Suggested winter reads to avoid the great outdoors

MINT STAFF

“Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors” by Piers Paul Read

If you think making it through the winter in Pullman is a struggle, at least you can be thankful you didn’t have to eat your roommate to survive. This book documents Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed in the Andes in October, 1972. Just 16 of the 46 passengers survived, and only by consuming the bodies of the dead, which were preserved in the sub-zero temperatures. The survivors spent two months in these conditions.

“The North Water” by Ian McGuire

Think Moby Dick, but colder and bloodier. This savage novel will make you skeptical of the line between man and beast. The opening scene ends with a man crushing another man’s skull with a brick, and it’s safe to say this sets the tone for the rest of the book. The relentless intensity will raise your core temperature in the coldest Pullman night.

“Looking for Alaska” by John Green

During the moodiest season of the year, college students can get in their feels with this story of teenage angst. Miles Halter enrolls himself in boarding school to get a more intellectual outlook on life but finds himself falling in love with the rebellious Alaska Young. “Looking for Alaska” delves into their adventures as they explore each other’s minds and past emotional trauma.

“The Tiger’s Wife” by Téa Obreht

In post-war Eastern Europe, a young medical student retraces his father’s last steps while telling the stories of his first. As a young boy in a poor village, he befriends a deaf-mute girl, whose only solace is in a formerly domesticated tiger, to the fear of the villagers, and whom her grandfather protects. Set in multiple places, times and with distinct characters, a story of a girl and her love for her grandfather unfolds.