Blogfest 2009

I’ve got a small red bookshelf that I’ve moved from apartment to apartment over the years, always filling it with the same books. They’re not necessarily my all-time favorites, nor are they my current favorites. (For example, there’s no Michael Chabon on this list, and he’s definitely in my current top five.) They’re more like family—creased, dog-eared paperbacks that I’ve read and loved at different times in my life, novels I can always go back to when I’m in a crappy mood, knowing they’ll cheer me up or make me feel less alone or at least fill a few hours of the day. Books I love partly because I’ve read and re-read them so many times (and this is largely because for most of my life I didn’t own that many books, so in a pinch, there weren’t many options). They’re like comfort food—familiar, filling, and reliably delicious. They are:

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
The Moor’s Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Martin Bauman, David Leavitt
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins
The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
Goodbye, Columbus, Philip Roth
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
It, Stephen King (this one deserves special mention because it got me through junior high and any number of traumatic eras since then)