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Okay, don't even get me started about my favorite books, I have FOUR lists on my computer (children's picture books, children's novels, young adult novels, and adult novels--I've been keeping the lists since I was eleven)! But since I'm at my boyfriend's computer I'll just list a few from memory.

Very special books:
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney is my favorite children's picture book. Actually, I like anything by Barbara Cooney.

The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell is a very special good-for-any-age book.

The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery is my favorite book overall. I've read it so many times I actually have portions of it memorized. The author also wrote Anne of Green Gables, but The Blue Castle isn't really a children's novel--you'll see if you read it--it's about making life choices and about marriage. (For that matter, so are the later Anne books.)

A book I just saw in the bookstore so the title is fresh in my mind is Family by J. California Cooper. She follows several generations of an African-American family from slavery to the present.

If you like fantasy, and you don't mind books that are a leeetle bit silly, Barbara Hambly has some good stuff. Some of it is out of print but available for cheap (like 75 cents) from half.com One trilogy is The Ladies of Mandrigyn/The Witches of Wenshar/The Dark Hand of Magic, and another (that happens to contain *five* books) is The Time of the Dark/The Walls of Air/The Armies of Daylight/Mother of Winter (which I'm currently reading)/Icefalcon's Quest.

There's a very interesting trilogy about the life of Josephine Bonaparte that I began reading this summer. The first book is The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. by Sandra Gulland.

I LOVE the Harry Potter books--I own all five in hardcover!

John Marsden writes for teenagers but I haven't let that stop me even though I'm no longer one. His Tomorrow, When the War Began series is probably most famous--its premise is that a group of Australian teenagers are camping in the bush over their school holidays when the country is invaded and its citizens imprisoned, and they return home only to discover that they, as the only free residents of their hometown, must singlehandedly fight the invaders. Marsden's writing can be downright awful but his plots are always so original that his books are still worth reading. Other good ones *not* in the Tomorrow... series include Letters from the Inside, Checkers, and Winter (which I just finished this morning).

Ruchie, you're not completely nuts (unless you've read this far down my post!)--I like Hamlet, and I'm trying to read The Taming of the Shrew and Othello, and I can't wait to go see Romeo and Juliet in Centennial Park later this month.

I read Wuthering Heights in school and it was pretty good. I read Jane Eyre on a friend's recommendation and it was even better. Now I've just bought The Tenant of Wildfell Hall so I'll have covered all three Bronte sisters.

The Haunting of Lamb House by Joan Aiken is funny and clever.

I liked Walking West by Noelle Sickels--it's an Oregon Trail novel that is *not* romantic or glorified in any way.

Okay, I'm going to be quiet now before I REALLY annoy anyone. Seriously, though, if folks want book suggestions in almost any genre, e-mail me and I'll see what I can come up with, okay? (I love doing stuff like that--should've been a librarian.) I'm especially good with children's books--already took some into my classroom--and I've got infants!

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