My Favorite Books…(Fiction)

As a VORACIOUS reader and bibliophile, I am frequently asked for book recommendations and to share a list of my favorites.  While I always have suggestions, I have deferred on actually publicly listing my favorites because I feel a bit like a parent being asked to choose between my children and thus my compilation has remained a vague set of preferences in my mind – I have all these stories alive in my mind, and replay my favorite bits all the times, but confessing my favorites aloud….!!!

But, I have decided to write this, so here are my favorite fiction books.  You may note that several of them are children’s or young adult books… I still reread them actively, these are not just things from childhood that I’m saving for my kids someday.

SO, roughly in descending order of current favor:

• Kim, by Rudyard Kipling
• Oliver’s Travels, by Alan Plater
• Phryne Fisher series by Kerry Greenwood
• anything from Jennifer Crusie
• The Venetian’s Wife, by Nick Bantock
• Wintertide, by Megan Sybil Baker
• Wisdom’s Daughter, by India Edghill
• Shiva’s Fire, by Suzanne Fisher Staples
• Pockets, by Jennifer Armstrong
• the dragon series (Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, etc.) by Patricia Wrede
• The Dot & The Line – a romance in lower mathematics, by Norton Juster
• The Lost Prince, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• the Aunty Dimity detective series by Nancy Atherton (the stories are cute, but the writing sometimes annoys me)
• House Husband, by Ad Hudler
• Mistress of the Art of Death, by Arianna Franklin
• Q & A, by Vikas Swarup (don’t “LIKE”, but absolutely riveting! Later made into the movie Slumdog Millionaire (which I haven’t seen. Read the book a few years before, could never then see the movie.))
• select books by Piers Anthony (Death Rides A Pale Horse was immensely comforting after my father died, and his Gaia and Xanth series helped me deal with difficult teenage years)
• The Cat Who series by Lilian Jackson Braun (also like the stories, but find the writing annoying sometimes)
• A Quiver Full of Arrows, by Jeffrey Archer

 

I had been asked for a list of my top 10… I went into my office and started pulling books off the shelf, muttering to myself, “Oh yes, this has to be on the list! Oh and this too…” and somehow, as you can see, my list is a bit longer than 10 items before I was able to force myself to walk away….

I think this amply illustrates the problem I’d mentioned at the beginning…

Anyways, I would love to hear what your favorite books are, and what you think of any of mine if you read them!!