What are you doing in front of the computer?!?  Go away! Scram!! GO READ!!! I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that these will keep you plenty entertained for a while.  A side-note before you dive in: There are a few obvious modern classics that I didn’t add…like Lord of the Rings.  If you haven’t read that, please do.  So I just put some that I thought maybe you haven’t read; these are super-good.  Read on…

1) Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice.  This is one of the best books I’ve ever read.  If you look for character depth, look no further than Louis in Rice’s classic vampire tale.  It’s not all blood and gore though…Louis’s reflections on his mortality or, more precisely, lack thereof, and his struggles with his nature really make you feel for him.  And Lestat is as annoying and evil a villain as one could wish for…this book is by turns scary, beautiful and extremely moving.  Prepare to be sucked in and to be thinking about it for a week when it’s over…

2) The Devil and Miss Prym, by Paulo Coelho.  Ah, you’ve got to love a book that’s supposed to be philosophical but that makes you read like a page-turner.  And you WILL be sucked into the pages of this one…how’s this for a plot: A mysterious man comes to a small, idyllic mountain village carrying nothing but a notebook and eleven gold bars.  Yeah, I’d call that a good opening.  What do you think will happen? I’m not telling…get ready for a slam-bang finish on this one. 

3) Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.  If you haven’t already read this for some pupose or another, get thee to a bookstore STAT!! This is not just a good book, but a modern classic.  However, for some odd reason, whenever I mention it to people, they never know what I’m talking about, which is why I’ve included it.  The story stars Guy Montag, a fireman in the future.  Their job is no longer to put out fires, but to set them…to books and the houses they were hidden in.  Welcome to Guy’s world, where thought, independance and individuality are stamped down and censored.  Guy goes along, not altogether happily, with the situation, until one day when he meets Clarisse…oh WOW.  I love this book.  Please read it!! I promise you won’t be disappointed…

4) Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke.  If you like good fantasy, then this is the one for you.  It took Clarke ten years to finish this behemoth of a first novel, and it was worth it.  It is, besides Lord of the Rings, the most complete, sophisticated and beautiful fantasy I’ve read.  Every legend, term, and tale that she invents for the story are meticulously and entertainingly explained in footnotes.  So there are no holes.  If you find a hole in the story, do let me know, because in it’s 782 pages, I couldn’t find a single forced moment, or a single bald spot in the richly crafted plot.  Don’t start this late at night.  Leave yourself plenty of time.  In fact, brew yourself some coffee or a gigantic cup of tea, get a pile of cookies, and settle down by the fire for a couple hours…

5) The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger.  I included this one because, even though it’s a modern classic, I wasn’t sure, thanks to our marvellous (read: disgusting) book-banning system, how many people hadn’t actually read it because it was banned at their high school.  So now I’m telling you that this book has one of the most compelling narrators ever in Holden.  I’m not giving away the plot, but I recently picked it up again to check some facts and I immediately started reading as soon as I opened the book.  Great plot, amazing character…what more could you want? 

Finally, there are a couple little nuggets of literary pleasure that I would like to recommend, even though they didn’t make the ”list of five”.  If you like auto-biographies and are looking for something different, look no furthur than The Mutt  by Rodney Mullen.  He is one of the most famous and talented skateboarders ever, and this book is the story of his passion for the sport and how that love propelled him through hard times to the position he enjoys today.  Christopher Moore’s book, Coyote Blue, is a hilarious dark comedy about Samson Hunts alone, aka Samuel Hunter, a young man on the run from his past and pretending to be someone else.  He confines himself in a kind of soul-numbing hum-drum life until a trickster from his past comes back…needless to say, all hell breaks loose.  Now go sit outside, but be sure to bring plenty of provisions…with these reads, you’ll be there awhile!