My Top 5 Favorite Books

As an avid reader, I find it daunting whenever someone asks me what my favorite book is. This top five list has been in progress for a while, actually, since I read my first book, Are You My Mother? by Dr. Seuss in the first grade. I find I’m always searching for a new book to become a favorite.

My personal criteria for what makes a favorite book is: Have I rated it five stars out of five?, Does the plot or certain scenes stick with me days or weeks after I have finished the book? and Is it something that I can see myself re-reading for years to come?

I hope you pick up several of these books, if not all of them.

1. The Glass Castle by: Jeannette Walls

I first read this book over ten years ago and it is like visiting an old friend every time I re-read it. My eighth-grade English teacher, Ms. Kent, lent me her copy and I remember finishing it in two days and immediately buying my own copy at the thrift store.

This is Jeannette Walls’ memoir where she discusses herself and her three siblings’ upbringing with dysfunctional parents. What I loved most about it was how Walls humanizes her parents, especially her father. Walls’ father is an alcoholic that drinks away all of the family’s money. He is constantly on the run, causing the family to uproot and move across the country multiple times. He even goes as far as to let Jeannette be sexually assaulted and nearly raped at 13 in a pool hustling scheme so he could make some money. Despite her trauma, Jeanette also recalls the beautiful moments she shared with her father in her childhood. For example, he promises her that he will be building a glass castle for their whole family to live in and works with her on the blueprints. A scene that stuck with me was when Jeanette was boarding a bus to go to college and she desires to avoid looking back at her father at the bus station, as her older sister did. But she couldn’t help herself. Even though her father was a selfish drunk, she chose to see the best in him and forgive him.

I may be biased, but I think Wall’s background in journalism is what made this memoir as successful as it is. She makes these difficult experiences easy to read and be understood by everyone, without omitting any descriptive language.

It may be because this book was given to me by a teacher that I admired, and perhaps I read it at a difficult time in my life, but it has stuck with me for so many years. The Glass Castle provides life lessons that I believe any reader can apply, regardless of their familial relationship.

2. Misery by: Stephen King

As a massive fan of Stephen King, I felt like my Top 5 list had to include one of his novels. Although I have not read all of his 80+ books, Misery is my favorite of the ones that I have had the pleasure to read. Misery follows best-selling author Paul Sheldon after he crashes his car in a snowstorm and is rescued by his biggest fan, Annie Wilkes. Annie keeps Paul prisoner in her home and forces him to rewrite the last book in his series to her liking after she reads his manuscript. Annie quickly becomes abusive and Paul learns of her murderous past as a nurse.

This book was another one that I finished in a single day as I found it impossible to put down. King does a wonderful job with the descriptive language and the dialogue with Annie and Paul. The main story is also interspersed with sections of Paul’s novel that he is rewriting on Annie’s old typewriter. It was such a stressful book to read that it had me anxious the entire time. If somebody has not read a Stephen King book before, Misery is my number one recommendation, alongside The Body.

3. Frankenstein by: Mary Shelley

Frankenstein is a classic that took me a while to read, as I found it to be intimidating, not only because of the length of the book but also due to the Romantic literary style of the period. Written in 1818 by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein is known as the first work of Science Fiction. This novel follows Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who creates a man-like monster. Frankenstein quickly becomes afraid of his creation and banishes him. The monster lives out his days in the wilderness, observing a family living in a cottage. After this family rejects him when he tries to make contact with them, the monster becomes enraged and sets out to avenge Dr. Frankenstein for creating him.

Although the monster is but a couple of months old, he is an especially eloquent speaker-- nowhere near the film adaptation of his simple grunts and groans. For example, "Soon . . . I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will surely think thus. Farewell."

Mary Shelley penned an exceedingly beautiful story about human nature and how we shun those we fear or do not understand. She created a genre and wrote a classic work of fiction at just 18-years-old. Frankenstein is a sublime book everyone should read.

4. Lolita by: Vladimir Nabokov

This was another book that I read as a teenager that had a substantial impact on me. I’m sure many people know the main plot of Lolita, but this novel follows a literature professor and pedophile named Humber Humbert who becomes infatuated with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores, or as he nicknames her, Lolita. No doubt the theme of the book can be a deterrent for many people. However, was the first work I read that taught me about morally untrustworthy narrators.

Humbert spends the entire book justifying his actions and convincing the reader that Lolita is the one causing these issues by coming onto him. These horrific acts that Humbert is committing are described through some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read. I found myself having to re-read paragraphs to break through the ruse of the flowery prose. It is a horribly tragic book all around, with no redemption for any of the characters. This book is a classic for a reason and although I do not believe everyone should read it, if you can handle reading about these sensitive subjects, it is completely worth it.

5. Sophie’s World by: Jostein Gaarder

Sophie’s World was my first foray into philosophy. This book was assigned in my AP English class during my senior year of high school by a teacher that I found to be insufferable. At first, I was reluctant to read this book, but as soon as I gave it a chance, it felt like it had everything I had been looking for.

Sophie’s World follows 14-year-old Sophie who is receiving philosophy lectures in her mailbox from an unknown source. Eventually, Sophie meets this mystery professor, Alberto Knox, and they embark on surrealist adventures after realizing their world is a literary construction by Albert Knag as a present for his daughter, Hilde’s fifteenth birthday.

Gaarder does a wonderful job making philosophy accessible to readers by presenting it as a work of fiction. The reader is learning about the main philosophers with Sophie. This book serves up a baseline understanding of Western thought, from pre-Socratic philosophers through Jean-Paul Sartre. I will always recommend this book enthusiastically for anyone looking to begin their voyage into philosophy. I found that it furnished me with a great introduction, before even taking my first college-level philosophy course.

Honorable Mentions

Because it was so difficult to narrow down my list, here are some honorable mentions of book that also met my criteria and I am excited to re-read in the coming future:

• The Secret History by: Donna Tartt

• Pet Sematary by: Stephen King

• I’m Thinking of Ending Things by: Iain Reid

• The Midnight Library by: Matt Haig