When I was a child, I hated reading. I was slow at it, kept losing my place, and got headaches every 10-15 minutes. But each week my mom checked out books from our local library, forced me to read them, and then questioned me about their content. Little did I know she hadn’t actually read any of them, but it was enough to know that I was being quizzed that I did as I was told. Because of that early childhood experience–or rather, despite it, depending on how you look at it–I’m now an avid reader. No other activity has impacted my life quite so profoundly as reading. If you are the average of your 5 best friends, then allow a good book to be one of those friends. When you read, not only are you accessing the writer’s thoughts, but his best thoughts, the ones he felt fit to share with the world.
Since quite a few people have asked me for recommendations, I thought I would share my top 5 books. The only problem I encountered was this: how does one compare a play like Hamlet to a book like The Selfish Gene? In my opinion, you can’t. So I decided to make a separate list for each of my 5 favorite genres. Here we go, in no particular order: