Books!!!!!! Reading has always been one of my favorite pastimes. I love the sense of escape that a good book will offer. For novels and short stories, my tastes run the gamut from the classics (Henry James, Austen, Bronte...both of them), to American novelists both classic and contemporary (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Stienbeck, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison) to the guilty pleasures of modern day "chic lit"(Jennifer Wiener, Helen Fielding, Sophie Kinsella) ,and finally to those that I can't quite fit…