2015 Reading Challenge: a book everyone has read but you

Eat Pray Love

by Elizabeth Gilbert

I didn't read the book, I never saw the movie, and it really didn't bother me any. But I love Gilbert's TED talks and have watched them multiple times, and I can't wait to read her next book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear coming out this fall. I feel like I ought to read the book that made her career—especially since everyone has read it but me.

The Light Between Oceans

by M.L. Stedman

Tom and Isabel live alone on Janus Rock, keeping the lighthouse. After two miscarriages and one stillbirth, all on the isolated island, Isabel is despondent. When a boat holding a dead man and a crying baby washes up on shore, Isabel persuades Tom to leave the discovery out of his log and eventually adopts the child as her own. But when they visit the shore and its nearby community two years later ... you can imagine what might happen.

Starring Sally J Freedman as Herself

by Judy Blume

Add Audible narration for $4.99.

Murder on the Orient Express

by Agatha Christie

It was supposed to be the perfect crime. But an avalanche stops the Orient Express in its tracks just before a passenger is found murdered in his berth, foiling the perpetrator's getaway, and trapping 13 potential suspects—each with an airtight alibi—in the train car with Inspector Hercule Poirot. If you've seen the movie, take note: Branagh changes Christie's ending. Hot tip: Dan Stevens's audio narration is fantastic.

A Little Princess

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett wasn't on my childhood bookshelves. I'm making amends: I read The Secret Garden earlier this year, and this title is next. The gorgeous Puffin in Bloom edition is waiting patiently on my bookshelves. (It's so pretty it could absolutely be a book I chose for the cover.)

The Book Thief

by Markus Zusak

"You are going to die," begins this 2006 novel. A fitting beginning to a story about hard things: a little girl and her family struggling to endure in WWII Nazi Germany. The characters are interesting and unexpected, right down to the unusual narrator. You'll see why this was an instant staple on school reading lists when it was published ten years ago, and why it has captured the hearts of readers from age 10 to 110. Beautiful, haunting, fascinating, hopeful.

Watership Down

by Richard Adams

I needed more than a few nudges to finally pick up this 1972 classic about a brave band of rabbits in the English countryside and their quest for survival against the threat of humans. But I’m so glad I finally read it. I’ve never read anything else quite like it. This British classic powerfully probes love, courage, loyalty, and human nature, and by turns includes both gorgeous scenes of the idyllic English countryside and encounters of great violence.