As an avid bookworm, as well as one of the founding members of the Black River Falls High School Book Club (also known as Tuesdays With Cheri), I obviously read a lot of books. Below is a little list of my top five favorite books of all time. My hope is that you will find these books interesting and if you take the time to read them, enjoyable.

1. What Happened to Lani Garver by Carol Plum-Ucci
This is a great book about Claire Mackenzie, a high school student in the isolated town of Hackett Island, which is appropriately by itself on an island of the same name. Claire, who missed a year of middle school while dealing with leukemia, is now a cheerleader, part of the in-crowd, dating the most popular guy around and is sufficiently hiding her true self; an anorexic guitar player who is struck by nightmares and an alcoholic mother.

When Lani Garver comes to Hackett Island, her world is turned upside down. First of all, no one really knows if Lani is straight or gay. But more importantly, no one knows if Lani is a boy or a girl. Claire and Lani grow to be pretty close, and Lani even convinces her to go to therapy for her eating disorder. However, Claire’s boyfriend and cheer buddies do not like this new development in Claire, and trouble is soon afoot.

*WARNING!* This is a great book for people who like cliffhanger endings, and if you don’t like them, my suggestion is to stay away from Carol Plum-Ucci in general.

2. Unwind by Neal Schusterman
If there was a second civil war on the subject of abortion, which side would you be on? Unwind takes place several decades after this war called “the Heartland War” which passed the Bill of Life, which was a compromise between the Pro-life and Pro-choice armies. To quote the book, “The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. However, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a parent my choose to retroactively “abort” a child on condition that the child’s life doesn’t end.” This process of “aborting” a child is called unwinding, and is the bane of all teenagers until they turn 18.

Unwind follows the story of three teens doomed to life on the run after being proclaimed as unwinds. Connor, Risa and Lev go through many a fiasco, including posing as students in a school, picking up a “storked” (abandoned on a doorstep) baby, joining a resistance, and ultimately fighting to stay alive.

Unwind is a wonderful book that will make you laugh, cry and question your ideals- not to mention realize how much we take life for granted.

3. Freshman by Michael Gerber
Hart Fox is one of the smartest kids at his school, and his 18-year-old life’s goal is to beat his arch-rival in getting into his dream school: Ivy League participant Stutts. On the day he finds out which one of them will make it into Stutts, he is shocked to learn that his spot has been taken by the school dunce, Trip Darlington. Trip’s father, the absolutely loaded Burlington Darlington III, is running for governor, and Trip’s going to a great school is one more thing to make him look better than the opponent.

Hart is outraged and after some negotiations manages to get himself in, tuition paid, all of the courses he wants… with one downfall: he must do all of Trip’s homework as well. Of course Trip won’t make it easy, as he has an instant dislike for Hart. Freshman is telling how Hart survives his freshman year as an outsider whose eyeballs are in the wrong sockets.

Freshman is a funny book all around. From its cover, a parody of a Facebook page; to the quirky characters, and even the involvement of a vampire, I can honestly say this is one of my all time favorite books.

4. The Bloody Jack series by L. A. Meyer
Bloody Jack is the first in a fantastic series about Mary “Jack” Faber, an 18th century London street urchin who finds work on a ship. Concealing the fact that she is a girl, 13 year old “Jacky” makes friends with the other five ship’s boys (Willy, Jaimy, Tink, Benjy and Davy) on the HMS Dolphin. The six establish their trust and love for each other by forming a “Brotherhood” and getting a blue anchor tattooed on their left hips.

Throughout the books, Jacky gets into various amounts of trouble, like getting discovered as a female and being sent to a finishing school stateside (The Curse of the Blue Tattoo), being kidnapped from said school and being sold into slavery (In the Belly of the Bloodhound), and in every book getting closer to marrying her true love, fellow ship’s boy James Emerson Fletcher.

These books are good for both dudeskis and dudeskas, as they involve just enough romance and action to even it out. The series includes Bloody Jack, The Curse of the Blue Tattoo, Under the Jolly Roger, In the Belly of the Bloodhound, Mississippi Jack, My Bonny Light Horseman, The Rapture of the Deep, and The Wake of the Lorelei Lee.

*WARNING!* This series is ever-expanding, so don’t take it on unless you are willing for commitment.

5. The Maximum Ride series by James Patterson
It would be great to have wings, wouldn’t it? Not exactly. For mutant teens Max and Fang, along with their flock, Iggy, Angel, Nudge and Gasman, wings don’t help at all. Maximum Ride is about the Flock, a group of kids who were experimented on by scientists at a facility called “the School.” They escape with the help of Jeb Batchelder, a scientist who raised them with kindness, and they are plunged into the lives of fugitives, always on the run from human/lupine creatures called “Erasers.”

But that’s not all. For one, each of the children seems to have some sort of experiment induced superpowers: Angel can read minds, Fang can blend into the darkness with uncanny ability, Nudge can both draw metal to her and is super-tech savvy, blind Iggy is slowly regaining his sight and can “feel” colors, and Gasman, well, you can probably guess what he does. Maximum herself has “the Voice,” an internal voice that tells her things, some more helpful than others.

Secondly, Angel picks up an adorable little Cairn terrier along the course of the first book. He surprises them all when he speaks, and quickly becomes a part of the flock.

Maximum Ride includes several books, titled Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment, Maximum Ride: School’s Out Forever, Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, Maximum Ride: The Final Warning, MAX: A maximum Ride Novel and Fang: A Maximum Ride Novel. This series is one of my favorites and is still expanding, with the next book Angel: A Maximum Ride Novel coming out in February of 2011. I would recommend it to everyone, as (like Bloody Jack) it is a great blend of genres.