Reading (sorry no smart ass today)

I posted a couple of days ago how I am reading the latest Harry Potter book. I am almost done now since I can not put it down. It got me thinking however, how much I used to read when I was growing up. I remember one of the first books I ever read was a story called "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." by Judy Barrett. To this day I still love that story so much. Then I read "Charlotte's Web" By E.B. White and of course that book stole my heart. I think that was the first time I ever cried while reading something. I soon graduated to the series of books called "The Babysitter's Club" by Ann M. Martin. Now if you are a child of the late 80's you will know all about these. I must have had 20 of them. In junior high we had to read books for English class and we read "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee in 8th grade. I loved that book! I should really read that again. Then when I started high school the cool thing to do was to read Danielle Steel books. It was like a girls guide to romance, yet of course that stuff never happens in the real world. And of course never happened from boys in high school-yuck! I also read a series of books by and author named Christopher Pike. They were like teen murder mysteries and ghost stories. I thought they were really cool. I had about 10 of them. I wish I could find them. Some of them I would totally read again. I also read a book called "Circle of Friends" by Maeve Binchey. I think I read that book 5 times! Of course the movie was nothing like it! After high school and then to college where you had no time to read for pleasure, I started to read things on Oprah's Book List. All of those were awesome! "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb and "White Oleander" by Janet Finch were some of my favorites. After I saw the first Harry Potter movies I thought I should read the books since everyone raved about them. "Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire" is my favorite and I was able to read it in 5 days while we were on vacation in Mazatlan (the best time to read a book) I just watched the trailer for the movie and it gave me chills! Now I am looking forward to number 6 and someday I will read them to Julia. I just wish I had more time to read like I used to!

What were some of your favorite books? Which one can you not wait for your children to read?

Hope everyone has a great Friday. Thanks for reading!

-Amanda