If the Buddha Dated: A Handbook for Finding Love on a Spiritual Path by Charlotte Kasl

This book may be small, but it’s deep. It offers enlightening advice on the confusing world of dating and the even more complex nature of human relationships in a way that is easy to understand and apply, even if it is a little foreign for the average Cosmopolitan reader.

A relationship with “no strings attached” means something entirely different within the Buddhist context. Attachment is the main source of human suffering, whether it is attachment to material goods or aspects of a person. A healthy relationship, according to the book, is one in which both participants are unattached to the other’s flaws and good points, a relationship in which both are fully accepting of everything good and bad.

If the Buddha Dated is a freeing, exhilarating read. Surprisingly, it didn’t push me to date. Instead, it taught me to be content with myself and open to meeting someone who fits, instead of furiously searching through all those that don’t.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

First published in 1929 as a long essay, the book’s wit and tenacity still shines through to this century. Woolf’s thesis is that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” In her day, males of creative genius were uncontested by their female counterparts simply because women did not have the status or independence to realize their brilliance.

As an example, Woolf bids her readers imagine that Shakespeare had a sister, a sister with extraordinary intelligence equal to his own. But her fate would not lie on the stages of England and in the history books. Her genius would consume her, having no outlet in the restrictive world of her day, and she would die unknown, obscured by her brother’s shadow. This example grounds the book and entices the reader to imagine a different version of history in which all genius, no matter its sex, is allowed to flourish.

The fact that it is an essay should not be dissuasive. At times both charming and snarky, both winding and straightforward, it will leave a reader entertained yet pensive. It’s an utterly satisfying read.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

If you are the kind of person who avoids the beach during spring break and would prefer to sit beside a fire sipping brandy and smoking, this book is a great spring break read. It is a story shrouded in London fog, dripping with unsavory characters and laden with the darkest of secrets.

Bleak House is quintessential Dickens, and therefore has descriptions that take up pages, so if you’re a laissez-faire reader, skip those details and get straight to the drama. The book follows an enormous cast of characters brought together by a never-ending case called Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

The characters are brought together — and some to their ruin — by the case, which involves a disputed will. The lives of the orphan Esther Summerson, the opium-addicted law writer Nemo, the frigid beauty Lady Dedlock, and her elderly husband Sir Leicester are complexly intertwined, as are those of the malevolent lawyer Tulkinghorn, the benevolent John Jarndyce, and his wards, Ada and Richard. Besides being a searing commentary on the British justice system, Bleak House is an intellectual soap opera.