College and university is a different world from primary, secondary and tertiary school. In college, you will meet people from all walks of life. You will meet people older, younger, smarter than you. University is essentially preparing you for the future workforce. Here are 9 books for students to read before they enrol in college or are in college right now.
Here are 9 books for students to read before they graduate from college. These books are classified into 2 main categories: Self Help and Novels. Now sit back and let’s go through book by book!
Self-help books for students
1 – The Power of Habit
This book, written by Charles Duhigg, explores the science behind habit creation and reformation. This book takes you through how to form new habits, and rewrite old habits. You can make dreadful chores become light and easy with the power of habit. Learn how to form new habits and overwrite bad habits. Habits are the reason why some of us can operate certain tasks on autopilot.
This is extremely helpful for university students who are constantly in a race against time. Forming healthy habits as a student can make everyday life less overwhelming and manageable.
Read also: How to Cultivate A Good Studying Habit
2 – Make Time: Focus on what matters the most
‘Make Time is essential reading for anyone who wants to create a happier, more successful life.’ – Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project
This book talks about making small shifts in your environment to liberate yourself from constant busyness and distraction.
This book can help inspire our college students to learn to ‘make time’ for what matters the most at that point in time – essentially helping you to organise your life and time.
3 – Build Your Dream Network: Forging Powerful Relationships in a Hyper-Connected World
Build your dream network, this book will help you to:
– Determine the most effective ways to connect with others so you don’t clutter your calendar with dead-end coffee dates and informational interviews
– Synchronize IRL networking efforts with your digital outreach
– Turn “closed door” conversations into strong personal relationships and business opportunities
– Eliminate FOMO by keeping your networking efforts focused
Hoey presents innovative strategies for forming strong relationships—the genuine, mutually beneficial, long-lasting kind—using all of the social tools at your disposal.
As a college student, socialising is an important skill to harness before entering the workforce. This book can give you a headstart in life!
4 – The Art of Happiness
The Art of Happiness shows readers how to defeat day-to-day anxiety, insecurity, anger, and discouragement. Together with Dr. Howard Cutler, explores many facets of everyday life, including relationships, loss, and the pursuit of wealth, to illustrate how to ride through life’s obstacles on a deep and abiding source of inner peace.
5 – Essentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
This book is more than just teaching readers how to time-manage. It is a systematic discipline for realising what is absolutely essential and eliminating everything else that is not. This in turn will help us to achieve the highest contribution possible towards the things that truly matter.
Being college students, we sure have so many things that get in the way of our studies, how do we learn to eliminate the fewer essentials for the more essential? This book might just have all the answers you are looking for.
Read also: Essentialism: The BEST way to study better before examinations
6 – When Things Fall Apart Heart: Advice for Difficult Times
We understand that being a college student, things may become tougher, stressful and darker for you. You might think, keeping yourself busy and ‘neglecting’ your feelings so you don’t feel the pain, the stress and discomfort, you might want to think twice.
Pema shows that moving toward painful situations and becoming intimate with them can open up our hearts in ways we never before imagined. In this book, she offers life-changing tools for transforming suffering and negative patterns into habitual ease and boundless joy. If you need something reassuring, here’s the book for you.
Novel books for students
For students who are more into fictional books, here are the 3 most popular novel books that you have to read before you graduate from university.
7 – The Great Gatsby
You must have heard of The Great Gatsby many times, but have you actually read the book? Do you understand the main point of the Great Gatsby?
The moral of The Great Gatsby is that the American Dream is ultimately unattainable. Jay Gatsby had attained great wealth and status as a socialite; however, that’s not Gatsby’s ultimate dream…
Read the book to find out more.
8 – To Kill A Mockingbird
To Kill A Mockingbird – A very interesting novel, this novel surrounds its theme around the good and evil concept. This book is about a conflict between good and evil. The writer deals with the idea of good and evil by highlighting the transition of Jem and Scout from the perspective of innocence. They believe that people are good because they do not realize the evil side of human nature.
9 – One Hundred Years of Solitude
A more lighthearted book – One Hundred Years of Solitude that does not have a deep life lesson to teach you at the end.
It has a dominant theme in One Hundred Years of Solitude is the inevitable and inescapable repetition of history in Macondo. The protagonists are controlled by their pasts and the complexity of time. Throughout the novel, the characters are visited by ghosts.
In a nutshell, here are 9 books for students to read before they graduate from university. Books are a great way to gain new knowledge and perspective in life. Start reading today!
