I have read Out Of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper at least 6 times. This book was the first book that made me cry.
This book tells the life of a girl named Melody who has cerebral palsy. Because of her cerebral palsy, Melody cannot walk or take care of her own needs, but worst of all, Melody cannot talk.
Melody has a photographic memory. She is very smart, really smart, but since she cannot speak, she cannot share this information with people, and at school she is often referred to as disabled by other students. As you can imagine, her life is hard, but that doesn’t stop Melody from being a sweet, smart and inspiring person. I definitely see the dedication to life, optimism and hope in Melody. When I first finished reading the book, I was grateful that I could talk, walk and meet my own needs for the first time in my life. Yes, being able to speak and having a voice is much more important than we think. By writing Out Of My Mind, Sharon M. Draper helped us empathize with people like Melody and reminded us how lucky so many of us are to actually be able to talk and walk. Whenever I need feeling lucky and hopeful, I take this book off the shelf and read a few pages. For me, every page in the book is meaningful and makes me feel good.
What is the book that you still re-read from time to time and what makes you keep reading it?
I apologize if the translation and pronouns are wrong, I use translation.
For someone who hasn’t read any, which one book would you recommend first?
Not the first published one. Pratchett himself discouraged readers starting there because he was still finding his footing as an author at the time and he was right: the first 2 or 3 are not good as the others, even if they’re still better than a lot of things out there.
The whole of Discworld is comprised of 41 novels informally divided in “subseries” aka novels sharing roughly the same cast of characters, but they are more or less all readable without prior knowledge, so there are a lot of starting points.
Maybe try Night Watch, the beginning of the Watch “series” and one of the best overall, or Small Gods, which is stand-alone… but any starting book of a “series” is fair game. Here you can find a handy reading order.
You’ll love pTerry, I promise ;)
I’ll second Guards, Guards! It’s such a funny book, and it introduces characters that go on to grow and change a great deal. Pratchett gets both the funny and the humanity.
I’d also recommend Thief of Time as one of Pratchett’s more standalone books. It does have recurring characters from elsewhere in Discworld, but it is more self contained and one of my personal favorites.