Hello, my name is Kendra Winchester.
Welcome back to my channel, and today I
thought I would talk to you all about my—
probably—my top ten favorite books ish.
Pretty close. I went through my library
and picked out ten books that I would
want to reread and based my favorites on
that. And these are in no particular
order. Now many of you who have been
watching for a long time can probably
guess all of these, or at least some of
them, so let's play game.
Once you pause the video, take a piece of
paper in the pen, write ten items, and
just write out the books that you think
that I will mention today as some of my
favorite books of all time. And I've
picked a selection both recent reads
and older reads, so we'll see what
happens. But I'm really interested to see
what you think are my favorites. If you
are new here, welcome! You will learn my
favorites today, and you'll get to know
me. I can get to know you in the comments.
It'll be a great day. All right, so these
are gonna be in no particular order.
I actually just stack them here, so we're
just gonna start from the top of the
stack and just move our way down. All
right, okay, first up... I can't get it out
of the box.
But first up use SABRIEL by Garth Nix.
This is one of my favorite fantasy books
of all time. Garth Nix is an Australian
writer, and he wrote the a Abhorsen trilogy,
which is this trilogy you can see it
here. My favorite is SABRIEL, and so it
is the first one here and the audiobook
is actually read by Tim Curry. And it is
an amazing audiobook that I have reread
multiple times. I just love this series;
it's so imaginative. It's about a girl in
this like early nineteen teens kind of
era, in this—you know—fictional universe.
And across the wall is like a medieval
Kingdom, and her dad at the Abhorsen. He
is the guy who keeps the dead down. He
battles necromancers and keeps the dead
from coming out of these like spiritual
centers locations
and eating people. Pretty cool, right? Yeah,
I really love it, and my dad is finally
reading this the first time just now. I
mean, it only took, like, 15 years. That's
fine. He made progress. Okay, second up
staying in the same vein, I really loved
Tamora Pierce, and I loved Alanna, the
lioness, because it is her first book in
the Tortall universe. But if you
picked her Tortall universe, or really any
books in this series, I think it totally
counts. Because I love pretty much all
things in this. I loved Alanna. This is the
first adventure. This is her first book,
and she is a girl who wants to become a
lady Knight, so she and her brother
switched places. And she is running
around as a boy Alan and trying to become
a lady knight. Pretty cool,
huh? And I actually read a book
about Alanna's daughter first before I
picked up the series, but I just loved
them all. And also, Sabriel by Garth Nix
and this series have some amazing cat
characters in them. Highly recommend.
Moving out of the fantasy sphere,
it wouldn't be a video about Kendra's
favorite books without SALVAGE THE BONES
by Jesmyn Ward. I just love Jesmyn
Ward. She is absolutely phenomenal, and
this book has some of the most lyrical
gorgeous writing that I have read in the
last decade. The audiobook is phenomenal
this book is about Esch, and she is a
young girl living in the Mississippi
Delta, and Katrina is on its way. And her
brother's a dog, pitbull has just given both to
puppies. That's why she's on the cover,
and there are themes of motherhood.
There's also like Greek mythology woven
into this story, and Jesmyn Ward has
just done an amazing thing with this
book. And this is actually part of a
trilogy that set in the same
neighborhood AS SING UNBURIED SING is
the third one. This is the second one. And
the first one is WHERE THE LINE BLEEDS,
which was recently reissued. I believe by
Scribner; this is from Bloomsbury. So I
love her. She is amazing.
Just fabulous. One of the most recent
books added
my mental, like, favorites list is Jhumpa
Lahiri's THE NAMESAKE, and I absolutely
love this book. And I can't stop thinking
about it, and I read it—what—six months
ago?
This book is Jhumpa Lahiri's debut novel,
and is about a young boy named Gogel. He
is an Indian American. His parents are
immigrants from India, and his... they have
a pet name, which is like your household
name, which is Gogel. It's a— it's a
Russian author, and they were gonna give
him an Indian like official legal name,
but in America, that didn't work like
it does in India. And in a
confusion of events,
his name is Gogel. So it's kind of a
symbol of his identity crisis that he
has being Indian American and trying to
fit somewhere but feeling like you fit
nowhere. Gorgeous book, gorgeous book. Next
up is GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson. Marilyn
Robinson is a brilliant writer. She is a
congregationalist, which is a
denomination of Protestant Christianity,
and she is just brilliant. And I read an
article that said that she sometimes
fills the pulpit when her pastor is gone,
and just seeing a woman in spiritual
leadership is just very important to me.
