Books, Books, Books!!

I have written so much about movies lately that I think I will switch over to another medium and talk about books.

I love books. Everything about them. The way they look, smell, and feel...the stories they tell, whether fiction or non-fiction. Wonderful tales of adventures, mysteries, romances, biographies, suspense, even horror. I would love to have a library in my home. With tall shelves set into the wall, full to the brim with books. I'd have the perfect comfy chair and a bay window with all the natural light in the world. I would drink tea and read all day.

I just finished reading a book that I was torn between wanting to devour in one sitting and savour for as long as I could make it last. I love books that do that for me.

My taste in books can be compared to my taste in movies. It only needs to be entertaining for me to give it a go but the better it is the more passionate I am about it. I can appreciate nearly any genre and style of writing.

As much as I love books, I love book stores. Walking into a Chapters, Book Warehouse, Coles, or any used book store sends a little satisfied thrill down my spine. I could wander for hours running my hands along spines and jackets, picking books at random based on their covers or titles. It takes enormous amounts of will power for me to walk out without buying armloads of books let alone one single piece of literary work.

I am slowly learning to only buy what I already know I love. Books are great for borrowing, loaning, sharing, so I am able to read before buying and if it is something that I would read again or would want others to read, then I buy it. Most recently, I borrowed The Shack from my mom and the day after I finished reading it, I found my own copy at a used book store, ready to be read again or loaned out to a friend.

One day I will have that library. And all of my shelves will be full of books that I am passionate about, arranged lovingly and tenderly in some wonderfully random order that only I can decipher.

I have tried to come up with a list of some of my favourite books but it's hard, I love so many and for such different reasons. I want to qualify each pick and tell you why it made the cut and then defend why others didn't. Plus I am likely forgetting some of the best and would fear that my list is incomplete and not fully representative of my favourites.

The ones that come to mind while sitting in a very small and isolated classroom (no access to my bookshelves to pick and choose my favourites) are;
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
The Shack by William P. Young
Any number of novels by Jodi Picoult
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Cooptown by Karli Thomas :-)

ahhh books! I love them so!