By: PAIGE FOSTER
Staff Writer
“Just five minutes” is a refrain nearly everyone is familiar with. There is no context in which this phrase is so glaringly false as when it refers to the amount of time one needs to spend in a store. Especially when that store is Target.
This past weekend, I found myself perusing the aisles of Target to grab one small item I needed. I promised myself it would only take five minutes, and the neatness of the store and my extensive knowledge of its layout made it so I did indeed find the item I needed in just about that time – which I found to be incredibly unfortunate because I had nowhere to be and I rather enjoy wandering Target’s aisles. So, after my five minutes, I somehow found myself in Target’s book section. Target faithfully stocks their singular aisle of books with various classics and current best-sellers, and on that particular day, the book section was even more intriguing than normal. I ended up spending a large portion of my weekly lunch money (and by that I mean all of my lunch money) on books. If you are looking for book recommendations or a gift for your Luddite friend, here are the ones I purchased:
- In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
- Ware’s murder mystery kicks off with a bachelorette party and ends with a body.
- The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
- This book is about a twelve year old girl growing up in the Hispanic community within Chicago in the 1980s.
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
- Similar to Mango Street, Smith’s novel charts the coming of age of a young girl, this time in New York at the turn of the 20th century.
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
- O’Brien’s piece describes the emotional turmoil of American soldiers during the Vietnam War.
- What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harris
- Set in the time of blatant racism and in the wake of personal tragedy, a 10 year old girl struggles to reconcile her naive impressions of an innately good world with one in which she is discriminated against and her father is dead.
- The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller
- A contemporary adaptation of Homer’s Iliad told from the perspective of Patroclus.
Here is another list of books that I picked up, but decided not to purchase and instead added them to be “to be read” list:
- The Stranger on the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
- The Searcher by Tana French
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- A Little Hope by Ethan Joella