I was quite the bookworm growing up. My parents tell me I learned to read at three and never looked back. When I moved to the States at the age of 6 and had to learn English, I used books to make the process infinitely faster. Reading books like Black Beauty and Little Women was like entering a whole new world. Like the picture above, it really was magical. At school, my English wasn't up to par - I had a funny accent and oftentimes, everyone spoke too fast for me to hold intelligent conversations. But with a book, that was different. I could read as slow or as fast as I pleased. I could look at the individual words and letters and look at the pictures if I found myself lost. They gave me the context I couldn't find in my everyday life, and reading gave me the ability to imagine that I was as witty as Jo or that I, too, someday could have a horse.
I don't have as much time as I used to to read novel after novel (though oftentimes I wish I did!), but I try to take in as much of the written word as possible, often through The New Yorker or The Atlantic or The New York Times when I don't have the focus or the time to digest a longer piece of work. And it really is digesting - I am a firm believer in re-reading.
There are so many good books out there, but these are my top five, in a not-so-firm order:
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Raisin in the Sun
Pride and Prejudice
Twelve Angry Men
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Do you love to read? What are your top five (or ten) books?
My top five:
ReplyDelete1) All the Kings Men
2) The Lord of the Rings (trilogy)
3) All the Pretty Horses
4) Fahrenheit 451
5) Moby Dick
Oh and Brideshead Revisited is tied with Moby Dick ;)
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