The Favorite Books of Laura Shea

This was my first introduction to Vonnegut in high school and remains one of my favorite books. Cat's Cradle follows the narrator's quest to write a book about what people were doing during the Hiroshima bombing, including the interesting people and ideas he discovers along the way.

It's science fiction, political (and religious) satire and philosophy all squished together with some humor. My favorite part is the religion of Bokonism. This is a book to read over and over. Enjoy!

Maybe the most famous graphic novel of all, and deservedly so. A watershed, Pulitzer-prize winner about Jewish life under the Nazis, moving from Poland to Queens, and based on the author's own family. The Jews are mice, the Nazi's are cats, and the book is maybe the most engaging book ever written about the horrors of the Holocaust and its aftermath among the European Jewish diaspora.

I reread this book on the beach last summer and felt as enthralled by it as the first time round. There are different views on this book, ranging from "It nearly finished me. It was like having an illness" (Robert Louis Stevenson, in admiration) to Peter Kemp of the Sunday Times, who dismisses the book as so much hysteria and hallucination. I loved it again, especially the mood swings and the writer’s craft to evoke these fantastic scenes of poverty and degeneration in St. Petersburg, and uses these as the background for a fantastic literary detective story.

I've never read this book but I've read Leon Uris' Mila 18 which is a fictional telling of a similar story. Based on how excellent that book was, and how much I trust Laura's taste in books, consider this one added to my "must-read" list.

I'm a huge fan of John Irving books and have read them all. "A Prayer for Owen Meany" is his best. From the first sentence, you're pulled into a classic, strange, bizarre story that is completely endearing.

This book is an amazing compilation of chapters that each read like their own short story; it's told like a memoir, but its technically fiction. The book is about Vietnam: the macabre images of death are intermingled with funny stories and also with stories that give a feeling of the monotonous life of a soldier in Vietnam. But it's also about war in general, about writing, and about the impossibility of truth. I recommend this book to anyone and everyone. It's a masterpiece and one of my favorite books of all time.