre called page turner fiction, may not make you grow intellectually from reading them, but the read itself is quite enjoyable.  When I was working, I used to read at least one of these during each winter break.   

Once the authors of such books have developed a reputation with their readers and a first movie has been made that did well at the box office, it's almost as if from there on they are writing in full anticipation of a subsequent movie contract.  So, unlike what I said before, I think it's okay in this case to watch the movie first.  It might motivate you to read the book.   Alas, because of the commercial success of each of these books, there isn't a freely available version online.  

A Sampling:

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
I feel more than a bit guilty in admitting that I became a big Thomas Harris fan and read all his books, not all of which deal with Hannibal Lecter and serial killers.  The guilt comes from truly enjoying macabre characters and their interactions with more normal people, when this is presented in fiction, where if it were non-fiction I'd be horrified.  This seems a personal inconsistency.  Yet others must have it too, as there is a new TV series now called Clarice which is also based on this book.  Like the other books on this list, the reason I didn't read this sort of thing while working is that I like to do nothing but read when I've got a book of this sort and you just can't do that when you have a job.

The Firm by John Grisham
Grisham is the master of Lawyer Fiction.  This is one of his earlier books.  I started to read it on a flight back home after my family visited my parents in Florida.  The kids were quite young then and I had the younger one asleep on my chest with his head on my left arm through the flight.  He didn't wake up on the trip and I was absorbed the entire time in the book.  I never had an experience of that sort before where the distractions were evident yet the book held me captive.  The movie, which features a young Tom Cruise, still comes on TV now and then.  

Contact by Carl Sagan
Sagan was a very well known astronomer and a Professor at Cornell while I was an undergrad there.  He would sometimes go on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  This story is based on real science, regarding the theoretic possibility of traveling to a planet in a remote star system, via a "wormhole" that enables faster than speed of light travel, and then speculation about getting in touch with societies from outside our solar system, ergo the title of the book.  For whatever reason, after reading the book and/or watching the movie that features Jodie Foster, I went on a jag about space travel and read some book by Kip Thorne about it that I don't much remember now.  The movie did not get great reviews, if I recall, and now it's from more than 20 years ago so might not stir current college students the same way it stirred me.  Yet the book might get kids to think about space travel now as a possibility and the story is quite good, even though as a fiction writer Sagan was an amateur.  

The Natural by Bernard Malamud
The movie became so popular that the musical theme would be played at major league ballparks during what seemed like a pivotal moment in the game.  But I'm guessing most people haven't read the book, which is quite different from the movie, much darker in the story it tells, yet engaging in its own right.  By darker I mean that the Roy Hobbs character was selfish, so not a good guy the way he is depicted in the movie.  Malamud is an interesting writer.  I recall reading The Fixer in high school.  As with other recommendations made here and in the previous posts, they are partly there as introductions to the authors.  Non-course students are free to explore other works by these authors if they so desire.  So it may be a bit unfair to characterize The Natural as page turner fiction.  It did read that way for me.

The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by Jane Leavy
This is the only non-fiction book on the list.  It is a biography of Mickey Mantle, written well after his playing days were over.   While Leavy did a lot of background research as well, she had several extensive interviews with Mantle, and since he had been out of baseball for a while with quite a different perspective than when he was a player.  This book depicts him as a charmer, but also as a flawed human being, leading a tragic life because of his own self-destruction.  Yet he was a hero to us.  When I was a young kid in New York he was the best player on the Yankees, who were then in their twilight.  And you could see him on TV in commercials, such as this one for Maypo.  To make a connection between Mantle and The Natural, Mantle came up to the Major Leagues in 1951.  Willie Mays came up the same year.  The Natural was published in 1952.   This seems more than a coincidence to me.

The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov 
I'm not a big fan of science fiction and read it only sparingly.  In this case, back in summer 1987, for one month I was a visiting scholar in the Economics Department at the Nova University in Lisbon, Portugal.  My hosts were quite good to me, but on the weekends I was left to my own devices.  Eventually I found a bookstore which had some English language books, though not a large selection.  I bought The Foundation Trilogy there and read the entire thing over one weekend.  Truthfully, I don't recall much of the story and, looking at the Wikipedia entry for it, nothing in the specifics of the story jumped out at me. So here is another example where I'm basing the recommendation entirely on the experience of reading it all the way through rather quickly, rather than on the particulars of the narrative.  For the latter, you'll have to get a recommendation elsewhere.  

On the Road by Jack Kerouac
This is another book that might be classified as serious fiction rather than the page turner variety.  I read it much earlier than any of the other books on the list, while I was a junior in college.  I had a housemate who became a very good friend that year.  He was a Deadhead.  We spent a lot of time listening to the Skull and Roses album.  Eventually, he suggested that I read On the Road (and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Neal Cassady is a character in both and serves to connect the two) to give context for the music.  On the Road is about the Beat Generation, the artistic generation that preceded the Hippies.  The book creates a romantic view of the lifestyle and offered a challenge to someone like me - could you live on the road?  This challenge is also in Bob Dylan's song, Like a Rolling Stone.  At the time of reading On the Road, I really had little idea of what I'd do after college (ultimately, I went to grad school in economics) so these thoughts engaged me much more than they would if I had my future well plotted out.  Covid would seem to put thoughts of living on the road at bay, at least for now.  But if non-course students are reconsidering their own future plans, On the Road may offer a romantic diversion for them.