Category: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday – Top Ten Books for People who like character driven novels

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. This weeks topic is Top Ten Books for people who like character driven novels. It was quite hard to pick ten as I could easily have listed more but here they are.

  1. Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh – one of my all time favourite books. The characters are so vivid and it’s great hearing them talk in their own voices.
  2. Talking it Over – Julian Barnes – Not my favourite Barnes (but The History of the World in 10 and a half chapters wouldn’t fit here.) but another really good use of multiple first person perspectives.
  3. The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood – it’s always hard to pick an Atwood but I think the characters and plot in this one are really interesting.
  4. The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas – Different third person perspectives drive the narrative here – each adds details to the overall story. Very well written and plotted. A recent favourite.
  5. Gone Girl – Gillian Anderson – I must admit that I found this a little irritating but it is definitely character driven with two strong characters that are full of surprises.
  6. A Perfectly Good Man – A recent favourite. Gale’s writing style is gentle, letting things unfold and characters reveal themselves.
  7. The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky – An excellent bildungsroman with strong and believable teenage characters.
  8. The Fault in Our Stars – John Green – I wasn’t always convinced by the characters but there can be no doubt that they drive the action.
  9. The Hours – Michael Cunningham – The story of three women in three different ages.
  10. A Boy Called Gabriel – Damian McNicholl – Another excellent coming of age story which details growing up gay in Ireland in the 1970s.

 

 

 

 

 

Top Ten Tuesday – once read authors.

On By kepagewriterIn Top Ten Tuesday3 Comments

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Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Authors only read once.

This wasn’t as obvious as I first thought. I tried to avoid listing people who had only written one book. Some authors I have been meaning to read more of, others not so much. It’s certainly reminding me of things that have been loitering around my TBR pile for quite a while.

1. Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre – obviously I suppose. I really ought to read more as I enjoyed this.

2. Tracey Chevalier – The Girl with the Pearl Earring – again an obvious choice. It was okay but not really my sort of thing.

3. Wilkie Collins – The Moonstone – quite a recent read – The Woman in White is quite high up my TBR list.

4. Douglas Copeland – Hey Nostradamus! – a good read – should definitely read more.

5. William Golding – Lord of the Flies – Had to read in order to teach which always seems to put me off reading any thing else by the author.

6. Doris Lessing – The Fifth Child – Didn’t like this much at all but she is much loved so perhaps I should have another go.

7. Michael Moorcock – An Alien Heat – I don’t normally like this sort of thing but I found this really enjoyable. Must read more.

8. Alice Sebold – The Lovely Bones – another read in order to teach.

9. John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men. Of course. I read this at school and since then have taught it I don’t know how many times. It’s a fabulous book but the association with school puts me off reading anymore Steinbeck.

10. Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse Five – A marvellous read and like An Alien Heat, a real surprise to love it so much.

 

 

 

Top Ten Tuesday – Ten Authors I Own the Most Books From

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It is a while since I’ve done a Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by The Broke and The Bookish)but Ten Authors I Own the Most Books from appealed so here it is.

1. Terry Pratchett – 35. It was always obvious that Pratchett was going to win. I love the discworld books although I have got a bit behind with them and haven’t read the most recent ones.
2. Margaret Atwood – 18. My favourite author.
3. Ian Rankin – 14. Mostly the Rebus books but a few others. I don’t own the whole series of Rebus books otherwise this would be a bit higher.
4. Julian Barnes – 9. Another favourite although I haven’t loved everything I’ve read by him.
4. Ian Banks – 9. A bit hit and miss but he has written some of my favourite books – The Wasp Factory, for example.
6. Irvine Welsh – 7. I started to read Welsh for my MPhil and I love his early stuff.
6. Ian McEwan – 7. Most of these were read for my MPhil and I loved some and hated others. The Child in Time is one of my favourites.
8. Kate Atkinson – 6. The Jackosn Brodie series and a couple of others.
9. Angela Carter – 5. I thought I had more than this. I need to read some more I think.
9. Martin Amis – 5. Again, a MPhil read and not a favourite.

Top Ten Tuesday – Spring TBR list

On By kepagewriterIn Top Ten Tuesday3 Comments

7aabb-toptentuesday2Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and The Bookish. This week’s top ten is ten books from your Spring TBR lists. I must admit that I don’t really like pinning myself down in such a way and I will undoubtedly get distracted by other books. However, these are the books I am currently looking forward to reading next. (That’s if I ever manage to finish Translated Accounts. I’m starting to understand why it was on my TBR pile for quite so long!)

