Let's Give This New Social Media Trend a Purpose

A new trend is sweeping social media which I can't resist participating in but I want to give it a purpose so I am donating to Give A Book (I've just made a donation to Give A Book. You can do the same at www.virginmoneygiving.com/charities/giveabook) and also recommend English PEN and any books for prisoners scheme. Reading and writing are more important than I can put into words so if I am to share the books that stayed with me and affected me I'd like everyone to have the opportunity to be similarly changed and to broaden their mind. Words and ideas can change the world - but crucially, they can change you as an individual. Let's give this trend a purpose and spread the word. Because, as Give a Book says, reading matters. If you don't read you can only think and dream so far.

My ten books are:

1. The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand 
2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
3. Middlemarch - George Eliot 
4. L'Etranger - Albert Camus 
5. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand 
6. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf 
7. The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot 
8. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 
9. Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock - Matthew Quick 
10. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 

Honourable mentions to Mockingjay, The Book Thief, 1984, Brave New World, Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, The Bell Jar, Lord of the Rings and Wuthering Heights