Top Ten Books That I Will Never Read

This week's Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by The Broke & The Bookish) is a linkup that I couldn't pass up: Books that I will never read! This list isn't all hate, but there is a whole lot of judgement, side eye, and duck lips going on here.

10. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
They are just so big and daunting… and I have to make character maps with most normal length novels in order to remember the characters. What would I have to do with these books?

9. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
This book was written to instill atheism and undermine Christianity. There’s a difference between writing a children’s book to teach about something (morals, friendship, atheism), and writing a book to teach kids that religion sucks. Even if your religion is believing in magical invisible flying cats, I believe authors should respect that.

8. Nicholas Sparks novels
I see the movies, which are cute, sappy, and predictable, and that’s enough for me. I’m more of a Georgian England romance kind of gal.

7. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
This book is similar to a good pop song that you would have enjoyed except for the radio played it a million and two times too many. It’s likely that I’ll read some of Green’s other books (I read Will Grayson, Will Grayson actually), but I’m gonna pass on this one.

6. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
I’m feeling so cynical while making this list! But from what I understand of this book, the author has a mid-life crisis, travels around and discovers simple living and gratefulness, then writes about it. Great if you need to read this, but I already did that whole experience five years ago.

5. The Shack by Wm. Paul Young
Please find me one person that you have met in real life that liked this book. One. Person.

4. Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella
I’m as big of a Sex & The City fan as the next lady who wonders how Carrie could afford a walk-in closet in NYC living on the money made from a sex column, but I like my trashy TV time to be separate from my book reading times.

3. The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter
Duuude, I listened to a This American Life (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/527/180-degrees) episode about this book and its author. The author is actually a very influential KKK member and this book is absolutely not a change of heart.

2. Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyer
I just. I can’t, you guys.

1. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
I do enjoy reading me some good live blogs, however.

My Top Ten All-Time Favorite Authors

This week's edition of Top Ten Tuesdays (hosted by The Broke & The Bookish) features my all-time favorite authors! Even though most of the books I read and have read in my life are by YA authors, when I put this list together I realized that not many of them made the cut. For me, YA books are fun and entertaining, and they provide conversation material for important contemporary subjects.

But, I chose the following ten authors because they: significantly changed my way of seeing the world, consistently write books that appeal to me, and have books that I have read multiple times. I also listed my suggestions for a good ‘intro’ book if you’d like to read them but aren’t sure where to start.

p.s. Play a game! Try to guess the author from their picture!

David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day) // Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz) // Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers: The Story of Success)

Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist) // Laura Ingalls Wilder (Farmer Boy) // Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre) // Shirley Jackson (The Lottery) // C.S. Lewis (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)

Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Do any of my favs make your list?

Top Ten Most Recently Added Books on my TBR List

This week's edition of Top Ten Tuesdays (hosted by The Broke & The Bookish) is about the books that I've recently added to my TBR list. My To-Be-Read list is long (officially 317, unofficially 502), and jumps all over the place. From sci-fi to sociology, poetry to philosophy, cookbooks to picture books, contemporaries to classics. I hear about a book somewhere that seems vaguely interesting and I add it to the queue because otherwise I will never remember it again. Part of me admires my fellow bookworms who are more selective than I about which books make it to this list. But the other part of me likes trying all sorts of genres and types of books, because really, I just enjoy the experience of a good story.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
As I have a quiet obsession with contemporary Japanese lit and I recently finished A Tale for the Time Being, Goodreads suggested I read this book. It’s about a poor housekeeper who helps a brilliant math professor who has short-term memory loss, and what it means to live in the present. It sounds like it blends math with metaphors for life in a beautiful way.

What Angels Fear (Sebastian St. Cyr #1) by C.S. Harris
Jessica at Quirky Bookworm is in love with the Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series that is set in Georgian England. I’m in love with these three words being in the same sentence: mystery, Georgian, England.

