a stack of books

something about books gets me. i read, a lot. sometimes my best friends describe my job to people as the guy who prays and reads all day long, and that would rule. only i think most of the time i would like to read and if that can be counted as prayer then i would be all for it. however, that is not what my job really is, and i don't get to read as much as i would like, but when i do something just gets me. i can stay up for hours on end turning pages just to find out what the words on the next page with a zealousness something akin to a child waking up on christmas morning. i also have found that i get sucked into any book i read. it doesn't even have to be good. i have this optimism when it comes to books that is somewhat fatal. even if i haven't enjoyed one word of a book, i find myself turning all of the pages until i finally reach the end because somewhere in the back of my head i believe that a book can redeem itself and become something worth reading, if even in the very last page. perhaps it is because i believe that if only one sentence, one thought, one word stands out in a book, then it has served its purpose. don't confuse this for some sort of relativity towards books though. i certainly have a ranking of books that i find to be good, important, or otherwise noteworthy. to be sure there are plenty of books out there that are total crap and don't really deserve to be published, but who am i to squash anyone's dreams?

without any further ado: a list of 10 books i have found helpful/inspirational/important/blah blah blah
(note: they are in no particular order of importance and some wouldn't make a true top 10 list for me)

1. Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell
2. Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor & Chaos by Tim Keel
3. a Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren
4. Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
5. Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
6. The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
7. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
8. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
9. City of God by St. Augustine
10. True at First Light by Ernest Hemingway

What would your list include?