Favorite Books: Recommended Reading

I love books so much that I am going to make this post a feature with links to individual books that have made it to my "favorites" list. Each book I list below will have its own post and a link where you can buy it. You can always buy them online through major merchandisers such as Amazon or Barnes & Nobles, but here are a couple of websites I found that list independently owned book shops in the USA and Canada. (1) Dr. Resmaa (2) Time Out's list of 2024 (3) IndieBound. 

I only have a small group of friends who read as much as I do, and I'm well aware there are readers out there who power through books much faster than I do. But, love for books is still the same no matter how quickly or slowly the reader makes her way to the end of it. Many of my friends haven't picked up a book in years - school took the joy out of reading and they never found love in the written word. I find that unfortunate because reading, for me, is a mental escape. I can envision what I read -- it literally plays out in my mind like I'm at the movie theater. I can imagine the atmosphere, the ways the characters look, what they sound like, and it really does appear like a movie in my mind's eye. An imagination is such an important thing to foster and care for. The world can be a rotten place so breaking away somewhere else mentally for a bit is a beautiful thing. 

This blog will be updated as I create individual posts for the books below. Be patient, as I have quite a few books I love and recommend to fellow readers. This list below is in no particular order. I couldn't imagine trying to rank them. 

  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 
  • The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
  • Nancy Wake by Russell Braddon
  • From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke
  • The Broke Diaries: The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Broke by Angela Nissel 
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  • The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
  • The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods 
  • The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
  • The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
  • Mutant Message Down Under - The Heart and Soul of One Australian Aboriginal Tribe on Walkabout by Marlo Morgan
  • Night by Elie Wiesel, Marion Wiesel (Translator), François Mauriac (Foreword)
  • Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
  • The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
  • Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks
  • Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa, Translated by Eric Ozawa
  • The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
  • A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II  by Sonia Purnell
  • War by Sebastian Junger
  • My Family and Other Animals (Corfu Trilogy, #1) by Gerald Durrell
  • Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
  • The Women by Kristin Hannah 
As you'll see in my list of favorites, much of it has to do with historical fiction, strong female leads (for many), a love of cultures around the world whether Ireland, Italy, Japan, Scotland, South Africa, Australia, etc., books that have a decent amount of self-reflection and self-awareness, and also sprinkled in the mix is a bit of romance. I'm not much a romance reader but an element of romance is always something worth enjoying. 

This list will continue to grow because I'm always finding a new book that I fall in love with. Granted, I do wish it happened more often. I did get the advice that after 50 pages if I'm not hooked, let the book go. Sometimes I'll trudge my way through books I really dislike. I keep hoping that something will shift and it will grab my attention. But I have been known to read books I don't actually like while in bed at night, so it puts me to sleep. In high school and college, I'd often read the book called something like "Everything I never knew about American history but always wanted to know" - I must have read the one section about "lame duck presidency" 100 times and still couldn't tell you much about it. It was like melatonin in book form. I loved it! It was as effective as I needed it to be. So, to say the least, I have read many books that will never make the list of "recommended reads" but they served other purposes. 



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