Continuing with my 30 Days of Gratitude, I am thankful for the great stories woven by men and women through history and my ability to enjoy them.
Day #19 – Reading is Fundamental
Watching my younger son carry an over-full book bag and having a few books in his hand – Catcher in the Rye, On the Road, and a couple of others – got me to thinking this morning how much our boys love reading, and how much Lisa and I love it as well. I don’t read nearly as much as I would like, or as I have at various points in my life.
But I do try to keep a book going at all times – and to remind myself that if I am ‘done’ it is OK to set it aside rather than force myself to finish, because what generally happens is non-reading stuff takes over.
Right now I am reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, and even a few pages in I am already engaged … it looks like it deserves the high praise!
So here are 5 books I love:
1. Kurt Vonnegut – Cat’s Cradle – my favorite Vonnegut book and one of my all-time faves. I have re-read this dozens of times and always discover something new.
2. Isaac Asimov – Foundation Trilogy – yes this is a cheat choosing all three books, but it is really essential reading for the sci-fi genre, but is much more than that.
3. Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 – although technically dated, the heart of this book is the character study of the interface of people and information and freedom.
4. Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 100 Years of Solitude – this sprawling tale of many generations of the Buendia family captured my imagination as a teen and never left. I have re-read a few times and always love it.
5. Sherwood Anderson – Winesburg, Ohio – Anderson (no relation) transports you to a small town just after the turn of the century. While there is a central character, the stories are told through the loneliness and despair that permeates the people of the town and the town itself.
This is not a new topic for me, here are some of my earlier takes on books:
Spill It Sunday Book Edition
The Facebook ’10 Books That Stayed With You’ Meme Post
Sunday Runday, Paleo Guest Post #2, Weekly Recap and my ‘Four Books’
10 Books That Touched You
Do you love to read? Recommend me a (non-running) book?
And how can I pass up finishing this with Weird Al?!?
Running Around the Bend 
I mostly read WWII books and I often recommend Unbroken to friends looking for something to read. Enjoy!
You actually did recommend it for me as well – “among my more recent reads, if you haven’t read Unbroken (Laura Hillenbrand) or The Happiness Project (Gretchen Ruben), I’d recommend them as well.” 🙂 So it had been on my wish list, and when it went on sale BAM I grabbed it. 🙂
Reading is my second passion in life right after running! I will read just about anything 🙂 nothing makes me happier than getting lost in a book! I just finished the second Comoran strike book (by jk Rowling under the Robert Galbraith pseudonym)…I liked the first better so would recommend that for sure…still undecided about the second. Now I’m reading the giver quartet, which I never knew was a quartet till recently haha. I loved the giver in grade school and have really enjoyed rereading it and then reading the new to me ones from an adult perspective
Glad you are enjoying those – I know I own the first “Robert Galbraith ” book for Kindle but never read it, oh well. I definitely own more than I will ever read – and still go back and re-read! Thanks for sharing!
I love reading, I just used to be so much faster at it. Or maybe I had fewer distractions? 99% of what I read is fiction interspersed with running books. I just finished The Infinite Sea, a sequel to The Fifth Wave. It was really good, if a little darker than I was expecting.
I like using my Kindle Paperwhite … because it doesn’t beep, buzz, or flash a banner for new emails and texts all the time 🙂 Otherwise it is 5 minutes of reading and then … squirrel!
I’ve been mostly listening to
books lately. Right now it’s “You” by Caroline Keynes and it’s pretty great, if creepy. My last book was “Red Rising” by Pierce Brown, which is a young adult dystopian book and I thought it was fantastic (it’s been optioned for the movies) — kind of a cross of Hunger Games and Harry Potter.
Sorry about my disjointed comments. My iPad is acting up and keeps posting comments before I’m done typing
I was laughing at the split comments … was going to respond in Haiku but am way too wordy for that 😉
Added more stuff to my wishlist 🙂 I have never been a big audiobook person, did listen to some when I had the long Boston-area commute, but not now. Two things (1) I just don’t get the same experience as actually reading and (2) I’d rather listen to music … but that is just me.
Oh my gosh I LOVE to read. Mostly trashy thrillers and mysteries, haha! Currently my favorite is The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. I loved the different perspectives and the narrative spanning such a large span of time. And it really made me think, which I liked a lot.
I love that one as well – I think that some of those books written for the ‘magazine story age’ are incredibly interesting as to how they work in a small context but also when assembled into a larger whole.
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