The Face by Ruth Ozeki
This is a collection of essays by various authors writing about their own faces. It’s a little more literary than things I usually read, but I’m curious about the potentials in the theme drawn from a Jorge Luis Borges quote: “A face has a social history: it tells of lineage and belonging. It exists is relation to other faces past and future. Our faces are constant but evolving companions. They are certainly not the faces we are born with, and we don't know which face we will be wearing when we die. A face accumulates signs of wear and betrays our habits of living. Above all, our faces are our most distinctive signatures; flesh-and-blood emblems of the identities we carry around invisibly.”

All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki
This fictional novel about industrial agriculture giants and antagonizing protestors and community activists attracted me mostly because I’m interested in reading more books by Ruth Ozeki. Though, I do have a passionate hate for Monsanto and a distrust of large farming operations...

My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki
Ruth Ozeki’s first novel is set in Japan and features a mysterious link between a Japanese tv show and the American meat industry. Again, not THAT interested in the book but I’m curious about the author.

The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
Someone said this was a book from their childhood that they would like to revisit during last week’s TTT… I can’t for the life of me remember who posted that! But the point here is that I LOVED Anne of Green Gables and I never once thought that L.M. Montgomery might have written other books. Silly me.

The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
A girl with supernatural abilities (and memory loss) learns that she is part of a secret organization of highly skilled fighters, and wants to know what happened in her past. Intrigue, conspiracy, British government… I’m curious! (Again, I can’t recollect who recommended this to me. I have memory loss too).

The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
This is an older roman noir, first published in 1952. Roman noirs are mysteries where the protagonist is not the detective, but is a victim, perpetrator, or both. The protagonist in this book is a sheriff in a Texas oil town. Are you not eager to read this gritty crime novel?

The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell
Dystopia (check). Biological manipulation (check). Main character trying to stay alive while multiple factions try to get her (check).

Nest by Ester Erhlich
Wendy Darling at The Midnight Garden posted a great review of Nest. This middle-grade novel seems beautiful and soft, while addressing harder issues (the main character’s mom develops a serious disease) in a genuine and authentic way.

Top Ten Books From My Youth That I Want to Re-Visit

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. It’s fun to play along, especially since I like to make lists. Join us! I haven’t re-read a book in years, mostly because there are so many other books that are waiting to be discovered. Some of the books on my list I’ll wait to re-visit with my future kids. For the others, I just need to get over my fear of not “being productive” and re-read them!

Piggins by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Jane Dyer
These three books about the crime-solving butler Piggins were my first mystery reads, and I begged my mom to get them for me every time we went to the library. The illustrations are intricate and have clues to help solve the mystery, if your eyes are observant enough!

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
I loved them when I was little, so did my younger brother. We tag-teamed checking the various books out from the library because there were rules on not checking a book out back-to-back, only being allowed to get so many books by one author/subject at a time, etc. Bill Watterson is a genius because Eric and I loved them, and so did my mom and dad.

Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little House books were a source of comfort and fueled playtime ideas when I was young and lived in a big woods, too. Farmer Boy is my absolute favorite, and I was overjoyed when I got to read it with a former student that I was tutoring. Honestly though, I don’t remember what happens to the Ingalls family when Laura gets a little older, so I wouldn’t mind discovering that all over again.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
My mom started reading these to me when I was seven or eight, and when I was a little older I read them to myself countless times. Sometimes I would just read my favorite parts. When I was having a bad day, I would sit in my closet and concentrate so hard on going to Narnia.

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
I read this book seven times in 2012. I tried so hard to become Harriet: I created a spy kit, bought a hooded sweatshirt, carried a marbled composition notebook everywhere (though it wasn’t green because my town only sold the black ones), recorded what the neighbors were doing, played “town” according to the rules in the book, and I even tried to like tomato sandwiches at a time in life when I couldn’t stand tomatoes.

