Summer Reading Recs with Joseph Pascale

When Joseph Pascale was a young boy his mother read him The Call of the Wild by Jack London, and reading and writing have been calling to him ever since. 

“My mother still has a letter I wrote, even though at the time I didn’t know how to write. It was just scribbles, but I told her what it meant,” Pascale said. “I was eager to read and write at a young age.” 

Pascale, the assistant director of Tutoring Services at Middlesex College, grew up reading the acclaimed Peanuts books by Charles Schulz, found Hatchet by Gary Paulsen inspiring, and admits he pulls out an old Goosebumps book around Halloween just for fun. 

The Piscataway resident has written multiple short stories himself and published a novel, How to Get a Promotion When Your Boss Is Trying to Kill You, in 2018. Fortunately, his boss at the time liked the book, which follows a character dealing with bureaucratic nonsense. 

“I told her the title and she started laughing and said she needed a copy to give to her boss,” Pascale said. “It wasn’t true to life, but it was emotionally true.” 

Here are some of Pascale’s favorite books he recommends to read this summer:

The Castle by Franz Kafka

“It’s not a traditional novel at all. Kafka writes things that take place in his own world–a reflection of ours, but surreal in ways. I find it very intriguing, because you’re following a character known by the letter K. He’s supposed to go to the castle as a land surveyor when he gets into a bureaucratic situation. There’s a surreal element to it.”

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

“This is a book I would tell everyone to read. It’s an all-time classic. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, has become unstuck in time, jumping back and forth through times in his life uncontrollably, and aliens make an appearance. It’s also a glimpse of dealing with the realities of war and the mundaneness of everyday life. Vonnegut writes it like no one else.”

Trigun by Yasuhiro Nightow

“It’s an anime from the ’90s that I loved, and then they made a new version that I hated. I wondered what the original manga was like, went back to it, and totally loved it. It’s like science fiction, but it takes place on a Wild West-style planet and the main character is an expert gunman with a huge bounty on his head, but he’s also a staunch pacifist.”

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

“Stephenson is someone who has done cyberpunk and science fiction works. Anathem follows these scholars who are closed off from society and live a monk-like existence. You slowly unravel stories about their world and how they are suddenly needed again by their planet. It’s really interesting.”