But also seeing an amazing talented
writer write about religion in such a
nuanced way is also very important to me.
And so when I read this book, I found
that main character, John Ames. He's an
older man. He knows he's going to die and
he's writing a letter to his young son.
He and as well his wife, who's much
younger than him, and so they had a son
when he was basically old enough to be
this kid's grandfather. But he knows he's
going to pass away before his son
becomes a man, and so he writes this
letter. And this is actually the first in
a trilogy. The second one is called HOME,
and it's about a lot of the similar
events that happened in this book, only
from a different characters perspective.
And the last book is called LILA, and
it's from John Ames wife's perspective.
And how she came to be with John Ames,
and I think they all three need to be
read together.
And they create a thematic whole. So to
get Marilyn Robinson's total perspective
on the world and life, I think you have
to read all of them as almost like . . .
THE CALL OF THE WILD and WHITE FANG, like
they need to be read together to get the
thematic hole of what Jack London is
trying to say. I feel very similar about
this trilogy, but the way that she writes
a nuanced religious leaders characters
perspective I find fascinating, and is
personally very meaningful to me. I
loved it so much. When I was getting
married, I was getting married the day
after graduation because I want all my
college friends to be able to attend
since neither my husband nor I are from
the area where we got married. And so I
wanted to go see this author and have
this book signed, but it was like a month
before I got married, and I didn't have
time because I had finals. So I was so
sad I missed it, and so what my mom did
was she actually went online found a
signed first edition of THE OCEAN AT THE END
OF THE LANE by Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman
is very important to me because I love
fantasy, but also because he's very
passionate about making audiobooks
accessible, but also well-crafted. He does
a lot of full cast audiobooks, which just
means that when a character is speaking
that dialogue spoken by an actor and
then there's a single narrator just
reading the general text. And I really
love what he's done. He also has an
amazing voice. I want to marry his voice,
and it's fabulous. And he reads his own
audiobooks and then typically he comes
around again and does a full cast audio
Edition. It's brilliant I love what he
does with audio, how he's embraced 
that medium, and that is important to me
as someone with migraines, I use audio, well currently I use it
exclusively to read, like I can't read
print right now. So this is what my
favorite is my favorite books of his.
he's one my favorite fantasy authors and
what this means for him and his
relationship with his wife Amanda. I mean,
this book is for Amanda. The dedication
says, "for Amanda who wanted to know." And I
think that really exemplifies a really
turning point in his career and his writing.
Yeah, a book that I have not stopped
thinking about since I read it and in a
short story collection that really for
me personally is
everything that a Kendra book I really
want it to be... it has all my favorite
themes and settings and tropes the style
of the writing is a very my style
beautiful. When read out loud, it sounds
gorgeous and kind of loosely fairytale
inspired. But also there's a lot of
American folklore wrapped around these
stories and that is ALL THE NAMES THEY USED
FOR GOD by Anjali Sachdeva. This one
won the Reading Women Award for fiction in 2018.
And we love this book because of what
she did with each of the stories. They're
all so different. They're all so vibrant.
Each is unique, but yet they still go
around the theme of characters trying to
come to terms with circumstances beyond
their control or things that they are
obsessed with. But it's it's this lack of
control in their own lives that is
emphasized in this book, and I found that
this book it just incredibly moving and
and when read out loud,
it's very lyrical. And I read some of
these stories in print, and I read some
of them via audio and either way
beautiful. And for me a short story
collection, each one needs to stand out. I
don't really like filler stories at all
honestly, so when I read this one each
story moved the reader to a new place in
this concept. But also they moved through
time. They move through genre. They move
through realism to fantastical. The
structure is gorgeous, like everything
that she did with this book is beautiful.
So one of my favorite books ever that I
have read in in my life,
and obviously it's on this list, but also
an author who is fantastic who's quickly
become one of my favorite authors of all
time, is this one a PACHINKO by Min Jin
Lee. Autumn and I met Min Jin Lee about a
year ago. She came to South Carolina, and
we met her took photo with her, and she
opened up her binder and she said, "Look, I
have my Reading Women Award sticker right
here next to my National Book Award
finalist sticker." And we are under no
delusions that we are as awesome as the
National Book Award, but the fact that
she understood
how much it meant to us that she written
this book and that how much we loved it
and she put that sticker in her binder.
And she's a very gracious person, and I
was just so moved by how kind she has
been throughout this whole process. We
interviewed her, and we just came back to
her book again and again about how
wonderful it was. And this this was the
winner. Autumn and I have never had to
argue about who wins a book honestly
like we both go on this process trying
to go with open minds, but this book
always was special to us. And I found it
very unique and after we read this book,
after she... I think, pretty sure after she
won, we found out too that min Jin
Lee is Presbyterian, and that a lot of
that influenced the way that she wrote
this book. And this book is about a
population of Korean people who moved to
Japan during the occupation, the
occupation of Korea. They moved to Japan, and
they are still there currently to this day.
But they're not allowed to be citizens
for various reasons, and so she profiled
them in this book. It's fabulous.
Don't take our word for it; it's won lots
of awards and different things. And it's
gorgeous, and I cannot wait for the third
book... third book in her thematic trilogy
with this. She's just gorgeous. Okay, two
more. So we have next up is a book that
I read at college, and when I read it I
was blown away. And I have not stopped
thinking about it. And it just taught me
so much about what literature can be and
that is MAMA DAY by Gloria Naylor. This is
an amazing book. At the time, I was a very
poor grad student, so I was
borrowing all these books in the library.
And so I went back years later, and we
went to this huge bookstore, and I found
this original hardback edition. Now it is
not a first edition, but it's this
original hardback edition. And so that's
why it's in plastic, but I treasure it
because it's important to me, not
necessarily that it's actually worth a
lot of money. bBut it is such an amazing
book, and this book is about a young
woman who grows up on a fictional island
between South Carolina and Georgia.
Both South Carolina endure to think this
island belongs to the other state, and so
no one really knows they exist. And it's
sort of like this magical island where
there are no white people.
It was a former plantation and then it
was just given over to the African
American people, and they took it over
and have a community there. And there's a
lot of magical realism in here. I mean if
you've read Zora Neale Hurston you can
tell this is in a similar vein or if you've
read . . . Hi, baby.
Hi, how are you? You want to be in
the video? Is that what you want to do?
You licking me? You happy? You want to sit
in my lap? No? Why don't go play with your
toys? Go play with your toys! So anyway,
this is a gorgeous book so the same vein
as like I said, Zora Neale hurston or Toni
Morrison or Jesmyn Ward. You can see
there's a lot of traditions, and I know
we use the term magical realism, but a
lot of different writers from the
African Diaspora have mentioned that
this is not magical realism. This is
their culture. So people like Weyetu
Moore are talking about how this is just how
stories are told where she is from. And I
think that's something important that we
need to remember when we look at a lot
of these stories that are from African
Americans and take that into
consideration when we look at this these
types of stories with fantastical
elements. What are they really? What does
that mean for the writing? What
traditions do they come from? And I think
this is one a book definitely for that
conversation. Okay, so this book next book
I feel it represents part of me being
nature loving part of me, and I read this
book in the summer of 2016 and when it
came out.
And this book is not perfect. It's
unruly. It's messy. They're part of
elements that, you know, I kind of wonder
about. And I think that you have to take
some of the representation with a grain
of salt there, but BARKSKINS by Annie Proulx
has a very affectionate place in my
heart. I don't love it because I think
it's perfect. I love it because it
personally meant a lot to read it
when I did and how I was able to just
relax and set aside a lot of my other
reading and just read this book. It's
very long . . .  for a very long time I really
love multi-generational family sagas.
This is what it is. It's also I'm very
into nature and preservation and
understanding the world around me, and I
think that that she communicated that in
this book. And I think that she also
Illustrates how oftentimes
the destruction of land follows
colonialism pretty closely. And she just
tackles so many things. Also, I admire Annie
Proulx because she wrote this book when
she was in her 80s. I wanted to be
writing books like this when I'm in my
80s. It was phenomenal. So for me
personally, I think this definitely
represents a type of book that may not
be a perfect book to other people, but
and I don't think it's perfect, but it's
a one that's important to me. And is a
favorite to me, and I think we all have
books like that.
And so while I acknowledge this book
has some issues, I personally love it.
All right, so that's it for me. Tell me in
the comments how many out of ten that
you got correct. Thank you for watching,
and I will see you the next one. Bye, guys!
