Books: The Greatest Things since Sliced Bread

I use it to make sandwiches and french toast all the time. But if a person could live off books alone, I would have to give up those lovely PB&J's.

Books are important: they tell stories; they share experiences; they give us knowledge. Books teach us about the world we live in, the people who inhabit it, the way our minds and bodies work. Books give us pleasure, emotions, thoughts, ideas. Yet there are those who claim they do not like books because, "They are a waste of time."

... You're kidding me, right?

Schools use books. Doctors use books. Marketers use books. Fashion artists use books. Social workers use books. Everyone uses books. Without books, where would we be? A television is nice and all, but it can't tell you how to spell hypochondriac or antidisestablishmentarianism or pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. ... Well, it could, but it'd have to repeat it several times because without books, there would be no written word, and thus, you'd have to take about five guesses to spell the medical terminology for Black Lung Disease. Then again, since there would be no written word, you wouldn't have to worry about spelling it. Heck, without the written word, we'd be reduced to grunts and physical gestures in order to get a simple message of "Dude, I have to pee." across to your buddy while in a bar you've never visited before.

Books are everything. For me, they're an escape from reality, a life story I can follow to get away from my own for a little while. While talking with my friends Christoph Reilly, Misha and Spryte, they've made me realize that there aren't a lot of hubs about good books worth reading. So I've compiled a list of some of my favorite books I believe everyone should read, and if you do read them and discover they really are good books, you just might come to the conclusion that yes, indeed, books ARE the greatest thing since sliced bread!

Pardon me while I act my age...

OH MY GOD, THESE HAVE GOT TO BE THE GREATEST YOUNG ADULT/ADULT ROMANCE FICTION NOVELS ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH!

*coughs* Alrighty, moving on.

The Twilightsaga follows the first person POV (point of view) of Isabella Swan. Bella is a rather socially awkward girl of 17 who moves from Phoenix, Arizona to Forks, Washington after her mother gets remarried. She lives with her father, Charlie, in the house she was born in and her mother ran away from when she was an infant. There she meets the Cullens, a family of vampires, and falls in love with the youngest boy named Edward. Their romance takes them along numerous twists and turns and physical boundaries, including other vampires, best friends turned werewolves, and finally, a family of their own with a half-vampire daughter named Renesmee. The nice thing is, all of these crazy events are spread out within a 2 year period, so they don't give you the feeling of a super-fast roller coaster that suddenly comes to a dead halt when it's done, but instead spreads the fast bits out with a few slower, calmer moments inbetween, with a beautiful ending that makes you cry for more.

The books pull your heartstrings and twist them until you can't put it down, and when you finally do, you discover you've read an entire novel and it is now 4 in the morning and you have to go to school in 3 hours. Trust me when I say that's EXTREMELY annoying. But if you have more self control than me, and would enjoy a new look at the vampire/human romance possibility, I highly suggest the Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyer.

Since this book was made into a movie, a lot of people have taken notice of it. At the same time, a lot of people only saw the movie, and didn't read the book, and thus, they don't know the entire story. So when I go and talk to these people, I tend to yell at them for being ignorant illiterate idiots and tell them that if they do not read the book before getting into a movie debate with me again, I will have to gnaw their faces off then rip out their teeth with a spork.

... What? I'm not allowed to have violent thoughts?

Alright, so that wasn't entirely true. I do get a little irked when I talk to people about books-turned-movies and those people haven't even read the book, but I'm not about to get all physical on their butts. Really, I'm quite the pacifist.

