It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it – Oscar Wilde

As any good writer or journalist was and probably still is, I am a lover of books. I have been from a small age, where I remember gobbling up the entire “Indian in the Cupboard” series and “Diary of Anne Frank” as fast as I could. I could read during anything, even when my mom was hell bent on vacuuming the entire house, and there was no room I could run to to escape the loud, unnecessary humming sound that came from the cleaning device. For some reason, I was really into Leon Uris novels, even though they were beyond my scope and probably, my understanding. Jewish history and the Holocaust fascinated me, most likely because I could relate to it, since I grew up knowing my own tainted history of the Armenian Genocide. I think the first book I remember reading was called “Rent a Third Grader” by B.B Hiller in, you guessed it, third grade. I brought it to school with me and my teacher became so intrigued, that I think she might have recommended it to other students or teachers.

It was the story of a class of third graders who try to raise money so they could save a retired police horse name Partner from going to HappiPet Food to meet his end, and it was amazing. After that, I remember delving into “The Babysitter’s Club” of course, as well as the “Nancy Drew” series which I absolutely loved, and Judy Blume books.

Over the last couple of years, my reading has sharply declined, because well, as you know, life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans, as John Lennon once said. The books I was reading were mostly for school and I only managed to read a few for pleasure including “Back roads” by Tawni O’ Dell and “Lolita” by Nabokov. However, because of a humanities class I once took, I discovered my favorite book to date, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera. If you have a reading list, or you’re looking for a book to read, I cannot stress how wonderful this book is. It will leave you breathless.

In 2008, I wanted to change my reading habits, so I started three books but never managed to finish them, including “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom, “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut and Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. It wasn’t until I started reading the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer that I remembered how much I absolutely love and adore literature and reading, which is quite ironic, because they aren’t very well written and almost quite laughable, but when you have such an intriguing and amazing story as the one that Meyer created, it’s easy to let down your guard and be consumed by the tale. Four books about Bella and Edward’s vampire-human love tryst later, I am completely enamored with books yet again and I’ve stacked about 19 books I must finish this year, that you can find the titles of below.

1. Dead Until Dark – Charlaine Harris
2. Slaughterhouse – Five – Kurt Vonnegut
3. Tuesdays with Morrie – Mitch Albom
4. Skylark Farm – Antonia Arslan
5. Fig Eater – Jody Shields
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
7. Collected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
9. The Hungry Years – William Leith
10. The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
11. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
12. The Call of the Weird – Louis Theroux
13. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey
14. Immortality – Milan Kundera
15. Julie & Julia – Julie Powell
16. Beginner’s Greek – James Collins
17. The Nanny Diaries – Emma McLaughlin & Nicole Kraus
18. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
19. Difficult Loves – Italo Calvino