Best Books Ever

I have always been a bookworm – I was famous for it in elementary school.  That is, if you consider being ridiculed, bullied, and jeered at (living in a small town in Louisiana, reading was not a pastime that was generally admired – except for your teacher, of course.). I made the big 6-mile move to the big city of Lafayette when in high school, and things went a little better.

Right now, I don’t take too much time to sit down and read a book.  I receive most of my literature from books on CD driving to and from work.  If the book is particularly good, I take the long way home.  I belong to two libraries now – Cobb County and Gwinnett County.  I have already paid for Cobb, but I probably will not renew.  Gwinnett had a good selection – they must have more commuters.

Right now, I am starting into the Berrybender Narratives by Larry McMurtry.   I am reading Sin Killer, the first one.  That reminded me that I was planning on keeping a list of books that I love – what better place to put that than on my blog?  I happen to be one of those people who reads books more than once – a thing that most of my students find inconceivable.  I would much rather read or listen to a great book that I have already read than to waste my time on a mediocre unknown book.

So, here’s a start – they are in no certain order – I am just listing them as I think of them:

• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry – I still cry when my favorite characters die!
• National Velvet by Enid Bagnold – Don’t even speak to me of that abomination of a movie with Elizabeth Taylor.
• Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole – Read it in honor of the real New Orleans.
• Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough
• Cress Delahanty by Jessamyn West – I don’t know why this isn’t more of a classic!
• Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
• My Friend Flicka,  Thunderhead, and The Green Grass of Wyoming by Mary O’Hara
• The Stand by Stephen King
• House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
• Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
• Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver – I love this book!
• The Misty of Chincoteague books by Marguerite Henry
• The Dune Trilogy by Frank Herbert
• The Original Trixie Belden Mysteries – I wish life were really like that!
• The Girl Who Owned A City by O.T. Nelson
• A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

That’s all for now – I am going to Fernbank with my mom, my sister, and her kids.