Welcome to our Ten Book Challenge where our favorite authors share some of their most beloved and memorable reads—from the books with their favorite covers and best opening lines, to the reads they gift and the bookstores they frequent. This is a peek into your favorite authors’ perfect bowl of literary comfort food. We hope you discover something delicious!

Winner of the American Book Award—and named one of the best books of the year by The New York Public Library, Kirkus and Library Journal—Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Sabrina & Corina is a short story collection sure to make you laugh, cry and learn. Focused on Latinas of indigenous ancestry who live in the gorgeous yet brutal American West, the female characters navigate the land and their lives with the grace of feminine power; the caution of those traumatized from the violations of their culture and bodies; the exploration of female relationships; and the universal experience of abandonment and what “home” truly means.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine herself is from Denver, Colorado, and Sabrina & Corina has earned countless accolades: a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Bingham Prize, The Clark Prize, The Story Prize, the Saroyan International Prize; her work has been honored with the Denver Mayor’s Award for Global Impact in the Arts and the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Award; and she’s written for The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, O: the Oprah Magazine, The American Scholar, Boston Review, and more.

The Book I……

I last bought/am currently reading:  My Heart Is A Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

I recommend to everyone:  Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

That was my favorite to read last year, and why:  Breasts & Eggs because Mieko Kawakami is an enormous talent and this was her first novel translated into English that I read

Whose author I would love to have lunch with:  Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze

That made me realize language had power: Lost In The City by Edward P Jones

I’d like to see adapted to the screen:  Geek Love by Katherine Dunne

That made me laugh out loud—or cry—while reading it:  Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung

That has the most gorgeous cover:  Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives (blue coat cover)

With the best opening line:  One Hundred Years of Solitude, “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

Bookstore that I frequent/is my favorite:  West Side Books and Tattered Cover

Bonus: What question do you wish we asked, and your answer!

Book that I’ve read more than once: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

Don’t miss our exclusive interview with Kali Fajardo-Anstine about the customer question in a Denver bookshop that made her realize her true calling, her next project—a debut novel!—and what she’s reading.