I don’t do a lot of memes. Partly because I never discover them in time (so behind – more than 300 posts on my Google Reader…!) but also because … well, I guess I just like doing this my own way. However – today, I stumbled upon the meme for today’s Top Ten Tuesday on Sam’s blog. Now, the Top Ten Tuesday meme is one I’ve actually been wanting to do for a while. It’s hosted on The Broke and the Bookish blog. Today’s topic is the best 10 books I’ve read ever since I started blogging and I thought it would be fun to make such a list. So here they are – my top 10 (although in random order – I couldn’t rank them…).
- Mark Helprin: The Winter’s Tale. A wonderful tale of New York but not the New York you think you know. About a horse – and about a beautiful although unlikely love.
- Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. A young boy trying to come to terms with loosing his father in the 9-11 attack. So so good.
- Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White. Such a thrilling read. I just dived into this one and hardly came up for breath before it was done.
- Orhan Pamuk: Snow. Orhan Pamuk is probably going to become one of my favorite authors. This one was amazing.
- Lionel Shriver: We Need to Talk About Kevin. Definitely not a book for new mothers! This is the story of Kevin told in letters written by his mother. Kevin is a high school killer and his mother writes his father, trying to figure out how it all happened.
- Donna Tartt: The Secret History. A story of a group of Classics students who become a bit too influenced by the Greek mythology they study…
- Yiyun Li: The Vagrants. Such a sad story from China – although beautiful at the same time. It’s a book about relations – and how many different people are influenced by the execution of one young woman.
- Jack Vance: The Complete Lyonesse. If you like a fairytales, this is a book for you. This is a beautiful and well-written and wonderfully long fairytale with princesses, princes, magicians, kings and queens, fairies and everything else, that makes a fairytale. This is good!
- Charles Dickens: David Copperfield. This is the story of David Copperfield’s life, starting with his birth, and it’s good. It’s somewhat autobiographical and a great book to read as your first Dickens – or whenever. It’s just a great great book.
- Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections. This book did what the best books do when we read them at the right moment. It taught me things about my own life, about my parents and our relations. It’s a great story about a family, a father slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s and a mother trying to get them all together for one last Christmas in the family home.
And yes, I know now that the memes for Top Ten Tuesday are posted so you can write about them in advance… Slow learner here!
The Literary Bunny 
I’m glad to see The Woman in White on your list – it’s one of my favourite classics! I haven’t read any of the others you’ve mentioned, though I’m hoping to read David Copperfield soon.
David Copperfield is such a great book! But then again, I have a thing for Dickens … Not that I have read that much by him yet but I like what I read! And The Woman in White is just great!
Great list. I felt the same way about the Correction, and for similar reasons I also loved American Beauty and The Royal Tenenbaums. Nothing like a dysfunctional family to get me thinking about my own.
The funny thing is that I watched the latter two movies with my best friend who grew up in Nepal with a much more traditional and respectful family system of interaction than I did. “You talk back to your parents?” he’d ask in amazement. Yeah, I did, maybe once or twice. Or maybe some multiple of that.
Yay, you made a list! The Woman in White would have been on my list too but unfortunately I read it pre-blogging. Whilst I liked The Moonstone, it wasn’t quite as good as Woman in White. The Vagrants sounds really interesting, I’ve added it to my wishlist 🙂
I made a list 🙂 And yeah, The Woman in White is just so good. Much better than I expected. The Vagrants is a really great book. I don’t think many people know it but it was really sad, moving – and interesting!
I’m so glad you read Jack Vance! I hardly ever see him mentioned on blogs. My husband got me reading Vance. I must admit that I like his SF as much as his Fantasy.
I’ve only read this one by Vance and it’s just gorgeous. I intend to read more by him and have added some to my wish list, I just haven’t made it to them yet. Can you recommend any titles? Or maybe any SF titles in general? I never read SF but I would like to remedy that.