Well, it's very exciting to be nominated for The Booker Award by the great and legendary Jeff Whelan of the brilliant and hilarious Space Orville! I am honored to be asked and hope I can offer a few of my favorites without sacrificing all those great and wonderful books that have shaped my life.

I have to mention firstly how honored I am to be nominated by such an inspiring and exciting author. Jeff Whelan's words keep me enjoying my beloved world of scifi with a huge dose of humor and wide eyed appreciation of the craft. Thanks Jeff and thanks Rolando Garcia for passing it on to Jeff.

Right n0w my five favorite books. Well five of my favorites.  I have loved and lost so many.  I must add that as a little one, my granma inroduced me to the public  library and I spent most of my afternoons immersed in the world of books. If my nan was a book, she would be no. 1 :)

From a very young age I was fascinated by alternative realities (I was kind of praying for one to be honest).  When I found scifi I was in heaven (so to speak). Arthur C Clarke began the odyssey. This story of deception and curiosity won my desperately wanting heart and there followed and exciting introduction to the worlds of Ursla Le Guinn, Isaac Asimov, Tanith Lee, Ray Bradbury, Douglas Adams ( how much do I love Red Dwarf???!!!), Auldoux Huxley and so many more.
Wake me up and tell me my dream wasn't about another planet/plane/dimension. (Isn't it interesting that the word plane is just one letter short?)

What an incredible book to find as a 13 year old. This is the true story of an Australian through his terrible childhood. It is a  vivid portrayal of the cruelty he was subjected to but it is told (as the title suggests) in the most positive light possible. Having experienced my own very difficult childhood I desperately wanted to imerse myself in this man's recollection knowing all too well that his experience was well above my own. This novel very importantly shows that you do not have to be a literary genius to pen a fascinating and poignant novel. A must read for memoir lovers.
My other most loved memoirs is THE RUGMAKER OF MAZAR-E-SHARIF

A true confession here. I was at a book market in Melbourne, there were literally thousands of books. I walked past the sales table and saw this book. My husband was off in the distance perusing crime novels (!) This book cover seemed to call to me... can they do that? (No one has told me if books are allowed to do that.) I tried to walk away... I looked at so many other books... why was I resisting? My husband chose his books and I looked longingly back at the table. Suddenly I felt panick. Had someone else taken it? Oh no! I rushed back to the table and saw it still there and relief flooded my body. I read it in a wonderful daze wishing it would last forever. So much sadness, so much I could never understand, so much wonder.

I know this movie lets it down but this is one of the most beautifully written and contrived novels I have read. Here, writing is a perfectly woven art of love, time travel, grief, lonliness, artistic fulfilment, childhood, and growing old. I spent quite a few hours in a kind of despair knowing - because of the brilliant writing -  that the worst was yet to come and still desperately needing to read as the tears ran down my cheeks. I'm not a romantic reader at all but I chose this because of the time travel aspect. I expect I will never read something quite so clever in covering these two aspects.

Where do you start with such a smart and clever concept. I am attracted to stories about the holocaust - perhaps because it is so unbelievable to me. But the premise of this story was so captivating that I just had to read it. Death begins the tale of 'the book thief' and we immediately know we are in for the long hall. This is a book that needs to be read and it's done in such a way that we can remove ourselves - if just for a moment - and see things from a different

I have been asked to nominate the next five people, so here goes....
Lada Ray

Cinta Garcia

Stephen Ormsby

Jason Ellis

Dana Delamar

Any of those wonderful people up there may choose to post The Booker Award on their blog or website and then share with us which five books have meant the most to them. You don't have to participate but it's pretty fun :)