The Dirty Dozen Well-loved Books

Sometimes my most favourite reads end up becoming the most dog-eared, page missing, binding frayed, poor slob of a book you have ever seen. It’s not the book’s fault. I simply loved them too much. I read the books once on a beach, several times in bed, once on a plane, once almost every year, outside the house, inside different rooms, and cover to cover so many times they can’t take much more. But l need my fix. I’ve taped them together, flattened them straight, collected the loose, fallen pages and lovingly stored them carefully in a cool, dark place — until the next time I rip them open and devour them whole. I can’t stop.

A good book is like an addiction. It doesn’t even have to be a well-written book. It’s just something that stuck in me and I can’t put it down. You know what I mean. The characters call to you so dearly they became your friends or the plot was so mind blowing thrilling or both at once. You fear those famous last words — the end — and so you don’t mind reading it all over again. Because it keeps giving you the same thrills and chills and comfort like the last time. Each time you read them you find a different favourite part, a different thrill, and you seem to learn something new every time. That’s the sign of a good, well-loved book.

The books that stay pristine (and dusty) on your shelf are not the one’s that thrust you into another world. It’s the ugly, torn up books you keep hidden by your bed because you keep coming back to them. You might have bought them new, been gifted them from a friend or rescued them from some flea market where they had a life of their own before you. I have these — my dirty dozen. I am sure you do as well. This list is not from my head (that would be an entirely different list). This list is from my heart. It’s my unabashed ‘this is what I love to read without trying to impress anyone’ list. These are the well-loved, guilty pleasure books I don’t show on my bookshelf because the books are in such a sorry state it’s embarrassing. These are the books in my nightstand. Here is my early year’s dirty dozen in no particular order:

• Papillon, Henri Charrière

• Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

• Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Hunter S. Thompson

• Shogun, James Clavell

• Killshot, Elmore Leonard

• No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy

• Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

• Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy

• Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

• The Great Brain, John D. Fitzgerald

What’s your dog-eared, guilty pleasure, well-loved list?