Fashion Beauty Friend Friday: Open a book

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November is National Book Writing Month. If you're a long-time reader of my blog, you're well-aware of my love for books. I spent my childhood in libraries and have a stack of books on my bedside table so towering it threatens to collapse and take me with it. I love to read. I love immersing myself in a big, thick novel. I love the feeling of reading a book so captivating that I can't put it down. Katy of Modly Chic feels the same way, and this week she's dedicated Fashion Beauty Friend Friday to books - what we're reading, our favorite past reads, and books we'd recommend to our own blog followers.

My Top 5 Favorite Books Of All Time:

1. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls: This is not an easy read. The biographical telling of the author's childhood, through which she struggled with poverty and two parents who were highly unsuitable for parenting, is heartbreaking and captivating.
2. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith: I first read this book in high school and have been in love with it ever since. It's a story of a girl from the slums of Willamsburg, Brooklyn, during the early 1900's. Francie is imaginative, alert, mature beyond her years - everything a heroine should be. I love the details of life in NYC during the pre-Depression years.
3. The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning: This book is on many Christians' must-read lists, and for good reason - it passionately explains how one's relationship with God is based around love. This book inspired me to become a born again Christian, and I read it at least once a year.
4. Wasted, Marya Hornbacher: Marya is a recovering anorexic and bulimic, and I can relate to her book on a deeply personal level. This book is an unflinching description of the indescribable hell of living with a chronic eating disorder. There are certain chapters I feel like I could have written myself.
5. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris: This book is just damm funny Like, laugh out loud funny. Sedaris has a wonderful way of weaving short essays about his oddball, endearing family with wit and snark. There are chapters that are more poignant than funny, and it's that combination that makes this book so successful.

My 5 Most Recent Reads

1. Anthropology of an American Girl, Hilary Thayer: This is an arresting and provocative story of a young woman growing up in the seventies, and her navigation in the world of womanhood. It's one of those books you just can't put down.
2. Room, Ema Donague: This is a book that's shocking, riveting and tragic, yet also manages to offer glimmers of hope and beauty. Room is the story of a kidnapped woman who lives with her son, the product of rape by her kidnapper, in a 11x11 foot space for five years. The child is the narrator, which injects an innocent and precocious perspective into a tale that is terrifying and  intense.
3. Shanghi Girls and its sequel, Dreams of Joy, Lisa See: Two beautiful, privileged sisters in the late 1930's from Shanghi have their lives turned upside down when they are sold to suitors. Their journey through China, escaping the Japanese bombings of WW2, and the sacrifices they overcome, kept me riveted
4. The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides: I'm in the middle of reading this book about the lives of three college seniors during the early 1980's. There is Madeline, an incurable romantic fascinated by Victorian literature; Leonard, a brilliant manic-depressive; and Mitchell, a tortured religious studies major on an all-consuming quest for spirituality. All three are captivating.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. What books are you reading right now? What are some of your favorite books?

Fashion Beauty Friend Friday was created by Katy Rose of Modly Chic. Become a member at the Fashion Beauty Friend Friday Google Group to join in the discussion!

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