Looking for something good to read?

Consider a title from Amazon’s list of 100 books to read in a lifetime. 

I’m not sure I totally agree with their methods or choices, but in Amazon’s defense they make zero claims that these are all important works of literature.

Perusing the list, I identified 35 that I’ve already read.

From that selection, some of my all time favorites appeared:

• “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides
• “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris (which had me choking with tears of laughter on a plane many years ago, much to the surprise of my seatmates)
• “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen (my intro to Franzen, but I’d argue that “Freedom” was on par or better than this one)

There were also four transformative works that I read in college:

• “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt (like nothing else, a book that blew me away)
• “The World According to Garp” by John Irving (always wrestling, so much wrestling with him)
• “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe
• “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales” by Oliver Sacks (a book that fostered my yearning to become a physician)

And two I can’t wait to get to:

• “Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen,” by Christopher McDougall
• “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America,” by Erik Larson (one that is on my iPad already and just waiting for a long flight to be opened)

Happy reading.