English professor Dee Anna Phares chooses five books.

“Asking me to list my five favorite novels is like asking me to choose which of my internal organs I like best,” Phares said. “I am attached to all of them. So, instead of undertaking the Herculean task of choosing a suitable quintet from all of literature, I will select my top five novels about literature [in no particular order].”

1. The Blind Assassin (2000) by Margaret Atwood - A literary mélange of memoir, mystery, sci-fi, history and the epistolary tradition.

2. Possession (1990) by A.S. Byatt - Literary detective story meets Victorian romance.

3. Pale Fire (1962) by Vladimir Nabokov - A weirdly wonderful exploration of authorship, narrative and sanity.

4. Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) by Salman Rushdie — It answers the question, “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?”

5. Orlando (1928) by Virginia Woolf - A great pseudo-biography touching on personal and artistic transformation.

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