Ten Good Things on a Monday: My Mother's Ten Favorite Books of All Time

10 Good Things on a Monday is a weekly feature  I am doing dedicated to every person's compulsive list-writing.  Every Monday we are going to make a list of 10 things that will cheer us up and help tide us over the whole week.

<a href="http://buoyreading.blogspot.com/search/label/good%20things" target="_top"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8ZLJhw831LIwGjiA8RrpkyCa2Kw0vJ-MCDZ92vwi4is-CRlAzDfrov1rTTH16ntcfHxERkDFchxdM-bLazZ6g9M8tSP4JfsgI1z6BjiHzILQVknmvbcSdG9PpCXAdG9SZ1LU5PvsKPpM/s1600/10.JPG" border="0" /></a>

Here's how it works:

1. Think of a particular group of good things you want to make a list on, does not necessarily have to be about books, e.g. your current book wish list, or your favorite book foods (you know, foods you love to eat while reading, if you're like me), or your favorite girly names, whatever you can think of, as long as it makes you feel good.
2. If you have no ideas for a list, you can always visit my blog post to check out my theme for that week and you can take a cue from my list.
3. Post your list on your blog, grab that cute ARGH button above and put it on your post too, so we'd know you're doing this meme.
4. Leave the link for your post on my own 10 Good Things post for the week, if you see others doing it, comment too and let's share our good things with everybody.
5. Everybody goes through the whole week happy!

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My 10 Good Things for this week:  My Mother's All-Time Ten Favorite Books  
 
Mother's Day just passed (A Belated Happy Mother's Day!) and as a tribute, I told my Mom I was going to feature her on my blog.  She was a bit thrilled and alarmed that I would do something like this but relaxed a bit when she found that I was only going to ask her for her ten favorite books ever.  

She mostly reads romance novels but I was able to get her to like some YA and contemporary fiction recently and she has been enjoying the books that I shoved her way.

1.  Paradise by Judith McNaught - She has read this like, more than a hundred times and I still see her crying over this.

2.  Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - She first read this during her grade school days and she even used this for a paper for English.  The teacher thought that it was such an unusual choice to write about Wuthering Heights since she believed that this book sort of had very disturbing situations that an inexperienced (read: young) reader might misinterpret.  At the time, my mother did misunderstand some parts of the story but as she got older, she finally understood.  

There was a time last year when we were in a book store and she found me looking at a copy of this book and she practically pushed me into buying it, even offering to pay for the book herself.  I did pay for it, but when we got home, she immediately tucked in and began reading the book - way before I was even able to scan through it.  That's how obsessed she is with this book.

3.  Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers - She was so surprised at how short but poignant this book was.  She really loved the unique format and even lent it to one of her co-workers (Without asking my permission!) who loved it too.

4.  Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught - This is one book that I did not really like much - I only cared about some parts but my mother really loved this book - in fact, she loved it so much that when she sometimes feels down, she'll read parts of this book to herself to cheer her up.

5.  Once and Always by Judith McNaught

6.  Until You by Judith McNaught

7.  Remember When by Judith McNaught

8.  Prince Charming by Julie Garwood - This must be my most favorite romance novel of all time.  There was a time when she was reading this when she's home, but every time she's out, I would take this book and read it too.  And there was this other time, when after she was done reading this, I borrowed it and then when I was done, she got it back and re-read it again.  That cycle happened like, four times, I think.

9.  Still Alice by Lisa Genova - When she was finished reading a book from her shelf, I forced her to read this one next.  She was hooked from start to finish and kept obsessing about the story for days after she was done with it.

10.  Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan - She agreed with me when I told her Dash is one of the coolest male book characters ever.

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I told you she likes her romance novels.  I have read all the books in her collection - my first forays into reading novels and we mostly agree on the type of stories that we like and do not care about.  We even talk about some books often, some conversations lasting for hours on end.  We're pretty close, my Mom and I, and reading books made us even closer.

Have a great Monday to everyone! 

So what are your Good Things?