10 Books That Have Stayed With Me

I read a lot. So here goes.

The Tanglewood Secret
I read this as a kid, and I must have read it about 50 times. It was one of the first novels I read. I remember it seeming very long, but it’s apparently less than 100 pages.

The Handmaid’s Tale
I think every woman should read this book. It is haunting and surprisingly relevant. It is dystopian, but the narrator still remembers the “before”, and I think that is what gives it the most impact.

Freakonomics
I love pop psychology type books. This was probably the first one I ever read. Now I try to seek them out whenever possible. It challenges me to think differently. I also love the format, of seemingly unrelated anecdotes that demonstrate a larger point.

Kissed by an Angel
This trilogy is amazing. It’s definitely one I think about often, as it went a lot deeper than I would expect for a YA book, especially written before YA got to be popular and good. I particular recall the scene with the cat.

4 Hour Body
This was the first book I read that challenged the conventional wisdom of food. The slow carb diet isn’t perfect, but it was one of the many stepping stones that lead me to where I am now.

For Women Only
This book changed the way I thought about marriage, and how to better interact with my husband. We had only been married for 6 months, and after reading this I was able to “argue better”. It mostly helped me see that we were coming at issues from very different perspectives.

To Kill a Mockingbird
This was the first literary fiction I read that I didn’t hate. I’ve read a lot more since. I think I finished this book in a couple days, and then had to wait until everyone else in the class caught up.

The Feminine Mistake
While I might not agree with this book anymore, it gave me a lot of food for thought and changed how I thought about being a woman in the economy. The book is a little alarmist, but brings up some good points.

The Notebook
I read this long before it became a movie. It is a short but beautiful book. The movie is a piece of junk. Everything that made me love the characters was demolished in the movie.

Brave New World
I didn’t like this book at all the first time I read it. It was the first dystopian book I ever read, and I don’t think I really “got it” because I was 17 at the time. But I frequently think back to it.