Read ‘The Reader’

Books. The idea of reading them makes some people cringe, but it doesn’t always have to be a negative experience.

Although I love watching movies, and I currently have a list five feet long of television programs with which I am keeping up, books have an element that movies and TV will never have.

Readers can jump inside the minds of the characters and feel what they’re feeling, something you can’t experience while watching a movie.

I understand the dilemma: We’re college students. Most of us don’t have the time to pick up a copy of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and go to town.

But I have a solution. I have a stack of books around 200 pages each, give or take a few. Each book is excellent in its own way, and what is even better is that they’re obtainable.

Busy students can read them in a short time while being exposed to good pieces of literature.

The most recent novel I have read is “The Reader” by Bernhard Schlink. Most people know that this novel was adapted as a motion picture, which starred Kate Winslet and won a Golden Globe award.

Michael, a 15-year-old boy, begins a secret love affair with Hanna, who is about twice
his age.

The two secretly see each other until one day Hanna disappears and is not heard from until years later when Michael is in law school.

The twist? She’s on trial for murder.

This is not your average murder, not that murder is in any way average; she allegedly killed a whole group of people while she was working as a guard in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

The other twist? She has a secret that could prove her innocence, but she won’t defend herself.

What could she have done to make being convicted look like the better outcome? If you like romance or mystery, this is your kind of book.

Regardless, this novel has elements that fit the preferences of every type of person, all in about 200 pages. It is an exquisite story that will keep you reading between classes and on the bus.

Schlink explores the controversy surrounding the relationships between older women and younger men through Michael and Hanna, and he gives the reader a psychological view on sacrifice and love.

You will not only ask yourself what Michael’s character will do to save Hanna, but you will also ask yourself if you would do the same.

If any novel can leave a permanent mark in your mind with questions such as these, then it is definitely a book worth reading.