Just read a book while on vacation--Border Songs by Jamie Lynch. Very nice. Lots of lovely images, well developed characters. The kind of book I aspire to writing...

However, the five best reads, the books that have stuck with me and that I return to are:

I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb;
Good Poems for Hard Times by Garrison Keillor;
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez;
Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides;
and either The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls, The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta, Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet, or Maus, a graphic novel by Art Speigelman.

Thoughts without a thinker by Mark Epstein, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (which I bought two years ago and couldn't get into but now I'm liking), and I'm ashamed to admit, Summer Sisters by Judy Blume (which I'm not thrilled about, but curious as its actually an adult novel not ya)

Question:

What book titles do you currently have piled next to your bed?

Favorite book of all time: The Once and Future King, TH White
other favorites come and go, but this one I always return to.
Second favorite book of all time: Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda