Out of all the books you've read this year, which was the one that:

moved you most deeply/"changed your life"?
Delta of Venus, by Anais Nin - sex has so much to do with one's psychological makeup, and Anais Nin's short stories are spot-on
The Gift of Wings, Mary Rubio - LMM's biography is probably the most disturbing books I've read this year. A human life can take so many sad turns.
The Alchemist, Paolo Cohello - I keep referring back the the lessons from this fable when I think about my own struggles and "quest" in life

made you laugh most?
Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine. It is really a charming rendition of a fairytale... Gail Carson Levine is a great storyteller.

you learned the most from?

Persepolis, by Marijane Satrapi
The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway

(both offered perspectives on political events I had never really thought about before)

you absolutely loved?
Silmarillion, by J. R. R. Tolkien
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen

(there's something so satisfying about classics)

was the biggest waste of your time?
The Girl with the Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier - terrible writing, cheesy.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hossein - sorry, not a fan.
Before Green Gables, by Budge Wilson - BAD, but I guess I couldn't help reading it
Laughter in the Dark, Nabokov - just a rather unpleasant story

you are proud of yourself for finishing?
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
Utopia, by Thomas Moore
Rememberance of Things Past v.1, by Marcel Proust
Purgatorio, Dante
Faust, Goethe

(These have been on my reading list for a very long time)

Which ones do you recommend to go on someone's "must-read" list?

Definitely Persepolis, by Marijane Satrapi. This graphic novel from a child's perspective of the war in Iran is so witty and moving.

Adam Bede, George Eliot

It's a mark of how tastes have changed, that Adam Bede was popular when it was first published, but both the story and theme are hardly engaging to me. "The world of Adam Bede": farming folk and dialect, and the plot of a poor girl seduced by a rich man, is neither scandalously exciting nor profoundly moving.

But such is George Eliot's gift that I learned to become interested in the fate of the characters.

Adam: I do not know why he is the title character, and do not admire him. He is made out to be strong, earnest, handsome, truly compassionate, and good, physically and emotionally and morally. There are probably many people like him in the world, but I would not like to marry them for I find moral righteousness like his hard and binding. I feel sorry for his brother Seth, who is secondary in status and affection to him always: his long suffering mother, Lisbeth, favours Adam blatantly although Seth is very good and gentle to her, and he has to win Dinah Morris's heart. I am disappointed that Dinah married him, and eventually gave up female preaching: all throughout the novel it was so clear that she had a vocation and was fitted to it, and that she was happy in it - to have her change her heart in the final chapters is sudden and such a damper on her independent spirit. I think George Eliot wanted to show that Adam finally arrived at a woman who was fit for him, but I do not think Adam is good enough for Dinah! I am not satisfied that he is giving her a love which "sprung out of his love for Hetty, and would not violate his memory of Hetty." A second choice to a woman much inferior?

This book has the only happy ending I have read yet in George Eliot. Oh, I suppose it is not very happy: Hetty and Arthur are both punished, Arthur most of all I think, while Adam is rewarded with love and success because he was honorable. Very idealistic - and dull. I prefer the note of tragedy and unwittingly hurtful character interactions in The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch. Those characters are so much more truthful and larger-than-life. Adam and Arthur and Hetty are too unrealistically good-hearted, despite their actions.