Favourite Books

My good friend asked me the other day for a list of some of my favourite books. And gosh! Do I have a lot. I’m always on the lookout for great books and it sometimes feels like even though so many new ones are being released each day, coming across a gem is tougher than you’d think. Anyway, here are four books that will forever be in my heart.

1. Glass Castle – “Those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness. Rich city folks, he’d say, lived in fancy apartments, but their air was so polluted they couldn’t even see the stars. We’d have to be out of our minds to want to trade places with any of them.”

2. Middlesex – “I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets people were embroiled in a thousand different matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair-cut and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered.”

3. Haroun and the Sea of Stories – “There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue…”

4. The Signature of All Things – “You are still young, so you think only of your own self. You do not notice the tribulations that occur all around you, to other people. Do not protest; it is true. I am not condemning you. I was as selfish as you, when I was your age. It is the custom of the young to be selfish… But someday you will understand that nobody passes through this world without suffering–no matter what you think of them and their supposed good fortune.”