Looking for a good read?

Just in case you aren't enthrawled with my book choices, here is a list of the 10 best books I have read in the last year or so. They are not ranked, just listed as they come to me. I'm on the fly here.

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows by J.K. Rowling. OK, so maybe they are ranked a little. It has been a long seven years for Harry, and even longer for me waiting in agony for the release of the next installment. This is book seven, and the end of the road. I love Harry so much I would marry him if I could (sorry Rhett!)--as my former roomates and anyone else who really knows me will attest to. Once I sat in the car during Bumbershoot after paying the ridiculous ticket price and read HP and the Goblet of Fire. It was totally worth it. The last book will not disappoint you.

2. Life of Pi by Yann Martel. This book is facinating for anyone like me who aspires to have a great imagination. It is the story of an Indian boy whose zookeeper father decides to sell all the animals and move to Canada. The long and short of it are that the boy and the tiger end up on a life raft together and Pi has to figure out how to survive. It is a wonderful convergance of science and faith and you will fall in love with both boy and tiger. Don't skip the intro like I did, supposedly it is a true story...

3. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Wells. I am not an avid non-fiction reader, but this memoir made me want to become one. It is a shocking story of overcoming horrific obstacles. I was riveted and couldn't stop reading.

4. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. This book will woo any Dickens or Austen lovers. It is a very British tale of an old woman's mysterious past that unfolds as she tells the story. Trying to solve the mystery did indeed keep me up at night.

5. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. This is one of the most interesting and captivating books about God that I have ever read. Writing in narrative form, Miller uses his life, his friends, and his crazy stories to explain why God makes sense to him. It is honest and real and not hokey or cheesy. That is why I like it.

6. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. This is actually a young adult novel that I heard about at a library conference I went to earlier this year. Sherman Alexie is an American Indian writer and poet who lives in Seattle. This story is set on the Spokane Indian reservation, so the setting was super familiar to me (being from E-WA and all). It is about the struggle to be someone or something when no one expects you to. It is also about the struggle to straddle two cultures, in this case, Indian and non-Indian. A very funny and touching story. And you could probably read it in a couple of hours, which is nice too.

7. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I read this one a couple years ago, but it has stuck with me. It is about a librarian who involuntarily gets sucked through time at random moments and about the woman who loves and marries him. It is scary and exciting and sad. And they are making a movie out of it, of course. But read it first, it is quite good.

8. Great Expectations by Charlie Dickens. At first I wouldn't think that this book would make the list. I read it because a friend of mine was teaching it in her AP Lit. class and I felt left out because I had never read it. It is the story of Pip, an orphan being raised by his evil sister and his too-kind brother-in-law who ends up tangled up in the life of a convict. It is also a love story, sort of. Anyway, it was very deep and very literary and quite long, but I felt great about myself when I was done.

9. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. This is another YA book, but is really interesting from a feminist perpective. It is the story of Gemma Doyle, a teenage girl from colonial-India, is sent to a finishing school in London after her mother kills herself. There is an element of super-natural in this story due to the fact that Gemma and the school have an unusual connection to an alternative world.

10. To Kill a Mockingbird by Haper Lee. OK, this is kind of a cop-out since I have read this book about 20 times (due to my affiliation with sophomore English). But it is an American classic and a story about the struggle for people to be good. It starts off slow, but picks up speed around ch. 8. Plus, Atticus Finch is arguably one of the greatest American fictional characters (I say arguably because I know some of my English Dept. cronies would argue--that is what they do best!).

There you go. I hope that you are going on a vacation soon and can choose one of these to entertain you in your heightened state of relaxation. If not, I am sorry.