10 Books Meme

This is my second Facebook meme in as many weeks.  Here’s a list of my top ten books.  Eight were easy….and then it got muddy.  I whittled the list down from thirteen to the required ten.  And I probably thought as much about the last two as I thought about the first eight.

• American Gods, Neil Gaiman. A great yarn about myths and Gods set in modern day America. What’s not to like? Plus it’s Neil Gaiman, he’s damn clever. It’s my favorite of his that I’ve read so far.
• The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien. It was hard to pick my favorite Tolkien but this is the first one I read. And I read it back when I was learning that I would eventually turn into “the crazy book lady”
• Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley. Another epic tale, the story of Camelot as seen through the eyes of the women in the story.
• The Temple of Gold, William Goldman. A classic coming of age tale. The story reminds me an awful lot of my family and especially my Dad. (And yes, it’s the same author as Princess Bride.)
• Snow in August, Pete Hamill. A mythic tale set WWII era Brooklyn. It’s about baseball, love, family and loyalty. There’s a big dose of Jewish Mysticism as well.
• The Ghost’s Child, Sonya Hartnett.  A charming story about love, time travel & ghosts.
• The Little House Books, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura’s my hero. I read these books so many times as a child, I think I actually wore the books to shreds. I can still tear through the entire series in under a week.
• Stories, Hans Christian Anderson.  Can you tell I’m a Fairy Tale addict?  I love these stories.  I love my illustrated version.  It’s on my nightstand right now.
• Eloise, Kay Thompson.  The first one is the best.  Grandma read this to me all the time.  Sometimes she’d even have special voices for each character.
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen.  Lizzie is a bad ass, for her time.  I love the relationship with her Father.  I love that she sticks to her guns.

The last three that didn’t make the top ten cut are:

1. The Borrowers, Mary Norton
2. The Women Who Run With The Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes
3. A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, Scott Cunningham