Seems like a blog on books should include the blogger’s favorite books. It is tremendously difficult to choose, and I’m sure this list will evolve and change over time. At this moment, these are the ones that come to mind right away.

• The Thousand and One Nights—The stakes are high: tell a great story or die tomorrow.
• Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins—Tom Robbins can be a potty mouth, but his story is well researched and incredibly far-fetched. Very entertaining if you can get passed some of the things he says.
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid—I love the structure and voice of this book, but there were a couple of slow parts for me.
• The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin—Took me back to the streets of Moscow. Grushin really captured the feel of the city the way I remember it.
• The House on the Strand by Daphne Du Mourier—This was a cool book. I read it a long time ago and want to read it again.
• 1984 by George Orwell—It almost doesn’t seem like fiction!
• Animal Farm by George Orwell—Very interesting; need to read this again!
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury—The book, not the movie.
• Fight Club by Chuck Palaniuk—I thought it was fascinating that this was Palaniuk’s take on The Great Gatsby!
• Where River Turns to Sky by Gregg Kleiner—An unlikely protagonist does an unlikely thing. I kept thinking: how is he going to make this work? Also, presents a very Oregonian perspective, which I really like.
• The Compromise by Sergei Dovlatov—Great satire. I love Dovlatov’s humor.
• The Zone: A Prison Camp Guard’s Story by Sergei Dovlatov—Interesting, honest, funny.
• Beloved by Toni Morrison—A horrific work of art.
• Aztec by Gary Jennings—Jennings does an amazing amount of research to pull his historical fiction together. Beware, he is warped. Otherwise, he is a genius.
• New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver—Oliver really loved nature. A good slow read.
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes—Broke my heart and you have to love that.
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy—Amazing for its timeless understanding of human nature.
• Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng—A great read to find out more about the Chinese Cultural Revolution; very important; after reading the dedication, I am in tears.
• A Hero of Our Time by M. Lermontov—Every girl should read this before graduating from high school. Deconstructs the “bad boy” beautifully.
• The Upanishads translated by Eknath Easwaran—Opened my eyes; broadened my understanding of the religious teachings I grew up with