I've always been a lover of literacy. Perhaps it was because once during elementary school my parents told me that they "would never refuse to buy me a book." So, I took that to extremes and fell completely into as many books as I could find interesting and persuade my parents to order/buy for me at a time. This deep rooted love for a new book - a new story, continued well beyond grade school though. I can remember countless times where I'd hammer out a new book in a night and plenty of car rides home from the bookstore where my father would get frustrated because I'd start reading my new novel before we even hit the road.

As I've gotten older, I haven't lost my love for consuming a good book or the innate desire to have something new to read. However, I've slowed down in my 'for fun' reading unfortunately, academic readings and textbooks consuming a majority of my time instead now. Also, as I've gotten older I've been grappling with genre leaps (wow, do I actually want to read an autobiography or a historical study?) and how some books still feel 'too adult' for me to read, though I am an adult (ie: mundane, boring, complicated, who would EVER want to read about that?) and how I feel as if certain genres are now off limits for me (Gossip Girl anyone?).

I'd like to share some favorites of mine from the past year and a half:

•  Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close
• Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger 
• The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
• The End of Sex by Donna Freitas 
• The Bell Jar  by Sylvia Plath
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
• Looking for Alaska by John Green
• The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides 
• Last Summer by Evan Hunter

What are you currently reading, hoping to read, and what's your favorite book? I'd certainly love to know!