  1. Complicity – Iain Banks (TBR Challenge)
  2. The Absolutist – John Boyne (Eclectic Reader Challenge)
  3. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier (Eclectic Reader Challenge)
  4. The Stepford Wives – Ira Levin
  5. The Rapture – Liz Jensen (TBR Challenge)
  6. Loitering With Intent – Muriel Spark
  7. The Fault in Our Stars – John Green
  8. A Dangerous Thing – Josh Lanyon
  9. Big Brother – Lionel Shriver
  10. The Talented Mr Ripley – Patricia Highsmith

 

Top Ten Tuesday – Top Ten Worlds We’d Never Want to Live In

On By kepagewriterIn Top Ten Tuesday4 Comments

Top ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week we are talking about fictional worlds we would not want to live in.

In no particular order:

1. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood. This is one of the first dystopia that I read and still ranks as one of the scariest. The humiliations that the handmaid’s go through are almost beyond imagining. Atwood’s nightmare world is frighteningly convincing.

2. 1984 – George Orwell. I read this at school. I am sure that it is at least partly responsible for my own political convictions. It is a shame that things like room 101 and big brother have been stripped of most of their meaning by imbecilic television programmes.

3. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley. I often feel like the savage in this book when I look at modern culture. I feel a little lost and confused when I see the things that people do, watch, listen to, post on social media.

4. Mad Addam series – Margaret Atwood. I haven’t read the third book of this series yet but the first two were really disturbing. As with The Handmaid’s Tale, you could really see the roots of reality in this book. Take it as a warning, folks. This is where we could be headed.

5.  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick / Bladerunner. It is particularly unsettling not to be able to tell if someone is human or not. Even more frightening is the idea that you might not even know yourself. This one eats at the very heart of the reader.

6. War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells. Oh, I know, the Martians get it in the end but up until that point, there really is no stopping them. I can’t help feeling this is what  it would be like if any aliens found us. Why travel across space and time, if you’ve not already conquered everything nearer at hand?

7. The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins. I’ve not read the rest of this series either. I liked the idea of the games and the different sectors more than I liked the way the story played out. You know everyone would watch it, that’s what makes it seem real.

8. Animal Farm – George Orwell. Another early influence on me politically. I imagine I’d be like poor old Boxer. Well-meaning but ultimately useless. I’d soon be carted off to the equivalent of the glue factory.

9. The Road – Cormac McCarthy. This is probably the bleakest book I have ever read. Some unnamed catastrophe has caused society to break down. McCarthy really captures the way that it would go once those rules were gone.

10. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro. This is another book where I liked the idea better than the execution. Children being bred purely for their organs is a chilling – and not unlikely – idea that gets to the heart of the issues surrounding cloning.

Top Ten Tuesday – Top Ten new to me books.

On By kepagewriterIn Reading, Top Ten Tuesday3 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and is a weekly top ten.

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I’ve read a lot of new (to me) authors this year. Here are the ones I enjoyed the most. 

1. Josh Lanyon – Come Unto These Yellow Sands, Snowball in Hell. It’s not often I read two books by the same author back to back. An excellent combination of LGBT issues and detective fiction.

2. Jeffrey Eugenides – The Virgin Suicides. As with a number of authors on this list, I can’t believe I didn’t read this earlier. Difficult reading at times but definitely worth it.

3. Simon Lelic – Rupture. A detective novel that explores the idea of responsibility.

4. Ben Goldacre – Bad Science – A must read for anyone who is sceptical about alternative medicine.

5. Ira Levin – Rosemary’s Baby. One that has been on my to read list for a long time. Superbly creepy.

6. Patrick McCabe – The Butcher Boy. Disturbing first person narrative of madness and neglect.

7. Iain Pears = An Instance of the Fingerpost. Interesting historical fiction with four different narrative voices adding clues to the mystery.

8. Peter Lefcourt – The Dreyfuss Affair. Funny and touching story of the romance between two baseball players.

9. Suzanna Kaysen – Girl Interrupted. An interesting contrast wit The Bell Jar.

10. Michael Moorcock – An Alien Heat. Amusing and well observed science fiction.