Quick reads for your March Break book list

This March Break, even if you're taking a much-needed vacation or a staycation on your couch, curl up with CBC's curated list of books that are sure to keep your attention riveted.

Here are Mandy Brouse from Waterloo's Words Worth Books top picks for quick reads, so you can go back to work boasting about reading a Pulitzer Prize winning title on your break.  

The Principles of Uncertainty - Maira Kalman

Maira Kalman's memoir has that accessible eccentricity that is usually called charming. It is charming, but it's not twee. Every tender and quirky illustrated page seems like the final word on her ultimate theme: what makes a life meaningful?

Her conclusion weaves personal memories, 20th Century European history, her Russian background, fanciful hats, her obsession with following old people, and always harkens back to the central premise of her title— uncertainty.

Reading this book gives you a blink-and-you'll-miss-it feeling that the answer to a meaningful life must exist on the next page, or the next, or the next.

Far from just being a collection of thoughts and speculations, each page takes an object or a thought and opens it up on the next page like a set of Russian nesting dolls. The Principles of Uncertainty will take about an hour to read, and that hour will be absolutely magical.

All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr

Don't be frightened by the 500 page count, this novel is comprised of miniature chapters ranging from a quarter page to three pages. Reading for an hour a day you would finish this book in a week. However, I challenge you to only read this book at such short intervals.

All the Light We Cannot See is a tapestry of unforgettable characters during World War II, with a rich adventure involving a cursed diamond at its heart.

This is also the story of a deep and lasting bond between father and daughter and the miniature city he builds for her, anticipating a difficult future for a blind girl.

The narrative follows two coming-of-age stories, countries apart, as they struggle through their war-torn lives to discover the boundaries of ethical choice, the strength of family, and the bonds of love.

Reading each chapter is like picking up and appraising each tiny structure from a city in miniature. It will make you see one of the 20th century's greatest conflicts in a new way. All the Light We Cannot See also won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015.  

Griffin and Sabine - Nick Bantock

The story of Griffin and Sabine is as much a metaphysical mystery and love story as it is an epistolary objet d'art.

Nick Bantock has recreated the postcards and letters of Griffin and Sabine's correspondence on each page, and the reader is able to pull the letters out of beautifully illustrated envelopes as if they had just arrived in the mail. The result is a sense of peeking into the secret life of an intimate love story as it unfolds.

Nick Bantock is known for his intricate and otherworldly works of collage art and it's on full display in this series, which comprises six books in total.

Interestingly, thirteen years after the last title in the series, The Pharos Gate: Griffin and Sabine's Missing Correspondence will be published at the end of March 2016. The first book was published in 1991, and just to give you a technological perspective of time, it was originally made into a CD-ROM game by Peter Gabriel whereas the Pharos Gate will be accompanied by an interactive app for Android.

You can get through Griffin and Sabine in half an hour but fair warning, you will be sucked into the sequels.

Step Aside Pops: A Hark a Vagrant Collection - Kate Beaton

There is something quite addictive about Kate Beaton's collection of very silly retellings from literature, pop culture, and history. No one is safe from her dark wit as she takes aim at humanity's beloved works of literature including Wuthering Heights, Nancy Drew, Greek mythology, and Kokoro.

Beaton imagines an online date arranged with Zeus that leaves an unsuspecting woman sexually accosted on a park bench by an over-familiar bull, while Wonder Woman screams at her adoring feminist fans in each panel, "But why do you even like me?!"

Step Aside Pops is a collection that will make you wish this was the high school education you originally had with hilarious takes on ancient history, politics, and feminism.

I also think Kate Beaton should be the official writer of Superman comics for her take on the long-suffering Lois Lane, accosted daily by Clark Kent; all she wants to be left alone so she can get to work as the hard-hitting journalist she is.

Step Aside Pops demands many re-reads, but will take about an hour to get through-- if you can stop laughing long enough.