I am a huge book lover. I started reading when I was around 4 or 5 years old. My favorite place to spend time as a child was our local Borders, where I would play and read and explore with my dad. We would spend hours in there. I would pick out books and he would read them to me or I would read them. We often met friends there and the employees knew us. It was such a safe and nurturing space, and I credit that store, as well as my dad, with fostering the love of books I have today.

In the last few years, I haven’t been reading as much as I would like to. But it’s still one of my dearest hobbies, and one that brings me the most joy and peace. I’d like to share with all of you a few books that changed my life.

1. "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis

The Narnia series was one of the first I really read on my own. I really couldn’t get into the books at the time I first cracked them open at the age of 8. My dad challenged me to read “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” before the movie came out, which I didn’t do. He read all seven of them before the movie came out. It wasn’t until two years later that I really got into those books. I think I felt a connection with my dad reading them, but I was also a little older and a little more equipped to understand Lewis’s writing style. The books are absolutely magical. They mainly follow the Pevensie children as they make their way to and from Narnia, with other books without them in between. There are very strong Christian motifs in the book, and they really make you sit down and consider your life and how your living it.

2. "Anne of Green Gables" by L.M. Montgomery

"Anne of Green Gables" is up there as one of my all-time favorite books. It follows the story of Anne Shirley, an orphan who is accidentally sent to a family that asked for a boy. The brother and sister that end up receiving her are at a loss with what to do with this capricious, vibrant young girl that has fallen into their laps and is so desperately searching for love and family. "Anne of Green Gables" is a series that follows the life of Anne through her youth, college, marriage and the family she starts. Anne is probably my favorite protagonist of all time and one I’ve always adored. She is just so full of love and joy and sees the world at its most beautiful, something I think everyone should do a little more of.

3. "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins (also, "Gregor the Overlander" by Suzanne Collins)

Suzanne Collins is amazing, that’s it. I’m going to be “that guy,” but I read "The Hunger Games" three months after the first book was released before it became the phenomenon it is today. I went to three midnight premiers for the movies, and have just been a huge fan ever since I cracked open the book for the first time. I finished the two sequels the days they came out. Words cannot describe how much I love these books. Collins’s world building is indescribable. She creates a futuristic society that is kind of scarily believable, especially with all the conflict going on today. I don’t think the U.S. is going to become Panem, but scary things are happening, and it’s always beneficial to read a book like this to get a different perspective on things. It’s another book with a strong female character, something I really appreciate as a young female reader.

Collins’s other series is just as good as “The Hunger Games,” if not better. It’s more for a middle-school audience, but its messages are so powerful that every reader could get something out of it. It’s about a boy named Gregor who follows his sister down a hole into this underground world (I haven’t read these in years, so my memory’s a bit foggy on specifics). There he finds out he’s part of a prophecy and that there’s a war between these underground creatures, who are made up of people, rats, mice and bats, I believe. There are strong allusions to the Holocaust in this story, and it draws on how terrible people can be to each other because of things they can’t control.

4. "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusack

This is the first book that made me cry. It’s about a young girl who is sent to live with another family during World War II after her brother’s death. She experiences the horrors of the Nazi regime while trying to keep alive her childhood. The family she is staying with takes in and hides a Jewish man, something that is basically a death sentence for all if found out. She is taught to read in secret by her foster father, something strictly against the law, and in that she finds the power of words. It’s a tragically beautiful story, narrated by Death himself, but one that is so beautiful and so powerful that I don’t think I could read it again. The ending absolutely broke me.

5. "The Raven Cycle" by Maggie Stiefvater

This series renewed my love of reading. I had been having trouble finding books I enjoyed in high school when I picked up this book. The world Stiefvater builds out of the Virginia countryside is amazing and magical in the way nature is magical. It’s a story about a girl named Blue who grew up in a female-run household of psychics, but she has no ability herself. Instead, she amplifies their powers. She runs into the Raven Boys, a group from the preppy all-boys school who she has always sworn to stay away from. One of them, Gansey (aka the love of my life), is searching for a lost Welsh king who will grant whoever finds him one wish. He has been hunting for years, and is finally getting close. But the catch is, Gansey is supposed to die in the next year (that’s not a spoiler, you find out in the first page and I think in the description on the back of the book). Blue is another great protagonist, and Stiefvater’s prose is absolutely breathtaking.

6. "Harry Potter" by J.K. Rowling

Everyone gets this. I don’t even need to write anything about Harry Potter, because it’s all been said before.

These are only a few, and I could honestly go on forever. So if you need a good read, check out some of these books and let me know what you think! I’m very passionate about all of them and will gladly talk about them for hours.