Six Books that Made Me Happy

Ooops, as I realize Anne tagged me about this one. Oh, right. And I can't get blogspot to line up the links for the books, so you'll just have to muddle through. If anyone who's reading this knows how, let me know. Maybe I should switch my blog to wordpress.

The premise is, six books that made me happy. Here they are in no particular order.

--The Dragon Series: Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons and Talking with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede. Am counting these as a unit, even though they are more than one book. I was teaching the mystery class in 2004, I think, and tres distracted. Zach O, one of my students from class and from my old 105 class, lent me his copies. I read them fairly quickly, and really, really liked them. They would've been awesome to read when I was in my teens, but as they came out in the '90s, it wouldn't have occurred me to read them. I ended up getting multiple people hooked on them, and so forth. I loved Morwen's sign, "No nonsense, please" and was very tempted to put it in my office.
--The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. I had listened to the second one, Pigs in Heaven, on audiobook, and I bought this one on an semi-impulse buy. I know that I really, really liked it. I liked its descriptions of people, it resolved well, and I liked the Tucson descriptions since I was here by that time. Apparently, it's become one of those assigned in high school and I can live with that.
--Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I know, kind of a given considering me. And I don't mean when I read it the first time, in 1992-3, but when I re-read it in 2001. I had moved out here, and all I had was an inflata-bed and some books. I can't remember why I had P. and P.; I probably figured a re-read was as deep as I could handle at the time. It was the perfect book for that time; I could enjoy the humor and remember why I liked it so much. And, Darcy!
--Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. Melanie had leant me her copy and I think it had gotten slightly spilled on, so I replaced it. This of course meant that her copy became mine. It was a particularly good book to read 2 chapters of before bed. It was a very good fairy-tale like book that had some fun linguistic and political and magical things. I am not doing it justice, but it's cool.
--I Love Everybody and Other Atrocious Lies by Laurie Notaro. I have to include at least one humorous essay book in here and I choose Laurie's third book. I've been reading her stuff since I moved here and she was writing for the AZ Republic. While her first two books are good, in the third, it just gels together. She has phrases like "angry jazz hands" and she has a whole chapter of dealing with the idiocy of people. Also, she was local at the time, so I could read it and share the feeling of being stuck behind a Valley Metro bus in traffic since I always seemed to have that problem.

Okay, I'm cheating. I can't think of another book and I'm not going to force it to make the 6 books. Because, that's apparently how I do things. I'd rather have 5 good books than 5 books and 1 book that's merely ennnhh. Call me whatever you want, but if I can't think of one, I'm not going to phone it in.