Back to Stardust, before I creep you out any more! ^_^

Stardust is the story of Tristran Thorn, who wanders beyond the wall in the little town of Wall to find a fallen star for his true love, only to discover that, on the other side of that wall is the land of Faerie (though it's called Stormhold in the movie, which is actually the name of a part of Faerie and the large castle that holds its ruling family). Here he finds that his star is actually a young girl named Yvaine who was hit by a large jewel necklace. This necklace is quite essential to the plot, but you don't realize that until the end. The necklace belongs to the King of Stormhold (aren't you glad I mentioned this earlier?), who died after throwing it into the sky. His six sons (actually seven, though one was killed but is now a ghost) are then forced to track the necklace AND kill off each other in order to become king. Not only that, but a trio of witches called the Lilim send their sister out to retrieve the star's heart, for it will keep them immortal and return their youthful beauty to their withering bodies.

Now, I would tell you more, but it would completely ruin the story for you, and that would seriously make me sad. I guess you'll just have to go and read Stardust, by Neil Gaiman, for yourself! I promise it's a book worth reading over and over again, and if, for any reason, you don't believe me, I will buy your copy from you. Seriously.

I will warn you now, if you're not into following different POV's and perspectives, these are not the books for you. But if you don't mind reading the ramblings of an extremely sarcastic djinn and following the roller coaster ride story of a young boy trying to become a man in a magician's world, and a rebellious girl who just wants equality, then you really should pick these up.

The world is ruled by the English, which is ruled by the magician Magistrate. Magicians call on djinn (pronounced gin) to perform magical tasks and feats for them in order to control the "commoners" who cannot see them, giving in to the belief that the magicians are the ones doing the magic. Apprentices are given up at the age of 4 or 5 to a magician family (since the families cannot have children of their own due to the problem of feuding magical families) who then trains the boy or girl to become a magician themselves.

Nathaniel is an extremely smart boy, and is well aware of his gifted abilities. In an attempt to prove himself, he summons Bartimaeus, a djinn of the third level (there are five levels, all explained in the book). What Nathaniel doesn't expect is Bartimaeus's giant mouth and his annoying way of getting under Nat's skin. As the story progresses, their relationship grows, wanes, and grows again. Through a series of severely life-altering events, they run into a girl named Kitty, a member of the Resistance; an organization bent on destroying the Magician's Rule of the modern world and establishing a shared rule with the commoners, who are basically used as cattle. They uncover a huge conspiracy to overthrow the Prime Minister, are nearly killed several times, and battle their way through mischevious and murderous djinn, old nemises, and two-faced friends.

These books make me laugh every time I read them, and the final ending nearly brings me to tears. I highly recommend The Bartimaeus Trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud, to anyone who liked the Harry Potter books or anything by Diana Wynne Jones.

If you haven't heard of Wicked, you lead a very sheltered life, and I seriously pity you.

Wicked has become one of today's most popular books, and has been made into a best-selling musical that is still circulating the nation's greatest stages. And for good reason; the book pwns!

Remember The Wizard of Oz? ... Okay, seriously, who hasn't seen the movie? Dorothy flies through a tornado and lands in Oz, and to get back home, she has to confront the Wizard and kill the Wicked Witch of the West. Well, folks, Gregory Maguire decided he'd give that green Witch her own version of how things went down in Oz-town.

Wicked is the full life story of the Wicked Witch of the West. Elphaba was born green. Her father was a Munchkin minister, and her mother was a stay-at-home mother who ended up drinking herself silly because she couldn't handle her daughter's disformity. She goes to school, becomes enemies with Galinda, an uptown snooty prep of a girl from the northern lands of Oz, then later establishes a friendship with the polar opposite personality that is Galinda. Galinda later changes her name to Glinda after the tragic death of an Animal professor who couldn't pronounce her name right, no matter how many times she corrected him. They later go to the Wizard in hopes of working with him. Elphaba discovers what the Wizard has been doing in the land of Oz, and is not exactly happy with what she finds. She then decides to become an outcast and a rebel, while Glinda stays on the straight and narrow path of life, serving the Wizard. Elphaba becomes romantically involved with a former classmate named Fiero, a prince from the west who's in an arranged marriage. When their romance is discovered, Fiero is persecuted, and in an attempt to save him from death, Elphaba casts a spell on him, though she doesn't entirely know what she's doing. Elphaba's sister, Nessa Rose, ends up becoming the governer of Munchkinland, and rules with a very tight fist. She winds up casting a spell on a boy she fell in love with because he didn't love her, and in her rage, she'd nearly killed him herself. At the end of the book, Elphaba doesn't actually die by the hand of Dorothy, but stages her death to escape the Wizard's constant scrutiny and death threats, even after his horrible secret is revealed to her and she discovers where she truly came from.

