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Favorite Books of All Time

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Reading has always been one of my favorite hobbies.  Getting lost in a good book is one of my favorite ways to escape.  Here are some of my favorite books of all time!

My book club

I love to read, I have since I was a little girl.  I remember getting The Babysitter’s Club books in the mail and devouring them in just a day or two.  Now that I’m older, and have a family of my own, I don’t have near the time I used to to read but I still try to read about a book a month.  I have been in a book club for the last 9 years.

Knowing I am meeting my book club girls means I try really hard (and sometimes fail… ok, sometimes I don’t even open the book) to read the book that month.  We take turns choosing our pick and it’s always a surprise to find out what the next pick is when we get together.  It is one of my favorite nights out every month!  I love the girls in my book club, and it’s such a blessing to have a group of women to chat about life and motherhood, with a side of books, each month.

Room full of books on a shelf with a white couch and a woman looking for a bookSince I love books so much, I thought I’d share some of my all-time favorites with you.  I am not the best at recalling every detail of the story, in all honesty I’m terrible at that, but I rate my books on Goodreads as soon as I’m done so I can at least remember if I liked it or not.  Am I the only one that doesn’t remember all the details about the books?  Or do I just have an awful memory?

One of my goals for 2018 is to read more.  I want to put my phone away earlier every night and open a book.  There is nothing better than getting lost in a story, and I LOVE finishing a book that has captivated me for days (or weeks… seriously, it usually takes me weeks to finish it).

I am so excited to share some of my all-time favorite books with you, and make sure to read to the end because I’m sharing a few books I’m excited to read in the New Year!  This list is compiled from the last several years, not just this past year so there are some oldies but goodies here!

  1. It Was Me All Along by Andie Mitchell– A heartbreakingly honest, endearing memoir of incredible weight loss by a young food blogger who battles body image issues and overcomes food addiction to find self-acceptance.

  2. The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman-After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

  3. The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin- When Anne Morrow, a shy college senior with hidden literary aspirations, travels to Mexico City to spend Christmas with her family, she meets Colonel Charles Lindbergh, fresh off his celebrated 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic. Enthralled by Charles’s assurance and fame, Anne is certain the aviator has scarcely noticed her. But she is wrong. Charles sees in Anne a kindred spirit, a fellow adventurer, and her world will be changed forever.The two marry in a headline-making wedding. In the years that follow, Anne becomes the first licensed female glider pilot in the United States. But despite this and other major achievements, she is viewed merely as the aviator’s wife. The fairy-tale life she once longed for will bring heartbreak and hardships, ultimately pushing her to reconcile her need for love and her desire for independence, and to embrace, at last, life’s infinite possibilities for change and happiness.

  4. Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline- Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to “aging out” out of the foster care system. A community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse.  As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be.A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.  Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life—answers that will ultimately free them both.

  5. The Paris Wife by Paula McClain- A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures the love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.
  6. Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain by Portia de Rossi- In this groundbreaking memoir, Portia de Rossi reveals the pain and illness that haunted her for decades, from the time she was a twelve-year-old girl working as a model in Australia, through her early rise to fame as a cast member of the hit television show Ally McBeal. All the while terrified that the truth of her sexuality would be exposed in the tabloids, Portia alternately starved herself and binged, putting her life in danger and concealing from herself and everyone around her the seriousness of her illness.

    She describes the elaborate rituals around food that came to dominate hours of every day and explores the pivotal moments of her childhood that set her on the road to illness. She reveals the heartache and fear that accompany a life lived in the closet, a sense of isolation that was only magnified by her unrelenting desire to be ever thinner, ever more in control of her body and the number of calories she consumed and spent.From her lowest point, Portia began the painful climb back to a life of health and honesty, falling in love and marrying Ellen DeGeneres and emerging as an outspoken and articulate advocate for gay rights and women’s health issues. In this remarkable and landmark book, she has given the world a story that inspires hope and nourishes the spirit.

  7. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein- A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope–a captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life . . . as only a dog could tell it.

  8. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey-At the age of 23, James Frey woke up on a plane to find his front teeth knocked out and his nose broken. He had no idea where the plane was headed nor any recollection of the past two weeks.An alcoholic for ten years and a crack addict for three, he checked into a treatment facility shortly after landing. There he was told he could either stop using or die before he reached age 24. This is Frey’s acclaimed account of his six weeks in rehab.

  9. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls-The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family.The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.
    The Glass Castle is truly astonishing—a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.

     

  10. She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb- In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years.Meet Dolores Price. She’s 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she’s determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.

