Post Grad Must Read

To anyone and everyone who's stuck on Post-Grad blues and still waiting for a call back here's a few books I've read and enjoyed and hopefully (dear god!) get over soon!

Here's my Top List:

1. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

The first part, "Franny", takes place in an unnamed college town during the weekend of the Yale game and tells the tale of an undergraduate who is becoming disenchanted with the selfishness and inauthenticity she perceives all around her.

The second, "Zooey", Franny's brother, older by five years, a somewhat emotionally toughened genius who at the age of twelve. As Franny suffers a spiritual and existential breakdown in her parents' Manhattan living room – leaving Bessie, her mother, deeply concerned – Zooey comes to her aid, offering what he thinks is brotherly love, understanding, and words of sage advice.

2. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

At 32 years old, Gilbert was educated, had a home and a husband, and a successful career as a writer. However, she was unhappy in her marriage and often spent the night crying on her bathroom floor. She separated from her husband and initiated a divorce, which her husband contested. She entered into a relationship with another man, but this relationship did not work out either. While writing an article on yoga vacations in Bali, she met a seventh-generation medicine man who told her she would come back and study with him. After finalizing her difficult divorce, she spent the next year traveling around the world. She spent four months in Italy, eating and enjoying life (Eat). She spent four months in India, finding her spirituality (Pray). She ended the year in Bali, Indonesia, looking for "balance" of the two and found love (Love); in the form of a dashing Indonesian factory owner.

A really inspiring book and made me want to travel and reflect. Oh Italy!

3. Gossip Girl: The Carlyle by Cecily Von Ziegesar

In Gossip Girl, The Carlyles the inimitable Gossip Girl introduces the most fabulous sixteen year-old triplets to ever inhabit the Upper East Side. When the Waldorfs move from their apartment at the end of Don't You Forget About Me, the Carlyle triplets of Nantucket, Massachusetts–Owen, Baby, and Avery– move in.

Nothing beats Blair's bitchiness on GG's first series. This is entertaining but I must say there are part of the story that felt like .....

4. Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult

The book explores the knotty tangle of medical ethics and personal morality. When faced with the reality of a fetus who will be disabled, at which point should an OB counsel termination? Should a parent have the right to make that choice? How disabled is TOO disabled? And as a parent, how far would you go to take care of someone you love? Would you alienate the rest of your family? Would you be willing to lie to your friends, to your spouse, to a court? And perhaps most difficult of all – would you admit to yourself that you might not actually be lying?

A real tear-jerker! I may sound OA but I do cry over books because I get into the character of the book I'm reading, I swear!

5. 4 Blondes by Candace Bushnell

This is actually four novellas regarding four status & sex obsessed Manhattan-bound blondes. Janey Wilcox, a floundering model/actress that baits guys in exchange for summers in the Hamptons and a life she deems worthy of her greatness. Cecelia is married to a royal, but the media’s obsession with her every flaw keeps her high-strung personality on high-alert. Winnie is at a crossroads with her lazy husband – tired of being the power woman in the relationship she tries to motivate him to do something with his work, while both sides question whether they’re working. And finally the last story surrounds a writer who goes to England to find a man, a husband to be specific.

I bought this book in Book For Less because the author is famous for the TV series Sex and the City and decided that maybe this one is good too, but to my horror it bores me to death. It didn't even have an underlying secrets that will be revealed in the end like most of the books. So, it's 1 over 5 stars for me (yeah, it sucked. really).

6. Love Story by Erich Segal

A timeless story of tragic love. Oliver is a child of privilege, the son of a family of importance dating back many generations. Jennifer is the only child of a widowed baker, as opposite from Oliver as one person can be. However, their union is one of strength and volatility that sweeps them both up in an uncontrolled wave, their love surviving every obstacle except one, mortality. Love Story is the Romeo and Juliet of the twentieth century.

Well, the story is pretty much alike with A Walk To Remember, the girl died at the age of twenty-five because of leukemia (sounds familiar, eh?) But I especially love the first paragraph of the book, Oliver is describing Jenny and it's really cute! :)

7. Stephen King's books (I LOVE HIM. I THINK HE'S A GENIUS!)

Arnie Cunningham is a typical high school nerd who is picked on in school, overruled by his parents, and has very few friends. Until he meets Christine, a run-down 1958 Plymouth Fury and buys her. Arnie learns that Christine has a thing for him and devotes his time to restoring her to mint condition. But overtime, Arnie begins to change and becomes disconnected with reality and his friends. Arnie's girlfriend Leigh and best friend Dennis find out that Christine's previous owner cared about nothing else when he bought her and find out that Arnie is becoming just like him. The only way they can bring Arnie back to reality is to destroy Christine, but Arnie and Christine are ready to destroy them first and any one else who gets in their way.

Almost everyone died in this book except for Dennis, Leigh and their parents. I was also hoping that at the end of the story Christine (the car) is really destroyed by Petunia (the other car) but then again, someone bought it (again!) and went to Calif. and continue its 'unending fury'.

Leland Gaunt comes to Sheriff Alan Pangborn's pleasant little New England town, and opens a store. What this kindly Satan sells is whatever you need and want, from a surcease from pain to an object which you have always coveted. The Faustian price is, of course, corruption, and soon the poor sheriff's town is wracked by jealousy, spite, and violence.

This is the book that got me hooked on Stephen King. It keeps me up all night and it's really terrifying, waiting for Leland's next move. Needful Things will give you an idea on what Satan looks like, they are deceiving.

Paul Edgecomb is a slightly cynical veteran prison guard on Death row in the 1930's. His faith, and sanity, deteriorated by watching men live and die, Edgecomb is about to have a complete turn around in attitude. Enter John Coffey, He's eight feet tall. He has hands the size of waffle irons. He's been accused of the murder of two children... and he's afraid to sleep in a cell without a night-light. And Edgecomb, as well as the other prison guards - Brutus, a sympathetic guard, and Percy, a stuck up, perverse, and violent person, are in for a strange experience that involves intelligent mice, brutal executions, and the revelation about Coffey's innocence and his true identity.

This is seriously a very creepy and horrifying book. After reading it I swore I will stop reading SK's book for a week. I will read chick-lit books just so my mind will divert from other characters.

Which brings me to...

8. Secrets of Shoe Addict by Beth Harbison

Loreen Murphy hadn't meant to hire a male prostitute in Las Vegas. It was all just a big, stupid, expensive misunderstanding. Abbey Walsh never intended anyone to find out about the fact that she's being blackmailed. As a minister's wife, her sordid past was supposed to be a secret. Tiffany Vanderslice Dreyer never dreamed that she'd find herself up to her eyeballs in credit card debt from one mad moment of a shopping spree. She's an upstanding wife and mother with the perfect marriage.right?

Very entertaining book, fun to read but sometimes I can't help but imagine Abbey Walsh as Gabriel Solis in Desperate Housewives which makes her my favorite character in the book (Maybe because I like Gabby in DH. :D) This is hilarious, fast paced and definitely a fun read. Although I'm currently reading it (I'm on the last chapter) I must say I highly recommend it. :)

So there's my Book List! I hope you guys enjoyed it. Have to read some more. I'll keep you updated soon!

Love,
Ccinki