Thanks to The Broke and the Bookish, there’s another great topic for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday:
March 26: Top Ten Books I Recommend The Most
So these are the top ten books I’d recommend to people wanting to escape into a great book. These are some of my favourite reads across multiple genres.
For anyone who has never read any Neil Gaiman, I strongly recommend starting with this novel to get a sense of this author’s dark imagination and sly humour.
I don’t like zombie novels but I loved this! This book remains my best read of 2012 and I strongly recommend this to anyone looking for a slightly more philosophical take on zombies and the apocalypse.
This book took me by total surprise. It’s a lovely contemporary YA novel set in Australia – poetic, sweet and delightful.
Not the easiest book to read given it’s odd structure and the fact that it spans several genres from historical to far-future science fiction. Still, this book remains one of my all time favourites and is well worth tackling.
A truly beautiful story written in exquisite prose. This is a story about magic and love with a subtle mythological setting and tender characters I couldn’t help but for in love with. Sean Kendrick will forever be one of my book boyfriends.
This is a really different read and it might not appeal to everyone. For those looking for something different, something quirky and controversial, then this might be the book for you. I loved it, even with the book’s obstreperous narrator. I particularly loved the exploration of a polyamorous relationship between two men and a woman but be warned, this book is full of bad language, drug use, sex and violence.
I recommend this whole series. The writing is brilliant, the settings fantastic and vividly realised and the story is magical. If you enjoy Arthurian legend, you’ll love this.
A great epic fantasy! While I think the second book was a little tedious, the first installment in this epic series is one of the best fantasy novels I’ve ever read and I’ve read a great many.
More epic fantasy for a younger audience. Ever since I saw the TV series as a kid and then devoured all the books in the series, this story has stuck with me for almost twenty years – it’s that good!
The last book on my list is a tricky read. Not only is it written with little to no punctuation but it is also written in the Brooklyn slang used by the characters. This takes a while to decipher but once you’ve got a grip on the prose, this is one emotional roller-coaster. I saw the movie first – it broke my heart, breaks it every time I watch it – and the book is that much more devastating, providing more personal insights into each of the characters as the spiral ever downwards. Violence, language and drug use is rampant in this book but it’s a brilliant novel about how just a few bad decisions can destroy lives.
And that’s my top ten for this Tuesday. Have you read any of the books I recommend? What are your must-read recommendations?
