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While in graduate school I read Shusaku Endo's spare and elegant novel Silence for the first time. This masterpiece had a profound impact on me that would last all these years as I wrestled with the questions that this work asked and it was unsettling how inconclusive I was in asking them of myself. In his new meditation on Shusaku Endo's masterpiece, Makoto Fujimura writes a beautiful and thought-provoking work that moves through both Japanese culture and aesthetics masterfully, all the while wrestling with the underpinnings of belief and what does that mean for someone who wants to create meaningful art that has an impact on those who encounter it. One of my favorite lines in his book says, "Deep communication can only take place through a path of vulnerability." This is exactly what he is doing in this book. Fujimura's vulnerability in writing of his own painful experiences allows the beauty to come through.

There are two things I can always count on to be bleak: Nick Cave songs and Cormac McCarthy novels. Blood Meridian is an amazing and graphically brutal work. While the bloody Sam Peckinpah style violence proliferates every chapter, its the magnificent and poetic prose that helped me navigate this hellish West that at times bore more resemblance to a Hieronymous Bosch painting. Unlike other writers, McCarthy writes about violence as violence and not as anything symbolic. He is definitely one of the truly great American authors.

I have loved Maria Tartar's other annotated books and this one is just as beautiful as the others I have in my collection. This novel celebrates its 100th anniversary is a great read for both children and adults. Though filled with pirates, Indians, mermaids, lost boys and fairies this story covers themes of lost youth to death. As Peter even says, "To die will be an awfully big adventure." Don't let all of the adaptations fool you, this is a magical book of such depth, as well as adventure, that it has something for everyone. That is why this tale has lasted so long.

A fantastic tale that reminds one of the best of Marquez or Calvino. The novel follows two protagonists stories: that of Henri a soldier and cook for Napoleon and Villanelle the androgynous Venetian whose story is caught up in romance and chance. Their two stories start seperately and interconnect as both are escaping Russia and the French troops, though for completely different reasons. Winterson does a masterful and magical job of storytelling as she presents these two characters and all of their passions.

The Seas is told by a 19 year old narrator struggling to move from adolescence to adulthood. Drawing on classical mythology and fairy tales, such as Undine and The Little Mermaid, Samantha Hunt weaves a tale that can be magical, funny, dark, and often hauntingly beautiful. Like the stories from which this one derives, the narrator finds herself deep in longing for her love of an older man but also fears that her love will bring about his death. All the while, she still looks to the sea for her father to return where he had walked into it when she was eight. When I finished this mesmerizing tale, it left me not only appreciating this book but wanting more from its talented author.

The great Russian surrealist novel that tells of the Devil coming to Moscow to wreak havoc. Bulgakov writes with amazing and meticulous detail about the politics, religion, and art in Russia. Not to mention it has a sharp-shooting talking cat named Behemoth that to this day is so popular he's printed on t-shirts. It's also a favorite of Salman Rushdie, Tea Obhret, Patti Smith, and Daniel Radcliffe. Not to mention inspired The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil." This book also has the great line: Manuscripts don't burn. A must read for anyone who hasn't read it and a great novel to reread if you have.

An amazingly accomplished first novel. I've read so many reviews that compare Ms. Obreht to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but I found her to bear more similarities to another master, Isaac Bashevis Singer. Her use of magical realism only underscores the subject of grieving, loss, and death. Having said that, this story is a delight to read in the same way that reading a classic fable or folk tale would be. Obreht is a gifted writer with a vivid imagination that does not wander off into flights of fancy that don't connect with the material she's writing about.

In Watermelon Sugar is a sad, lonely novel with beautiful imagery. The nameless narrator tells of his life in the town of iDeath, which is a place like no other and not just because the sun shines a different color every day, and about his relationship with two different women Margaret and Pauline. They are what inspired the Neko Case song "Margaret vs. Pauline" off her album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. Using deceptively simple prose, Richard Brautigan presents a world that is normal and oddly surreal at the same time. Certainly one of my favorite aspects of the novel is the story of the tigers with beautiful voices that sing and play instruments. They also do what tigers do by killing and eating people of the town, including the narrator's own parents. Despite this gruesome horror, that the narrator witnesses, he develops a fondness for the tigers, who help him with his math homework as they devour his mother and father. It's as if he understands that the tigers can't help their brutality because it's just part of their nature. Brutality is something that will slowly build until the violent climax of the novel.

A fantastic tale in which Calvino creates a world steeped not just in the magic of Cosimo living in trees but in history, philosophy and politics as well. It is amazing how the author balances the whimsical with the human so effortlessly as he tells the story of this young noble who climbs up a tree in anger at his father and then chooses to live out his life in this arboreal setting. Somehow Italo Calvino makes this fantasy believable and fills it with such life, imagination,and poignancy that the reader cares deeply in the outcome. A rare feat that reminds the reader of the tales of childhood that first delighted us.

One of the most beautifully written books I've read. Smith's poetic voice lovingly recreates her life with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. This does not read like the traditional rock autobiographies out there. Instead, she focuses on this relationship that formed her so deeply as a person and an artist. It, like Bob Dylan's Chronicles, is a book that can be read by even those who are not fans of their music.

A fascinating read. Like Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One, Just Kids is not the usual rock biography. Patti Smith's literate memoir is both love story and elegy. Like Smith's music, the writing is intelligent and moving. This is a celebration of not only her passionate relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe but of creative discovery. This memoir can stand along side Smith's definitive work Horses as a tribute to her craftsmanship and poetic talent.

Only Kurt Vonnegut could write a novel about the bombing of Dresden, time travel, aliens, and post-war America and make it all work brilliantly. This book also has one of my favorite lines from literature: "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck i time." If you've never read Vonnegut, I highly recommend starting with this book.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers is a beautifully written book about loneliness and isolation. The story deals with two adolescent misfits, Alice and Mattia. Paolo Giordano takes the idea of prime numbers as positive integers divisible only by itself and the number one and applies it with great sensitivity to these two characters so that they are forever linked, but like the gaps between prime numbers, cannot be traversed. In many ways, this novel reminded me of those by one of my favorite authors, Carson McCullers, who also dealt with the attempts of the outcast in society to, as E.M Forester put it, "just connect."

This book made J.K. Rowling's, Nick Hornby's, and Kelly Link's lists of their favorite books and, having just finished it, I can see why. Cassandra Mortmain, the narrator and main character, could easily find herself at home in a Jane Austen novel. And Cassandra makes numerous references to this perfect author in such passages as the following: “But it has come to me, sitting here in the barn very full of cold rice, that there is something revolting about the way girls’ minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love....I am judging from books mostly, for I don’t know any girls except Rose and Topaz. But some characters in books are very real--Jane Austen’s are; and I know those five Bennets at the beginning of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.” If you are looking for a book to fall in love with, choose this one.