You can learn a lot about a person by what books he or she chooses to read. The following titles are among the books that have helped to shape who I am and how I view the world. I think these books reveal something significant about life, about people and about the human condition. I'll add to the list from time to time.

-- Ray Elliott

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee All Over but the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries by Kaylie Jones From Here to Eternity by James Jones The Thin Red Line by James Jones Close Quarters by Larry Heinemann Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann One to Count Cadence by James Crumley The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway My Dog Skip by Willie Morris The Colony by John Bowers

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt Lucky Come Hawaii by Jon Shirota The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer Sophie's Choice by William Styron Catch 22 by Joseph Heller The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell North Toward Home by Willie Morris The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain