My favorite Cleveland real estate agent Carol Cohen has created a new MEME regarding your five favorite books. This was a tough list for me pull together for a couple of reasons. I love to read, but haven't doing as much of late, and for me to pull together into a "top five" list well ... that's hard to do.

1. Killer Angels, Michael Shaara (1974). The Battle of Gettysburg is one of the most studied and over discussed battles of all time. And Shaara's book does an amazing job of telling the story of those three days from the pivotel players in this amazing battle. A few years ago (after several readings of the book) I had a chance to visit the battle site and I could see the words from the book come to life in an amazing way.
2. The Power of Postive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale (1952). This book has been republished a few times over the past 55 years and the stories and challenges are still viable in today's world. I was introduced to this book in college and then had the opportunity work at Peale's alma mater Ohio Wesleyan University - based in Delaware, Ohio - and the book even became more powerful to me.
3. Bill James Historical Abrstract 1983, Bill James (1983). It was at least 10 years old when I picked this book up at a garage sale. It sat on my shelf for a while until I finally read it and it completely changed how I looked at the world of baseball. No longer was just the "hits, runs, and errors" enough but it had to go another step. I began to realize the depth that baseball stats really had and I think it was this book that set my love of baseball over other sports. It followed with other Bill James books and his fellow sabermetrics including John Sickels and Michael Lewis' Moneyball and has continually spawned my love of Strat-O-Matic baseball.
4. Little Black Book of Connections, Jeffrey Gitomer (2006). I was in Barnes & Noble only a matter of days after becoming a REALTOR and found this book. It opened my eyes to the "how to" in business dealings. I've become a Gitomer-holic buying up his other books and simply loving the stuff he has to say.
5. Sole Survivor, Dean Koontz (1997). This was a very tough decision to make, I got into Koontz's books when I was in high school and have been reading them sense. Got out of the habit lately as I've been focusing on more self-help books.

Thanks for stopping by and I've had to MEME a few others ...

• Michelle DeRepentigny, Georgia
• Maureen Francis, Michigan
• Katerina Gasset, Florida
• Dena Stevens, Colorado

Photograph by Chad Green and used via license from stock.xchng.