I'm just like everyone else who scrolls through social media, I watch videos. If I click an an article and it's long, I tend to skim over it quickly and them return to my search for funny memes and videos.

But lately, in my quest to simplify and slow downy lifestyle, I have ventured back into my love of reading. My mom was an avid reader who would even read a book over and over again because she enjoyed the descriptive prose the transported her into amazing tomes and spaces though her vivid imagination. She would read to me and my siblings as a child.  She made the characters come to life with her expression and passion for the written word. I read to my own children very much the same way.

Life got busy though, too busy. It had been years since I picked up an actual book. Soon after my mom passed away, while going through some of her things, I came across a couple of books about past lives and the after life. Being a book mom had read while preparing herself for death, I was intrigued to read them too.

The book gave me peace during a time of extreme loss and sorrow. It was as if mom and I were holding hands and reading a book together. In fact, it brought me to the epiphany that I needed to slow down, take the time and start reading again. So I did.

I first had to take some time to remember what I liked to read by remembering what I had read and enjoyed in the past. Once I did, it was like riding a bike, except for the take the time part. I still struggle with that one.

Here is a list of my fifteen of the books that I will never forget and that impacted my heart and mind with thought and imagination. Maybe, they will spark something inside the reader trapped inside you too. All of them are easy reads, but wonderfully written. Some fiction, some non-fiction.

  1. Lord of the Flies - J.R.R. Tolkien
  2. Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
  3. Clan of the Cave Bear (a thick book, but brilliantly written)
  4. Jurassic Park (I read the book long before the movie and, yes, believe it or not, the book is better. After reading JP, I read all of his books mixing real science and fiction) - Micheal Creighton
  5. The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestory (I'm a nerd) - Bryan Sykes
  6. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee
  7. Streetcar Named Desire (the play) - Tennessee Williams
  8. Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into The Afterlife (My mom's book from the above story) - Eben Alexander
  9. Many Lives, Many Masters (the second of my mom's books) - Brian Weiss
  10. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
  11. Macbeth - Shakespeare
  12. The Politics of Jesus (read it in college as a required read in a history class, never forgot it) - John Howard Yoder
  13. 1984 - George Orwell
  14. Harry Potter (All of the books) - J.K. Rowling
  15. Slaughter House Five - Kurt Vonnegut

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