A List of 10 Great Books You Should Check Out: Part 1

I love book lists. It's just as much fun to see what you agree with and what you've already read as it is to write down all the new treasures you're going to go hunting for. And there are so many book lists! There are current bestsellers and classic must- reads. There are lists of fiction and non-fiction, lists for every genre imaginable, loved books and hated books and just about everything in between. My favourites are the lists that seem a bit random. I always appreciate a reader who is as voracious and as eclectic as I am and I find that those lists usually contain the most fertile territory for me. Having said that, here are some contributions to the book list world. The following are no particular order, other than alphabetical. I refuse to play the 'favourites' game. I tend to be dictated to by mood and what feels good to read on a rainy afternoon and what you want to read before bed may be very different.

1). Boy's Life - Robert McCammon. I would have to call this one of the best books I have ever read. It is the quintessential story of a boy growing up in the Deep South in 1964 and yet it is so much more. His family must struggle with the changes that were sweeping the nation, both politically and socially. He must deal with the changes that all young people must face, including first crush, best friends, the death of a loved one and learning to let go. The story revolves around a mysterious horrific murder that haunts his father and leads the boy down some frightening roads, but at the heart of it, this story is about a boy who loves his dad and cannot bear to watch his father being eaten alive on the inside by his visions of a cruel and unfair world. McCammon's writing took a quantum leap in this book and his prose is almost poetical at times.

2). Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Prose that flows like water over stones, funny and sharp and lyrical, but seeping down into your soul while you're not looking, staying with you long after you finish the last page. Do not, I say, absolutely do not judge this book by the movie that was made. That debacle was an excellent example of why so many great books do not translate well onto film. The beauty of books lies not only in the imagery, it lies in the spell that is wrought from words. And De Bernieres is a master. His prose is complex but not complicated, his imagery vivid and his emotions powerful without the self-consciousness of sentimentality. You also may learn a whole lot about WWII that you did not know.

3). Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay. Cable TV has picked up the Dexter story and created a series about it. They know a good thing when they see it (sometimes!). But read the book. I believe that Darkly Dreaming was Lindsay's first novel and I couldn't believe how good it was. Poignant, violent, funny - not necessarily words you would associate with a serial killer or a book about a serial killer. With Dexter, you get way more than you would expect and you constantly have to deal with the question "Do the ends justify the means?" I love that type of moral conundrum and no, I still don't have an answer.

4). Dreamers of the Day - Mary Doria Russell. I just finished this one and immediately handed it off to my mom to read, who is passing it to one of her friends. It's that kind of book. Centered on Agnes, a spinster school teacher who loses her entire family in the influenza epidemic after WWI, the story takes place in Cleveland, Ohio and the Middle East, particularly Egypt. Agnes arrives in Egypt with her beloved dachshund Rosie and is immediately swept into the orbit of T. E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell and Winston Churchill, who are there to carve up the Middle East, post Great War and Versailles Treaty. It's hard to know the intentions of the politicos, but we are living with the outcome of those decisions. The creation of Iraq, the chopping up of Palestine, the complete disregard of the Kurds and the divvying up of the oil, as well as setting the stage for the House of Saud and the political turmoil that we are neck-deep in now - all of these were part of that historic meeting between those three people and the outcome of their agendas. And Agnes is caught up on the periphery and so we see history through her eyes, before it was history. Along the way, Agnes falls in love with a German spy and realizes that she is her own person, not an extension of all of her mother's disappointments.

5). Fall On Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald. This is one of those epic, sweeping stories that is big and immensely satisfying. It chronicles five generations of the Piper clan and follows four sisters through their lives, lives that are filled with ambition, family bonds that not only bind but suffocate, illicit love and a particularly dark and tragic secret that no one is allowed to talk about. A first novel, MacDonald's work is dark and sometimes chilling, lyrical and revealing in its grace and the story is mesmerizing. Some of its most predominant themes are those of incest and race and the decisions that we make that haunt us for the rest of our lives.

6). Memoir From Antproof Case - Marc Helprin. I have seen other Helprin novels on book lists, but never this one. And I think it is his best. It's big and brash and the protagonist is not always a likeable fellow, but he's always interesting. I chose a passage from this book for one of my public speaking assignments in college and I can honestly say that I held them in the palm of my hand as I read to them. The story is the memoir of a fascinating old man living out the rest of his days in Brazil, chronicling his life starting with his youth in upstate New York and following his adventures as they led him around the world. One of the mainstays of his life was his abhorrence of coffee and how this often put him at odds with others, sometimes hilariously.

7). Mrs. Munck - Ella Leffland. It may not be fair to put this one on the list as it may be very hard to find it. It is a first novel published by a small printing house in Canada called Grey Wolf Publishing. However, if you can find it, grab it. This book is all about revenge and the very fine line between love and hate and the crazy that is hovering at the edges of both. It's fierce and uncompromising and unflinching and disturbing and you feel kinda bad when you laugh out loud because maybe that makes you a bad person that you would laugh at something like that. Delicious. And disturbing. And oh, so honest.

8). Say When - Elizabeth Berg. First let me say, I love almost all of her books, and I find it hard to say "this one over that one". The difference for me with this one is that she wrote it from the male perspective and she did a great job. I'm always wary when I see an author of one sex writing from the perspective of the opposite sex. They usually impose how they think the opposite sex thinks, and we all have a whole lot of personal experience to tell us that men don't know what women think and women don't have a clue why men do some of the things that they do. But Berg does a great job of looking at a failed relationship through a man's eyes. The best thing for me about this book was that it gave me some glimmer of understanding about myself and why my relationship of ten years with a man that I adored failed. I was able to start seeing where I was at fault and start forgiving him for failing me. And of course, in the process of forgiving him, I started forgiving me. And no self-help anything had been able to help me with that.

9). Snowfall - Mitchell Smith. This a post-climate change story that takes place several generations after another Ice Age hits. People living in Colorado are one of a small band of hunters who are struggling to survive on the edge of the ice sheet and, after clashing with a group that has migrated from Michigan, they decide to try to move south where they have heard it is warmer and green. I am always fascinated with survival stories and this is an interesting take on human migrations and mutations, the politics of change and the fact that politics never change, and the resilience of the human race.

10). The Last Jew - Noah Gordon. Such a good book!! This is the story of Spain and the Jewish Diaspora that emptied Spain of her unconverted Jews. It follows the path of a young Jewish man who is separated from his family and who wanders the Spanish countryside trying to survive, convinced that he is the last Jew in all of Iberia. He spends many years alone, moving from area to area, always aware that the Spanish Inquisition is covering the country like a hood, keeping good people scared and compliant and enabling monsters to "cleanse" the country in the name of God and queen. It seems like every time he finds a home, someone or something betrays him and he must run again, until he stumbles upon a physician who takes him in and trains him in the arts of medicine and healing. Really, a terrific story, extremely well written and very well paced.

Well, there you have it - ten books that I have loved and have read at least twice, if not a dozen times. Hey, once I become friends with a book, we check in with each other often! And these books are all good friends. Enjoy and let me know what you think! Also, feel free to share books with me in the comment section. I'm always looking for a great new book or author.