Insects fly, read.

The first books I can remember hearing true buzz about- The way I selected books to read back then was chiefly the pitch of their buzz.

1. Catcher in the rye,
   
2. Life of pi

My older and cooler cousin recommended Catcher in the Rye. I remember being unmoved by it, and shocked by all the swears! Number and severity of swears in literature was only going to increase exponentially the more I read and the older I got. C'est la vie. I liked it, because I thought I should like it. Nevertheless I was happy to be introduced to J.D. Salinger then, because I went on to read Franny and Zooey which I actually connected with at the time and still do.

Life of Pi; a former teacher was reading with her book club. I didn't pick up on any media hype, didn't know about the Booker Prize etc. Just a word of mouth pick - I also really liked the cover; bright red with a tiger's face. Then I liked that it was partially set in Toronto (Scarborough), then the questions it tackled, then the narration etc. etc. Yann Martel finally has a follow-up coming out; Beatrice and Virgil. Despite publishers' attempts to market it as "shocking" I'm really looking forward to it. I'm excited to see what he's been up to.