Image courtesy of BlueBirdBaby.

School breaks, those inter-semester dream lands we look forward to, are best spent reading, usually in the early morning, at your kitchen table, with a coffee in hand and a full pot not far away. No seriously, there’s nothing better than catching up on your leisure reading. So many people know this that #FridayReads is even a thing on Twitter. So whether you’ve got four months or four(ish) days until class starts up again, whether its Shakespeare or Perez Hilton, whether it’s scholarly or trashy, for the love of Sherman Alexie, read something you didn’t find on a course reading list.

Here’s a little nudge:

• Start small with the (online) newspaper. News, news, news…what’s in the news? Oh! Did you hear about the thing in Spain where they are trying to make chores for children mandatory by law? The Toronto Star says the law is for real and short on providing ways of enforcing. There’s also a perplexing gender comment in there for those paying attention. Read “Proposed Spanish Law Aims To Make Children Behave“.
• Let’s push your word limit. As a reward, we found this story (or rather the internet revealed it to us) on a research project that aims to discover just what professors do with all their time. Don’t take the high ground and pretend you’re not curious. Read “What Do Professors Do All Day?“
• Lastly, to balance out what has been mostly guilty pleasure reading to this point, we present the case of a group of lab mice and what their pain levels say about human interaction. According to a researcher from McGill University, after being injected with a mild pain inducer, the mice were more likely to display outward signs of pain when no lab technician or a female lab technician were present, but they showed little signs of pain when a male technician – or even clothes worn by a male – were placed in the lab. What does that mean? Read the Economist’s article, “Sex, Writhes and Videotapes” to find out.

That couldn’t have been more than an hour of reading, but how good did it feel? Fine. We give up. Here’s a list of free, online choose-your-own-adventure games.