Only 3 favorite books?

I have to say that choosing just three favorite books is very difficult, but here are a few of they many favorites I have!

Watership Down by Richard Adams

"CHORUS: Why do you cry out thus, unless at some vison of horror?
CASSANDRA: The house reeks of death and dripping blood.
CHORUS: How so? Tis' but the ordor of the alter sacrifice.
CASSANDRA: The stench is like a breath from the tomb.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon
The primroses were over."

The overwhelming darkness in the opening of Watership Down compelled me to discover the root of the problem. In the meadow of life, why so much reference to death and sacrifice? It may be a morbid beginning that caught my attention, but the first time I read it I was about thirteen years old and had recently gone through the ongoing illness and death of my older sister. There was comfort in this book knowing that someone else knew about death and the effects it has on a person, a family and a community. This book was on my bookshelf then and it remains there now as a reminder of the lives encountered along the way.
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The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the un fashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninty-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green plant whose ape-descented life forms are so amazingly primitave that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea...."

The immediate tone of the writer made me want to say, "Earth is not insignificant!". "We are more sophisticated than loving our digital toys!" Or are we? The sarcastic humor of this book carried me thorugh the entire series at a time that reading for entertainment had been lost to me. The story of relentless man against the world, the universe really, had a way of drawing my imagination back to life. This book made reading fun again after a self induced dry season.
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The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

"We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust..."

How may people have felt their story is lost, nothing or something to be cleaned up - like dust. The Red Tent retells Dee-nah's story ( she was the daughter of Leah, Rachel,Zilpha, and Bilhah - the wives of Jacob of the old testament). Although much ficional leway is taken with the story, Diamant succeeds in telling womans story with more realistic truth about the ancient daily struggles faced and makes them situations any woman can relate to in the present day. This story is every womans story. It embraces the full experience of life and teaches the reader how to carry on in hope and faith for the future.