Love to read?

I love to read. I mean, I really love to read. They tease me at work, always asking me how many books I read in a week or even in a day. I wish I had nothing else to do with my time than to read and write. Seriously. Alas, I work and take care of the munchkins...all three of them. But, I do love to read and I try to read a lot of different types of books to give me a broader taste of literature. I thought I'd put together a list of some of my favorite books. Maybe we share one or two?

In no particular order, except #1, which is indeed my favorite all-time book!!

Persuasion by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Narnia Series by C.S. Lewis
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shafer and Annie Barrows
Inkheart, Inkspell, Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Anything by Pat McManus *best darn humor writer EVER*
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti
Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (all of the Anne books!)
Cry of the Kalahari, Eye of the Elephant and Secrets of the Savanna by Mark and Delia Owens
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Victorian mystery novels by Anne Perry (specially the William Monk series)
1776 by David McCullough
An Arrow Pointing Toward Heaven by James Bryan Smith
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
My Life Crazy by Kylla Hanson, who is a FABULOUS writer and she's quite a strudel!


I could go on and on...but I won't. I will tell you a few writers that I just can't stand and have trouble reading, even though I give them a chance every couple of years: Hemingway and Faulkner. Yuck. Both are fantastic writers - really, but with Faulkner, it's just so dark, so depressing and just blah - I can't go on with him. Hemingway - where do I begin? Too much to write on him.

But I give them another chance every so often because I hated Jane Austen for years and now she's my favorite author. I disliked Dickens intensely and now, with the exception of Great Expectations, I read him.

So, I put together a list of Classic Books that I want to read or re-read. When I had the list together, I was shocked at how few of them I'd actually read. I made a little pocket version of it and carry it in my purse. When I go to the library or bookstore, I just pull it out, check out a book from the list and get to reading. I just re-read The Great Gatsby and now I'm reading, for the first time...GASP...To Kill a Mockingbird. I do find that I get so much more out of these books than when I was in high school, so I'm having a ball reading! If you're interested in my classic book list, let me know.