1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky*
2. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger*
3. Message in a Bottle - Nicholas Sparks
4. The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
5. Dear John - Nicholas Sparks
6. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins*
7. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins 
8. The Last Song - Nicholas Sparks
9. Hush, Hush - Becca Fitzpatrick 
10. Only Son - Kevin O’Brien 
11. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas - Agatha Christie 
12. The Rescue - Nicholas Sparks 
13. Cat Among The Pigeons - Agatha Christie 
14. Songs of the Humpback Whale - Jodi Picoult
15. The Runaway Jury - John Grisham 
16. Looking For Alaska - John Green*
17. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
18. P.S I Love You - Cecelia Ahern 
19. Murder At Hazelmoor - Agatha Christie
20. The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks
21. Eleven Minutes - Paulo Coelho
22. The Valkyries - Paulo Coelho
23. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
24. The Secret - Rhona Byrne
25. The Hollow - Agatha Christie
26. Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Jeff Kinney
27. Specimen Days - Michael Cunningham
28. Fall On Your Knees - Ann Marie MacDonald
29. A Million Little Pieces - James Frey*

Books that I’m currently reading and that might make the cut

1. Breathing Lessons - Anne Tyler
2. King Dork - Frank Portman
3. The Winner Stands Alone - Paulo Coelho
4. The Partner - John Grisham

*Books that made my year

The list is kinda light, I promise to read more meaty books next year. What are yours?

1. You have a nagging feeling that you were a termite during your previous life, because you don’t just glance or flip through books; you “devour” them.
2. Instead of going to the gym to lift weights, you use the heaviest volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica to tone the muscles in your arms.
3. You passionately support the bookmark industry by buying a new design every time you buy a new book.
4. You frequent the library and bookstore as often as shopaholics raid high-end boutiques. Can you say Barnes and Noble, National Bookstore, Fully Booked, Powerbooks?
5. You can put the soap opera fanatic to shame, because you’ve experienced an array of emotional responses just by reading your favorite novels.
6. You savor the pleasant smell of a new book’s pages.
7. You firmly believe that books had instant replays even before home theater equipment was invented.
8. You wish they had book launchings during Shakespeare’s time. You’d love to have your copy of “Romeo and Juliet” signed by the great English bard!
9. You actually looked forward to writing book reports in your literature classes.
10. You feverishly try to learn building a glass-covered bookcase.

As I thought about the answer to this question, I had to take a trip to memory lane to visit my responses to some of the books that I considered good books. Each person, of course, has a different appreciation of what to consider a “good book”.

• To some it means simply that they did not regret reading the book.
• A book can also be good because of how believable the book’s world is, of how well an author is able to immerse the reader into the characters’ worlds.
• For others, it is because of the book’s content and how well the author was able to explore an unfamiliar (or familiar) topic or issue.
• For some people, however, it has more to do with the way a book makes them feel, how well it captures an emotion or mood, or how well it creates specific moods and emotions.
• To another subset of people, it is a book that challenges their hearts or minds.
• Moreover, a good book can be such because it personally educates readers on their lives, as experienced through others, or helps them to see things in a different light.

There are various reasons that account for a book’s quality. Ultimately, however, I think a book is a gem when it achieves a multifaceted level of beauty and purpose. A good book is rarely good for just one reason. 

(Source: http)

I think it’s high time for me to help someone embrace the beauty of literature.

Apparently the classmate/friend that I was talking about on this post, the one whom I forced to read and finish The Perks of Being a Wallflower in one sitting will be my victim.

After all, she was disappointed when I didn’t bring any book to read yesterday. So this morning, I brought my copy of Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho, I thought she might like it since, she was devastated by Charlie’s unpreparedness towards sex. Eleven Minutes is about the art of love(making), the true thing. She’ll definitely finish it in a blink or two.

And I was right! She was on page 112 by lunchtime. She’ll be good.

If you were there, you’ll see both us reading, sitting, shoulder to shoulder. I was reading The Winner Stands Alone by the same author.

Before our afternoon class started, I proposed that I’ll let her read a book for the whole year. One book at a time.

She said yes.