  11. Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers- A powerful retelling of the story of Gomer and Hosea, Redeeming Love is a life-changing story of God’s unconditional, redemptive, all-consuming love.

  12. In The Woods by Tana French- (Note:  I love ALL of Tana French’s novels… I just picked one to share but read them all cause they are awesome!)  As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.Richly atmospheric and stunning in its complexity, In the Woods is utterly convincing and surprising to the end.

  13. It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover– Sometimes it is the one who loves you who hurts you the most.
    Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up—she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true. Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt.

     

    Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan—her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.

  14. Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter- (Note: This book scared the crap out of me.  If you don’t like that… don’t read it!) Sisters. Strangers. Survivors.More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia’s teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet.

    But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss—a devastating wound that’s cruelly ripped open when Claire’s husband is killed.The disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it.

  15. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins- Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

    And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes to the police. But is she really as unreliable as they say? Soon she is deeply entangled not only in the investigation but in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

  16. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah- With courage, grace, and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war.The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France―a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

  17. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng- “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.

    A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

  18. The Help by Kathryn Stockett- Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who’s always taken orders quietly, but lately she’s unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college.She’s full of ambition, but without a husband, she’s considered a failure. Together, these seemingly different women join together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town…

  19. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn- On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge.

    Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

  20. One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp- What does the Christ-life really look like when your days are gritty, long–and sometimes even dark? How is God even here?’ In One Thousand Gifts, Ann invites you to embrace everyday blessings and embark on the transformative spiritual discipline of chronicling God’s gifts. It’s only in this expressing of gratitude for the life we already have, we discover the life we’ve always wanted…a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others.We come to feel and know the impossible right down in our bones: we are wildly loved–by God.

    Let Ann’s beautiful, heart-aching stories of the everyday give you a way of seeing that opens your eyes to ordinary amazing grace, a way of being present to God that makes you deeply happy, and a way of living that is finally fully alive. Come live the best dare of all!

As you can see, I like a little bit of everything.  I love self help books but I can get drawn into a murder mystery that will scare the daylights out of me.  Autobiographies tend to be the type of books I can’t put down.  I devour them.  I love learning about peoples lives and their story and how they became who they are.  These are books I’ve read over the years, some of them I haven’t read in over a decade… but they are still on my favorites list.

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Reading has always been one of my favorite hobbies.  Getting lost in a good book is one of my favorite ways to escape.  Here are some of my favorite books of all time! #beautifullybrokenjourney #bookrecommendations #favoritebooks #books

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13 Comments

  1. I love to read as well ana have read the almost all the books you did this year. I also love to get lost in a book ana it also helps me to not think about food.
    I’m on Goodreads as well. What is username and i’ll Look you up and we can be Goodread book buddies.
    Happy Reading!

  2. HI Amy

    I love following you on Instagram your story has really inspired and helped me. I just ready your book list and a lot of these books I have loved myself. One of my favorites was the Shoemakers wife by Adriana Trigiani. If you have not read it yet, it might be one that you enjoy.
    Happy reading
    Nathalie

  3. I’ve just found Jen Hatmaker and just read “For the Love” which I loved and am now reading “Of Mess & Moxie”. My favorite fiction book is “Gap Creek” by Robert Morgan. I also loved “Firefly Lane” by Kristin Hannah, “The Five Fortunes” by Beth Gutcheon is another lighthearted favorite and lastly “We Were Liars” by E. Lockhart. Just a few suggestions…I’ve read several of your favorites and will be tagging the others as I’m always looking for suggestions! Thanks ?

  4. Love this post, Amy! She’s come undone, A Million Little Pieces, and It was me all along are some of my ALL time favorite books. Gone Girl was one of the last books I read and it still leaves me feelin’ “off” when I think about it! One of my main goals this year is to get back into reading because I really haven’t gotten past the first chapter of a book since having lil Pep. So looking forward to checking out some of the books on this list and hoping to feed my love for reading once again!

    1. Hey Star, I started listening to audiobooks in January and it’s been so helpful! I dowloaded the Axis 360 app and connected it to my library, check it out! You could listen while cooking!!

  5. Hi Amy! I just found your blog today and I found you to be very sweet, sincere and inspiring. I’m excited to be following you. I made a list of some of your favorite books and I am anxious to start reading again once I finish up with my yoga teacher training (at the moment my brain can’t hold anymore) Have you read The Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle? That was my last read and the best book I’ve read in a long time.
    God Bless you,
    Co Shy

  6. Love your recommendations. Have read many if the same. I really want to read Orphan Train next has my grandmother rode the irphan train and was adopted at one of the stops.

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