My Top 5 Best Books I've Ever Read...So Far!!!

Hello, I'm Ana Paula from the CPE morning group and I'm new here. By the way, congratulations, the blog is really good and I know I should've written a post before, but here's my humble contribution. LOL

Reading for me is just more than an activity or a habit, but a way of connecting to different things through words, thoughts and imagination, which surely makes me a better thinking human being. That is why Literature is truly one of my passions and I wish I had more available time to read all the books from the writers I love.

So, it's really difficult to make a list of my top 5 books, since there are so many of them that fascinate me, but I'll try:

5 - NATIVE SON, Richard Wright: A great drama about prejudice and social discrimination in the USA during the 50's in which, because of the racial segregation, black and white people could not share the same rights. More than referring to the crime that the main character is responsible for, when he, a black young man, kills his boss's white daughter, Wright describes the stupidity and unfairness of social inequalities in a prejudiced society, making you question if even after the "end" of the segregation in the USA, and after people like Martin Luther King and Obama's election, there still seems to be room for prejudice, not only there, but all around us and mostly, inside of us.

4 - O CRIME DO PADRE AMARO, Eça de Queiróz: It was the first book I read by Eça and I remember doing it because I had read about him when studying Portuguese Literature still in High School, and I wanted to know more about him. He's a really awesome writer and in this wonderful novel he shows the true colors of tradition, religion, alienation and hierarchy within the hypocritical Portuguese society during the middle of the 18th century. It's just amazing!

3 - ENSAIO SOBRE A CEGUEIRA, José Saramago: And there goes my passion for some Portuguese writers! It's just that you cannot die before reading anything by Saramago in your life!!! This particular novel indicates the sublime intelligence and criticism of a writer whose own writing style and relevance leads the reader to rethink what it means to see in this crazy world that we live in. Are we really using our ability to see things or are we drowning in our own blindness day by day without seeing/realizing it?

2 - PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Jane Austen: As a devoted fan of English Literature, choosing Jane Austen here symbolizes my due respect to all the greatest English writers such as Thomas Hardy, the Brontë Sisters, Charles Dickens, Daniel Defoe, Virginia Woolf and so on. Jane Austen is not only a writer but a myth, and this novel makes you think about the real roles of women and men in our capitalist-chauvinistic-prejudiced society in which material values are more important than feelings. And there's nothing left to say, just: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife".

1 - MEMÓRIAS PÓSTUMAS DE BRÁS CUBAS, Machado de Assis: Machado is the real reason I love literature because he does not write to entertain you but to challenge you, to trick you, to make you feel misarable when he refers to something you don't know, to get you more and more curious about his intentions when writing the way he does, to criticize what is considered right and wrong, that is, to transform you into a better reader and intelectual person. This novel is one of the greatest achievements in Brazilian Literature and just UNBELIEVABLE. You have to read it to know the feeling!

That's it, guys. Hope you've enjoyed... maybe it's too much Literature but it's what I simply love reading.

See you!!!