Agatha Christie Mysteries
I progressed through mystery novels in this order: Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes. I don’t really remember which Agatha Christie books I read, so that’s a sure sign that they will be fresh when I get to read them again.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
I read this book in 6th grade (didn’t understand it) and 10th grade (cried a lot). I told myself that I would definitely read it again.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
I read all the Hitchhiker’s Guide books in a row when I was 13 or so. I remember giggling an awful lot, and trying to explain the jokes to whomever was around me, but realizing that it’s best if you just read it yourself. I also remember being awed by the revelation of 42. So overdue for a re-read.

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
I read this book twice when I was in high school, and it completely changed my worldview about Christianity and the church. Miller helped me make my faith more personal and less “this-is-just-what-we-do.” This book made me realize that there are many flavors of Christians, and guess what… they are all still Christians!

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
I have actual plans of revisiting it this year! I’m in line for the audiobook of The Fellowship of the Ring at my library, and it’s a full cast BBC production. I’m stoked. I read it in middle school and I am so positive that I missed a lot of its depth. That’s true of just about all the classics that I read when I was a teenager, though.

Top Ten Books on My Spring TBR List

This week's Top Ten Tuesday hosted by The Broke and the Bookish is about books on our spring TBR pile. Just fyi, It’s AUTUMN down here in the Southern Hemisphere! My favorite season! On my list I decided to not include books that I’ve already started.

10. Fragile Bones: Harrison & Anna by Lorna Schultz Nicholson
I love books, TV shows, and films with characters who have autism. I’ve even gone to real-life lecture about autism by an autistic man, and I will always listen to a radio program about it. I cannot explain the source of my curiosity. In Fragile Bones, two teens, one with high-functioning autism and the other who is the top of her class, buddy up through a school program and find their lives mixing in ways that they didn’t sign up for.

9. Cleo by Lucy Coats
I’ve had a life-long attraction to Ancient Egyptian lore. I hard-core fangirled when I saw the Book of the Dead in the Louvre. So of course I wanted to read this: teenage Cleopatra escapes to the temple of Isis to flee from her awful step-sisters. When Isis needs help to regain her full power, Cleo returns to take on Alexandria and her future.

8. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
I’ve read mixed reviews: most are stellar, but Alyce from At Home With Books gave it a derp face. I requested it from the library because I like psychological thrillers, and there is an audiobook version. I go through a lot of audiobooks because I commute at least two hours a day. So, a commuting girl sees something horrific on her daily commute and it changes the way she sees the world? I’m looking forward to arriving to work completely terrified.

7. The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler
I recently finished reading A Tale for the Time Being, and I have a small book hangover from it. That’s what attracted me to The Book of Speculation - it has a similar plot. The main character receives a book that gives him clues to his family’s history. He realizes that he must act quickly to find all the clues and try to save a relative from the family curse.

6. Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Bruna from Bruna Writes and Ana from Butterflies of the Imagination both recommended that I read The Lunar Chronicles series, and they aren’t the only ones. I finally put myself on the hold list at the library. Besides meeting a PopSugar Reading Challenge need, this will satisfy several YA subgenres I like: fairytale retellings, dystopias, and sci-fi.

5. The Buried Giant by Kazuro Ishiguro
I keep seeing this around places, including a review by Neil Gaiman, and I kind of have an obsession with novels written by Japanese people or Japanese descendants. It’s not because I’m one of those people who wears cosplay and believes I was born in the wrong culture. I like the sense of acceptance of the self, the pacing, the introspective attention to details, and refined use of language that are generally present in contemporary Japanese literature. I don’t know much about the story (and I like it like that!) besides this: a VI century British couple journeys to find their estranged son.

4. Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata (manga series)
The other day when I was exploring the Japanese neighborhood in São Paulo with my boyfriend, we stopped into a bookshop. Silas started swooning over the Death Note series because he had seen a remarkable play based on the story. From what I understand: a young man finds a notebook and discovers that if he writes someone’s name in it, that person dies. He starts out using it to bring justice, but then the power gets to his head.

3. The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery 
Did you know that I’m a scuba diver? And that one of my favorite sea creatures is the octopus? When I go to an aquarium (which I love to do), I divide my time between trying to get an adrenaline rush from the shark tank and trying to communicate telepathically with the octopi. I’m very excited about reading this non-fiction on the amazing intelligence of octopi.

2. Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo (manga series)
Guys. There is this app called Manga Rock and it gives you access to pretty much every manga ever. I’m trying to still be a productive member of society, but it’s reeaalllly hard. Manga is addicting because it’s so quick to read, the stories are imaginative and creative, and nearly all of it is serialized (Gotta catch ‘em all!). Post-WWIII Tokyo, sci-fi, and a struggle for an extreme power… Sign me up!

1. Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer
To be honest, I wouldn’t naturally choose this book to read based on the blurb (a girl goes to a therapy home to receive assistance with the grieving process over her dead boyfriend). But I heard an interview with the author, read several positive reviews on blogs, and watched a booktube where it was endorsed. I’m a curious person, plus a cover art whore.

Top Ten Book Characters That Would Be Sitting At My Lunch Table

If I wake up early enough, I can smell fall in the air even with the thermostat sitting above 40 degrees. I’ve been reminiscing about university days and bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils, the smells of roasted corn and chiles common in southern Arizona, farmers markets and crisp bike rides. In honour of going back to school, this Top Ten Tuesday by The Broke and the Bookish is themed: Book Characters That Would Be Sitting At My Lunch Table.

Image Source: The Harry Potter Lexicon

Hermione Granger from Harry Potter 

I can’t say exactly which character is my favourite in the Harry Potter universe, but I know for a fact that Hermione and I are the most similar (proof). I like her because she is like me, and we would get along great (unless that is, we were feeling threatened by scholastic rivalry).

Illustration credit: The Republic of Pemberly 

Elizabeth Bennet & Colonel Fitzwilliam from Pride and Prejudice 

These two are witty on their own, but play off each other so well when they are put in the same room. Their banter and tongue-in-cheek comments would keep the whole table entertained.

Illustration source

Lincoln O’Neill from Attachments 

Lincoln and I have a lot of the same interests, and he is the type of person I hung out with in high school: nerdy, unassuming, has abnormal quirks but isn’t embarrassed by himself. Plus, I want his apartment. He could be my book boyfriend.

Joachim from The Christmas Mystery

He is young, but full of wonder, creativity, and ideas. If he got a little older, we would have a fun time making art and stories together. I know he would always be uncovering more mysteries and noticing little things that normal people just can’t see.

Illustration credit: Ryan Jimenez 

Cinna from The Hunger Games 

He is the most selfless character in the Hunger Games, has the best sense of style, is down-to-earth and straight-talking…but what I like most about Cinna is that he uses his talents, career, and knowledge to do very, very important things. Think of all those hours spent on seemingly meaningless work making costumes, when actually it was training and preparation for something infinitely meaningful.

Illustration credit: Wokjow

Hans Hubermann & Liesel Meminger from The Book Thief 

I just finished reading The Book Thief and I haven’t gotten over my love for these characters yet. I didn’t put Rudy and Max on the official list but I love them too!

Illustration credit: Pauline Baynes, source

Lucy from The Chronicles of Narnia

I’m noticing a trend—I like honest characters. Out of the Pevensie children, Lucy is the most honest with herself and others, and doesn’t doubt what she knows. Her faith is steadfast. She is quick to help, keeps a positive attitude, and is generous. I know she would share her pudding cups with me.

John Ames from Gilead

This man is far removed from the school lunch table, but he is so calming and amiable. When things get stressful, he would be able to point me to the things in life which really matter, and give me some practical advice along the way.

Top Ten Books I Really Want To Read But Don't Own Yet

Between the library, ARCs for review, friends, and books I am trying to read to sell back, I have put a moratorium on book buying. My self-imposed bookstore exile has increased my to-read lists because it encourages me to read more. Thanks to the ladies at The Broke and the Bookish for inspiring this list!

x. The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen

When I asked a couple teen girls at my church what they read, they lit up and told me about this series. Naturally, I have to read it.