Tomorrow is my 45th birthday – and, as I say every year, after many harrowing hospital stays and several serious illnesses, I am deeply grateful for them all.

Of course, today is a sick day – with all the weather changes and germs everywhere I could have predicted a puny birthday week – but spending it at home with my people will still be wonderful.

This week, I think a 45 motif is in order here on the blog – and today we shall list, in no particular order, 45 books I love.

Some are recent reads, some old, there is no method to the madness – just books loved by me.

45 Books ❤ :

1. Beach Music – Pat Conroy
2. Love is a Mixtape – Rob Sheffield
3. The Giving Tree – Shel Silverstein
4. The Fault in Our Stars – John Green
5. The Bright Hour – Nina Riggs
6. A Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
7. Wild – Cheryl Strayed
8. The Ragamuffin Gospel – Brennan Manning
9. Choose Joy – Sara Frankl
10. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
11. If You Give a Pig a Pancake – Laura Numeroff
12. When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
13. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
15. Tiny Beautiful Things – Cheryl Strayed
16. Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls – Lauren Graham
17. Good Bones – Maggie Smith
18. The Dictionary of Lost Words – Pip Williams
19. Letter to My Daughter – Maya Angelou
20. Friends, Lovers, and The Big Terrible Thing – Matthew Perry
21. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark – Michelle McNamara
22. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – John Berendt
23. A Thousand Mornings – Mary Oliver
24. Selected Poems of Emily Dickenson
25. I Feel Bad About My Neck, And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman – Nora Ephron
26. One Thousand Gifts – Ann Voskamp
27. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within – Natalie Goldberg
28. Raw Faith – Kasey Van Norman
29. Slouching Toward Bethlehem – Joan Didion
30. Love Does – Bob Goff
31. Kisses For Katie – Katie Davis
32. Blue Nights – Joan Didion
33. On Writing – Stephen King
34. The Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling
35. The Beautiful Creatures series – Kami Garcia (but avoid the film like the plague)
36. The Little Prince – Antione de Saint-Exupery
37. Interview With The Vampire – Anne Rice
38. My Reading Life – Pat Conroy
39. The Hunger Games trilogy – Suzanne Collins
40. Into The Wild – Jon Krakauer
41. I’m Glad My Mom Died – Jennette McCurdy
42. Educated – Tara Westover
43. The Chronicles of Narnia series – C.S. Lewis
44. A Prayer Journal – Flannery O’Conner
45. Brave Enough – Cheryl Strayed

Here’s to letting my inner geek shine with all my favorite nerdy series on day one of my week of celebrating 45.  😉

Be well, everybody. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Grace and Blessings.