I’ve always loved reading! When I was really, really little I’d go to the library with my mom and sister and bring back huge stacks of picture books to read—the librarians quickly had to give me a Red library card instead of the Blue one since I was exceeding the limit for number of books to be checked out by kids. Yup, quite a book worm I was…am. By the time I was 5 years old I was picking up books from the ‘Chapter Book’ section. During the elementary school days I’d usually read a book a day (yes, I used to love reading the Goosebumps, Babysitters Club and Nancy Drew series, lol!), mainly because we were given an hour to read each day in school and I’d end up hiding a book behind the textbook so I could finish :-) Of course, as soon as Junior High came teachers turned reading from a pastime into a graded chore :-( High School did a damn good job of exposing me to a variety of the “classics,” feminist pieces, poetry and Shakespeare. And, my drama/theatre focus in College English courses let me delve even deeper into Shakespeare, in addition to also picking up on Beckett, Aristotle and the likes. Post-college I’ve started to read a book a week out of sheer free-will, without the worry of being quizzed and having to write term-papers :-) It would be really cool to have an entire room devoted to books one day…shelves and shelves and shelves of books. Anyway, as usual I digress…The purpose of this post is just to share a list of some of the books, plays, and short stories I’ve really enjoyed so far. So, here goes—

In no particular order…

•This Book Will Save Your Life
•The Joy Luck Club
•A Day No Pigs Would Die
•Where The Red Fern Grows
•The Art of Racing In the Rain
•No Time For Goodbye
•Wuthering Heights
•As I Lay Dieing
•The Sound & The Fury
•A Thousand Splendid Suns
•1984
•The Awakening
•The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
•The Great Divorce
•The Five People You Meet in Heaven
•For One More Day
•Water For Elephants
•Almost Moon
•Pride & Prejudice
•Franny & Zooey
•Jane Eyre
•An Alternative Method
•Witches of Blackbird Pond
•Wicked
•The Giver
•A Separate Peace
•Anne of Green Gables
•Walk Two Moons
•Ttyl (written entirely in a series of IM conversations between three friends)
•The Great Gatsby
•Heart of Darkness
•Invisible Man
•The Scarlet Letter
•To Kill A Mockingbird
•The Last Piper
•The Time Traveler's Wife
•Judgement Day
•Twanged
•The God of Small Things
•The White Tiger
•Ladies Coupe
•For Matrimonial Purposes
•Serving Crazy With Curry
•The Hindi Bindi Club
•The Mango Season
•Fasting, Feasting
•The Inheritance of Loss
•The Palace of Illusions
•Family Matters
•The Death of Vishnu
•The Saffron Kitchen
•The Sound of Water
•Video: Stories
•The Sari Shop
•The Marriage Bureau for Rich People
•Shantaram
•Arranged Marriage (stories by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni)
•Red Earth & Pouring Rain
•Sister of My Heart
•A New World
•The Devil’s Arithmetic
•Number The Stars
•Night
•Bird By Bird
•Zen & The Art of Writing
•Reading Lolita in Tehran
•Nickeled & Dimed
•That’s Not What I Meant
•Liar’s Club
•This Boy’s Life
•The Diary of Anne Frank
•The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
•ALL of Shakespeare’s Plays—My favorites would have to be The Tragedy of Richard The Third, Macbeth, Othello and Romeo & Juliet
•Waiting For Godot, Endgame
•Oedipus The King, Antigone, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Lysistrata, Everyman, Tartuffe, Gilgamesh, Medea,
•Flowers for Algernon
•The Story of An Hour
•The Lottery
•Peppermints in the Parlor
•Matilda
•House on Mango Street
•The Chocolate War
•The Midwife’s Apprentice
•Harry Potter series
•Ella Enchanted
•Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
•Homecoming
•Are You There God?, It’s Me Margaret
•The Things They Carried
•Bloomability
•Maniac Magee
•A Wrinkle in Time
•Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry