the ramble

I decided (back when I was doing this year’s Minute By Minute exercise) that I was going to post for you lovely readers a list of my favorite books. What I like to call The Gigi Required Reading. Mostly because my friends end up with these books frequently on birthdays and Christmases and other holidays that feature Gift Giving. So, really, everyone ends up reading them. So, for those of you not getting said books for birthdays, here’s the list.

Tier One: Must Reads
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
Wildwood Dancing, Juliette Marillier
The Tale of Despereaux, Kate Dicamillo
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
The Last Unicorn, Peter Beagle
The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
Exodus, Leon Uris
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Harry Potter (all), J.K. Rowling

Tier Two: Read After Tier One
The Curious Incident of Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Long Way Down, Nick Hornby
The Wasteland and Other Poems, T.S. Eliot
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, T.S. Eliot
On Beauty, Zadie Smith
Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
A Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi
Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
The Hunger Games (trilogy)

More Interesting Reads:
The Downtown Girl’s Guide to Wine, multiple authors
Lady Chatterly’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence
Sense & Sensibility, Jane Austen
Jewish Literacy, Joseph Telushkin
Sexually, I’m More of a Switzerland, David Rose
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith