Everyone knows a few "good books."

And by "good books" they mean the kind of books that make you cry, the ones that make you sit up in bed late at night and furiously write twelve pages in your journal, trying to get everything down before you forget what you've realized.

It's the type of writing that jolts you up from its alluring pages in awe as you try to really contemplate the sentences you just read. And it's how these semi-random arrangements of print type on a page can actually shake your world to the very core of its existence and force you to open your mind to new ideas that had simply never occurred to you before.

And these "good books" are in a special club in my heart, a place that is, by principle, difficult to get into, yet effortless to remain a part of. If someone shares with me a book that has rewoven the very fabric of their soul, who am I to ask what its relevance is to my life?

I have no authority to deem what books are life-changing for all people. I can only attempt to contribute my own selection of titles that when spoken aloud create a small flutter of excitement in my heart, even though to another person they might simply be a cluster of words in an efficient and precise monotone.

But these titles and stories each carry with them a separate story, about the moments that I personally have shared with them. This includes the time I bought a brand new book, read it in three hours, and returned it the next day with the well worn retail-pest's Classic claim that it simply didn't suit me. Or maybe even the time it took me an entire month of listening in the summer to stagger through a hilarious audiobook that brightened my drab life immeasurably. Or that one book that I adored so much I re-read it five times in a row and everyone thought I was still on the first go-around because it never left my hand.

Whatever my favorite books may mean to other people, I know I will always have the haven of those pages to go back to whenever I need them. It's a great comfort, isn't it? That there is definitely at least one ever-reliable friend in the world who will be there for you at any hour of the day or night, for any possible reason, with every possible solution to your life's worries?

And so, when people ask me why I read, I tell them with extraordinary articulation: "...uhh, because I like it??"