The best part about Wicked is that there's a sequal, called Son of a Witch. I only had the chance to read it once, sadly, since my copy was stolen from me when I lent it to a fellow castmember in a play I was in. I personally wasn't a ginormous fan of it, but I will say I did enjoy it.

Whether or not you're into twists on our favorite fairy tales and classic stories, you're bound to love Wicked, by Gregory Maguire, for it's eccentric view of our favorite land over the rainbow.

Another must-have-on-your-bookshelf series. For a while, these books were actually banned from schools, along with the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, because some parents believed they would "corrupt" their children. Why they thought that is beyond me; I mean, seriously, they're a work of fiction. Unless you're kid's a true critical thinker (which our public education system seems to think isn't a necessary thing for our children to be), he's not going to take the books for anything above face value. And at face value, they are way too hard to put down because the story is so enthralling you can't help but be sucked up into Narnia and keep going back for more adventures.

The Chronicles of Narnia is a very hard series to explain, since there are seven books in all, and they're not all the same. My best suggestion is to go to the Wikipedia page (found here) and read about them yourself. There is no way I can even begin to divulge the amount of information Wikipedia has lovingly supplied for you.

The most predominant Human characters in the Narnia books are the Pevensie children: Peter, the oldest and head of the children; Susan, the second oldest and motherly one; Edmund, the second youngest and trouble-maker; and Lucy, the youngest and most naive/sweet. They are joined by their cousin, Eustace Scrubb, and his classmate, Jill Pole. Preceding these six are the two children who witnessed the birth of Narnia, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, along with Digory's uncle, the eccentricly mad scientist who forced Digory and Polly into another dimension that lead to even more dimensions.

Depending on how you like to read series books, you can either follow Narnia's stories in chronological Narnia order or chronological publishing order, both of which I will list here.

1. The Magician's Nephew
2. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
3. The Horse and His Boy
4. Prince Caspian
5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
6. The Silver Chair
7. The Last Battle

You can read them in any order you please, though I personally prefer the Chrono-Narnia order to the Chrono-Published order, just because I like chronology to fit right in the story I'm reading. I'm kind of crazy OCD that way.

These books are believed to have Christian foundations, which is great, fine and dandy to those who choose to believe that. C. S. Lewis himself stated that he didn't intentionally write the books to fit in a Christian theme, but that they just sort of fell into that category after he wrote them. Whether you get into Narnia for the Christian benefits or the amazing story lines and plots, The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis is quite literally the absolute must-have for any human being that gives a darn about reading. Period.

Oh, trust me, I have a TON of amazing books I could list here. But I feel this smaller tidbit of my library will do for now. I don't want to go and overload your brains or anything. That wouldn't be very nice of me.

Then again, neither is what I just said. ^_^ Ah well! I sincerely hope you take the time to read all of these beautiful works of literature, and share with me your experiences in them. Maybe you've got some great books I should read! That would be lovely; my already overflowing bookshelves need more friends!

... Okay, seriously, I need to go book shopping again. I've read everytihng I own, and could go for some new material. *makes a sad puppy-eyed face* So please, throw out your suggestions! Toss me your lines! Help my boredom be eased! I beg of you!

Oh, one last thing; don't read for really long-ass periods of time. It will mess with your eyeballs so bad, you'll have trouble seeing 10 feet in front of your face. On that note, happy reading, and don't run into any walls!