I’m not being cliché when I say that books shaped my life. So much of the mechanical underpinnings of my thoughts and beliefs are connected to stories that I ingested in unlikely places – WVU football games and booths at Outback Steakhouse. A log in the woods, my aunt’s back porch.

Given the sheer number of pages I’ve happily consumed at the edge of the pool when I should’ve been swimming, I have developed an outrageous number of opinions on good books and wanted to offer a few recommendations. There could never be a top list of five or even ten books, so these are chosen randomly (but obviously with some sort of subconscious favoritism).

One thing I’ve discovered is how widely our tastes as readers can vary, even in stories that have survived the ravages of time with “classic” status. My favorite books vary wildly from one another so even if you can’t stomach Victor Hugo from beginning to end, hopefully there’s something here you’ll enjoy. 

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith 
  • Holy macaroni and cheese I loved this book. I read it on the bus in the haze of starting residency but I remember connecting strongly with writer, story, and character. A perfect blend of elements that transcends time (1910ish) and place (Brooklyn, obviously) and offers something for everyone. “She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more…It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life – the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.”
  • Born to poor, immigrant parents, Frannie grows up to be a strong and intelligent woman despite living in the shadow of her younger brother and the pain of her father’s alcoholism.  

• Edith Wharton
  • I haven’t figured out yet if the modern world agrees with me that Edith Wharton is amazing. She was not only the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize but she left behind a treasure trove of good books. Both Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth get 4.5 out of 5 Lizzo stars from me, not just because of Wharton’s incomparable insight into human nature and society but for the sheer beauty of her language. No one says things like Edith Wharton says them. 
  • “She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.”

• A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman
  • Neither Tommy nor my sister-in-law understand my love for this book. They think it’s a little too “silly,” perhaps a touch “overdone.” Maybe this book just found me at the right time. I was living out of town for 5 weeks and filled my lonely evenings writing at coffeeshops. I picked this book up at a Barnes and Noble, read the first page, laughed out loud, and knew I had to take it home. I devoured it on the bus and in the lobby of the skyscraper where I was working and laughed out loud over and over again. The writing is fresh, hilarious, and heartwarming.
  • Our hero, an elderly man named Ove, is practical and sensible to the point of the ridiculous. Case in point: “Ove feels an instinctive skepticism towards all people taller than six feet; the blood can’t quite make it all the way up to the brain.”He also misses his recently deceased wife more than he can bear and struggles to navigate the world without her. 

A Voice in the Wind by Francine Rivers

• This is the first in a trilogy taking place around 70 A.D. and is the kind of story that haunts you long after you’ve finished it. Ancient Rome, gladiators, forbidden love, betrayal…This book has it all. I remember it having a slow start but if you can get past the first few chapters, you might not be able to put it down. 
  
• “Can you see air you breathe? Can you see the force that moves the tides or changes the seasons or sends the birds to a winter haven?” Her eyes welled. “Can Rome with all its knowledge be so foolish? Oh Marcus, you can’t carve God in stone. You can’t limit him to a temple. You can’t imprison him on a mountaintop. Heaven is his throne; earth, his footstool. Everything you see is his. Empires will rise and empires will fall. Only God prevails.”

• Dean Koontz
  • If you are looking for something a little more exciting that an elderly Ove and an Edith Wharton, Dean Koontz is your man and my favorite author of the thriller genre, mostly because his characters are real and irresistibly likeable. His writing can be profound, hilarious, and suspenseful. Lightning, Watchers, and The Husband make the top of my list. Tommy would agree. 
  • “We are what we are, he thought, and maybe the only time we can change what we are is when life throws us such a surprise that it’s like hitting a plate-glass window with a baseball bat, shattering the grip of the past.”

I currently have East of Eden by Steinbeck and Under the Domeby Stephen King on my nightstand and Wayfarerby K.M. Weiland downloaded on my Kindle. Still waiting to see which one is going to sneak into my affections and force me to finish but there’s no clear winner yet. Might just reread The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton (5/5 Lizzo stars) until one of these books decides to be irresistible. 

Got a recommendation? I’d love to hear it so please leave something in the comments!