Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
J.K. ROWLING
This is definitely one of the first series I fell in love with. I don’t have a favorite book in the series, but I chose Deathly Hallows because it’s the only one I could find. I’ve definitely read all of them – a little too much.
When I first started reading Harry Potter, I was the same age as the characters, so I grew up with them. I’m a huge sci-fi or fun book fan, so I have re-read them many times. My mom and I used to go to the midnight book releases, so we could pre-order copies of the books. I’d get to Barnes and Noble at 10 o’clock, wait for the midnight release, get them and read them right away. My mom would generally read all of the books that I read. Not in a sense of like, helicopter parent. More that she wanted to experience what I as experiencing. We continued to do that with all different sci-fi series, and she continued to do it with my brothers. She’ll read all the same books that they do, if she finds them interesting. It gives kind of a common ground. She enjoys books just as much as we do. She’s a teacher, so it’s all kind of wrapped into that. There’s definitely the love of reading and escaping into those kinds of worlds.
The Handmaid’s Tale
MARGARET ATWOOD
This is an interesting one, because this is one that my fiancé recommended. We both really like to read, but we generally read very different things. I like fun, sci-fi, definitely a lot of escapism and mainly fiction, but Handmaid’s Tale is a little bit darker and deals with some literary themes. It is an interesting book, with some feminist themes and subtle sci-fi elements. For someone who reads a lot of Harry Potter, this is a different kind of thing. I like when people give me recommendations, because I think what people choose to read says a lot about them.
My fiancé got a writing degree from TCU so while we read different books, we also read differently; he marks up his books – he’ll highlight and underline and make notes. I am not that way. I have a hard time dog-earing a page, so we’re very different in how we handle books.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I got a little mad at the end. It’s a book that just ends without resolution, which is part of why it’s very raw and very real. It’s not a happy ending; you don’t know what happens and it kind of sucks. It’s just a very interesting one.
The Art of Looking Sideways
ALAN FLETCHER
This is a design book that I got in college. It’s not a book I needed for college, but I definitely was the girl who kept all of her books from college. I hoard them. The general point of the book is to look and think about things differently. It’s very visual and it has a fun layout. The cover has an unnamable font, and it’s actually difficult to open. You can open it however you want to and you can work with it however you want to.
There’s an element of the book that’s unlike normal routine, and the book teaches about unconventional approaches. Sometimes, we forget to play around with the way we think about things and the way we do things from a creative perspective. While I have not read the whole thing, I’ll pick it up, and read a part of it as a reminder to look at things a little bit differently.
Ender’s Game
ORSON SCOTT CARD
This is definitely sci-fi and I love it. I grabbed the first of the series, but I’ve read the next four or five. It gets a lot more sci-fi crazy as you move through the books. It blends technology, aliens and religion. This is one where they made the movie and I don’t think the movie gave it justice. It’s a classic sci-fi, breeze through it and read it again. It’s really enjoyable and a fun read.
Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
ED CATMULL
This one was on Charlie’s list, but it’s on my list because he let me borrow it as a recommendation. I haven’t started it yet, but I’m looking forward to reading it. He told us about different excerpts, but now I’ll be able to read it myself.
The Vegetable Garden
WERNER DRESSENDÖRFER
This one’s more of a pretty book, that’s why I chose it: to look at the pictures from a design perspective. This book kind of serves as art. We change the décor in our house a lot – we move paintings and pictures around, and we use things, like books, as décor. Between my fiancé and I, we have way too many books; multiple bookshelves, books piled in corners, but any that are really nice like this, we want to display for fun. They’re so nice to look through.
