I, Anika

A few weeks ago, I felt something I hadn't felt since sophomore year of high school. I was chilling in a cafe with my creative writing group, and somehow we got started on the subject of The Brothers Karamazov. I was unusually quiet. I rustled my papers and clicked my heels. I said everything except the truth: I've never read the damn book. In fact, I've never read anything by Dostoevsky. For the first time in years, I felt uninformed.

Dostoevsky is one of those authors whose books appear on every reading list and "Top 100" list of all time. Another is James Joyce, whom I also haven't read. Yet a third is Charles Dickens. I have read a few books of his - a few too many. Reading Dickens, to me, is like eating boiled carrots. I do it because someone else says it's good for me, but I don't like it. I feel similarly about Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner (I know, someone call the Feds). Reading Woolf and Faulkner is like watching the Cirque du Soleil. They performs feats of contortionist derring-do with the English language, and I ooh and aah and admire their technical expertise, but at the end I feel vaguely uncomfortable, like I've just witnessed something unnatural.

Where are the books in between? The ones you can bring home to your English teacher, but also have fun with on the side?

In honor of that ideal, I've put together a list of my top books of all time. There is a writing standard - for example, you won't find Bridget Jones' Diary on this list - but these are the books I most loved to actually read. They changed my perception of writing, and occasionally humanity. One of them (Jonathan Safran-Foer's Everything is Illuminated) is so powerful that when I was reading the last chapter I started crying silently into the pages. On a train. In Italy. Surrounded by strangers. Which isn't so remarkable, except that a few minutes earlier I'd been laughing hysterically. Be warned.

1. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
2. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
3. Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
4. A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
5. Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong
6. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
7. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
8. The Lost Girl, by DH Lawrence
9. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
10. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte