5 Books with Sarah Osborn

"Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose." Neil Gaiman

Asking someone to make a list of their five favorite books really is like asking someone to make a list of their five most essential body parts. Readers understand the parts are the whole, and every book we read is essential, and even if it isn't the best book one has ever read, part of it stays with us on a genetic and a spiritual level. I dared several friends to take the 5 Book challenge. 

Sarah Osborn is a teacher, a kitchen mystic, a Corgi whisperer, jazz lover, and an enthusiastic, generous friend. Here are her 5 Books. 

Five of my favorite books (Which I'll want to change it as soon as I've shared them):

1. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami.
Murakami has an ability to take me along into a fantasy world using very convincing small twists and beautiful language. I don't really think I even like "fantasy," but I love his books that are filed under that genre. Reading this is like falling into the rabbit hole, and not feeling it happen until you're halfway down the tunnel. By the time you realize where you are, you've made sense of all that is around you - even if it's more than a little "off."
2. Tie: Everything's Illuminated/Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. JSF is great at putting really fine points on things. He writes a lot about love and happiness, sadness and death using imperfect characters we can't help but adore.

3. The Stranger, Albert Camus.
I especially love the way Camus uses his description of sunlight to intensify Mersault's emotions. Because of that, I usually read this book on a scorching sunny day or in the middle of a snowstorm for maximum enjoyment.

4. East of Eden, John Steinbeck. 
It's like an epic soap opera about that stuff we refer to as "good" and "evil." How didn't Steinbeck's brain and heart not explode with all of his feelings and insights into what makes people tick? What an amazing writer - I love all of his stories (especially Cannery Row, which you, MK, turned me on to!).
5. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell. 
DISLCAIMER: This book isn't really in my top 5 of all time - it is just the last book I read that truly impressed me. Other books which fit that bill: Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, Tom Robins; Blindness, Jose Saramago; The Road, Cormac McCarthy; The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski; Dance Dance Dance, Haruki Murakami.
All novels. Nothing too heavy, not saying that these are the best books of all time - just the books I like especially.