Must Love Books....

These are (so far) the best books I've read this year. A mix of fiction and non-fiction; although according to French writer Laurence Cossè in A Novel Bookstore, "I never use the word fiction. Every subtlety in life is material for a book (...) novels don't contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices or major ordeals (...) there are books that as you read, you wonder (...) literature informs, instructs, it prepares you for life." (150)

• Jane's Fame, How Jane Austen Conquered the World, Claire Hoffman (This book reads like a novel)
• Travelling with Pomegranates, Sue Monk Kidd (About connecting with yourself at different stages in your life)
• I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (British writer and author of 101 Dalmations! This is the British counterpart of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith - a book I also love and will be in another book list)
• 4 Seasons in Rome, Anthony Doerr (About being a parent, a writer and living in a different country... everything must be better in Italy!)
• Little Princes, Connor Grennan (About the plight of the children of Nepal and how we can, with our actions, change the world for the better)
• The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, Elisabeth Tova Bailey (for all you nature and snail lovers!, very satisfying)

ha-ha n. a ditch with a wall on its inner side below ground level, forming a boundary to a park or garden without interrupting the view.  Oxford Dictionary

As in:

"Fanny, feeling all this to be wrong (of course!) couldn't help making an effort to prevent it. "You will hurt yourself, Miss Bertram," she cried, "you will certainly hurt yourself against those spikes - you will tear your gown - you will be in danger of slipping into the ha-ha. You had better not go."
                                                                                                            Mansfield Park, Jane Austen