business books

As students around the country head back to school, backpacks are rapidly stuffed with laptops, pens, notebooks, and heavy textbooks. Amid the scramble to finish class assignments and complete mandatory chapters, leisure reading gets relegated to winter break. Reading personal books during the school year, however, can be fun, stimulating, and stress-relieving. And for those of us who are long-graduated, we can get behind in our reading just as easily, falling into a summer slump of all work, no play. In the spirit of reading for fun, we’ve rounded up links to our favorite reading lists from the past month or so. Let us know what books are on your to-read list this fall!

Online College Courses shares the fifty best novels for business majors; their list encompasses themes ranging from “Big Bad Businesses” (including Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley) to “Classics” (including the requisite Atlas Shrugged) to “Worker’s Rights” (featuring Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete), and more. There are some great selections featured here for an often-ignored reading group—aspiring businesspeople.

If you’re lucky enough to be enjoying a late summer vacation, NPR listed five new “Heady, Not Heavy” books that masterfully blend smart themes and sophisticated plots with entertainment. All of the featured books would make great beach or barbecue-side reads.

Feeling adventurous? You can always try to hunt down 2011’s most sought-after out-of-print books. BookFinder.com lists the top one hundred on their site this week. Sex by Madonna tops the list, followed by titles by Stephen King, Nora Roberts, Johnny Cash, and Norman Mailer. We all want what we can’t have, don’t we?

In the spirit of a Harry Potter and G.R.R. Martin–filled summer, Flavorwire lists Lev Grossman’s top ten must-read fantasy novels. (Yes, both Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and A Game of Thrones are on the list).

If you’re suffering through the Texas drought with us here at Greenleaf, reading one of the books on The Daily Beast’s Irene-inspired “Hurricane Lit” list just might convince you that clouds do indeed exist.

Not enough? Check out TheBrowser’s “FiveBooks” section. The site regularly interviews distinguished writers and critics on the best books in their field. Find out Woody Allen’s picks for “Inspiration,” Darren Aronofsky’s for “Making Movies,” and Sophie Kinsella’s for “Chick Lit.”

When you’re done reading all these books, you can test your literature IQ over at Sporcle.com. Publishers Weekly rounded up some great book quizzes this week on that site. (For the record: Yes, this is a challenge.)