What Would You Save?

Found this interesting exercise on "A Work in Progress" and Janelle's "Eclectic Closet" and decided I just had to give it a try. Your task is to find "The Ten Books One Would Save in a Fire" (If One Could Only Save Ten)

Ofcourse, as Janelle correctly points out, this raises the question, do you pick out 10 books based on their value and how difficult they might be to replace, or do you pick ten of the ones you love?

I decided to go with the ones I love because, apart from my great-grandmother's book 'The Island Story' which she won as a prize when she was in school some 80 years ago, I don't really have any valuable books.

So here's my list of The Ten Books One Would Save in a Fire (If One Could Only Save Ten)- based on books I love:

1. "Of Human Bondage" by Somerset Maugham

2. "What the Body Remembers" by Shawna Singh Baldwin

3. "Natural History of the Senses" by Diane Ackerman

4. "Enrique's Journey" by Sonia Nazario

5. "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini

6. " A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry

7. "The Good Earth" Pearl S. Buck

8. "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert

9. "A Fortune-Teller Told Me" by Tiziano Terzani

10. "The Essential Rumi" Coleman Barks.

I have to say the list surprised me a little. Knowing my penchant for South-Asian literature I expected to see a lot more of those and maybe some more recent books, but to my delight, more than half are books that I read more than a decade ago.

So, C'mon, tell us which books you would save!