Top 5's

Dear all,

After the inaugural post on the blog, which I wrote about a month ago, this is the first time I've contributed something. Above all else, I want to start by congratulating (and thanking!) each and every one of the writers who participated in the making of this blog so far. Not only is it great writing practice for the writers and excellent reading practice for the readers, but it's been great fun for me to read the beliefs, dreams, stories you've been sharing with all of us. Please, keep it up.

That being said, I now want to 'share' something, and I hope you'll all take part in this new little project of mine. There'll be others, provided this one works.

A long, long time ago, more specifically when I was in my late teens --18 or 19, I can't be sure--, I was given a book by this certain British writer Nick Horby which was to change my life. At that time, I was already in the habit of reading a book or two a month (although I failed a few months due to college and to the heavy workload of my early years as a teacher), but I still considered reading an obligation of sorts. Don't get me wrong!, I liked it a lot; but oftentimes I read books more because I understood how important they were for me than because I really wanted to.

Back to the book, it took me a few months to actually start reading it, and to be quite frank, I don't even remember who gave it to me in the first place or why (whoever it was, I'm in this person's debt forever). All I know is that, one day, upon arriving home from work dog-tired, I decided I was going to give it a go, and off I went to pick it up and began reading it at about 11 p.m. or so. A few hours later, about 4 or 5 a.m., I'd finished it. Just like that! It was the first time ever I'd read a whole book in one sitting --although I was actually lying on the sofa --, and I was just, to use a word CPEers love, flabbergasted.

The book was "High Fidelity".

I might've read better books before and after "High Fidelity", but rarely, if ever, have I read a book that meant as much to me as this one did. Of course there was also "Sophie's World", which I commonly mention as the book that got me into reading in the first place, but it was "High Fidelity" which proved to me beyond any doubt that this reading thing was truly fun, and no "Lucky Jim" that's come after was ever able to disprove it! ("Lucky Jim" being Kingsley Aimis's obnoxious CAE-reading-list book we were all forced to read last semester!)

"High Fidelity" is the story of a guy called Rob, who owns a record store in England and is constantly being left by the women in his life. The book starts right when Laura, the girl he'd been living with for a few years, leaves him for his upstairs neighbor, and throughout the book Rob takes us on a tour of his life of disgraceful relationships, weird friends, and attempts at getting Laura back. Being a man, you just can't help but sympathize with Rob; if you're a woman, I guess you'll recognize Rob in most if not all of the boyfriends you've had in life, and perhaps will even understand them a bit better.

So why is this post called "Top 5's"?

In "High Fidelity", Rob is forever sharing his "top 5 biggest heartbreaks of all time", or his "best 5 songs to heal a broken heart to" etc. Ever since I read this book I've gotten addicted to thinking of most topics in my life in terms of "Top 5's", and this is why I now start our very own Top 5 here on our blog (if you've ever read any blogs of mine, you know I've always had Top 5's in them, only this time I really think it's gonna work!). The first one of ours is then, obviously, our "Top 5 Best Books We've Ever Read".

Now, I know that for those who are really great fans of reading, coming up with your 5 favorite books ever is akin to saying who your favorite child is, or your favorite parent, or your 5 favorite students (I have mine! LOL); but let's give it a go anyway, shall we? One more good thing about books is that, even though they make us feel all things possible, they themselves have no feelings at all, and thus will never know whether we've picked them as favorites or not! (unlike children, parents, students and the like).

My Top 5 best-books-of-all-time (today) are, in no specific order:

1 - High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby;

2 - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon;

3 - Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, by Machado de Assis;

4 - Tell No One, by Harlan Coben;

5 - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safron Foer.

Well, that's it. It hurt to write this list and leave so many great books out of it. I tried to pick them based solely on how fun to read they were, and not on how intelectually relevant or how 'horizon-widening' they were (although I did learn a lot about several things reading them all). Therefore, Machado de Assis is on the list only once because Memórias... is absolutely brilliant and it's great fun.

Your turn now! What are your "Top 5 Best Books I've Ever Read"?

PS: "High Fidelity" was made into an incredibly fun movie. Read about it here.

PS2: "Tell No One" also became a must-see flick, and a French one at that! Read about it here.