Top 10 7 Unread Books on My Shelf

It's been forever since I've done one of these. This is a particularly interesting topic because I just weeded out a ton of old books from my shelves, mostly college history texts. So I do plan on getting to all of these or else I wouldn't have kept them.

7. Dan Simmons, Ilium

Hey look, it's 700+ pages. I didn't love the Hyperian Cantos THAT much.

6. Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

This one's only 152 pages. Really, I have no excuse.

5. Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

I loved Oryx & Crake and got it signed when I saw Atwood at a local college last year. I actually started this but abandoned it for some reason, even though the premise was intriguing.

4. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

I've seen him live too, along with Salman Rushdie. Unlike Atwood, who was very humorous and engaging, Rushdie and Eco were so dull I actually don't remember anything they said or did. But still, I've heard many great things about this book.

3. Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus

2. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

I love Thomas Mann. I've read many short stories by both him, as well as novellas by his contemporary Hermann Hesse and yet I still can't bring myself to crack open either of these two thick tomes. I'll get to them eventually, I promise - I even spared them my recent Book Purge. Someday.

1. John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

Srsly, WTF. This book has everything I love - experimental Modernism, New York City, the early twentieth century - and I've read The 42nd Parallel twice. And this has been on my shelf for, what, two years now???

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists! Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top 10 Trends I'd Like to See More/Less Of

More

5. Steampunk

I think there's already plenty out there and I just need to read it. Love love LOVE steampunk fashion.

4. Standalones

There are so many series out there already and most of us really don't have the time.

3. Indie Bookstores

Do yourself and your local economy a favor!

2. Cthulhu Mythos

OF COURSE. Steampunk Cthulhu, now there's a story!

1. International Literature

Because America doesn't read nearly enough.

Less

5. eBooks

Meh.

4. "Chick Lit"

Insulting the intelligence of women everywhere.

3. Twilight

Please go away and take your diehard fangirls with you.

2. "Celebrity" Novels

How the hell does a piece of tripe allegedly written by Snooki end up as a New York Times bestseller? ENOUGH!

1. Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance

Look, I love me some True Blood but this is getting ridiculous! Most of the stuff is clichéd and cheesy as hell.

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists! Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top 10 8 Books That Tackle Tough Issues

8. Paule Marshall, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People

A character-driven examination of race, class, and power on an impoverished Caribbean island in the late 1960s. Subtle but eye-opening.

7. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Despite my dislike of Herland, this is one disturbing look at the effects of well-minded paternalism mixed with post-partum depression. Still a great feminist text that resonates today.

6. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Problematic (to put it mildly) by today's standards but still a chilling examination of the impact of imperialism on the imperializers. And then you go on Wikipedia and learn that the Congo Free State was even worse than what Conrad described.

5. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood

The reality of what independence has meant for Kenya. A heavy-handed but powerful attack on the new ruling elite left in place by the European colonists to continue the exploitation.

4. Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun

It's about a WWI vet whose arms, legs, and face have been blown off. It's, like, maybe kind of anti-war. Just a little. </sarcasm>

3. Mathias Énard, Zone

A brutal stream-of-conscious narrative about the perpetual warzone that is the Mediterranean.

2. Shan Sa, The Girl Who Played Go

One of my recent reads, this coming-of-age story, set in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation, explores the effects of war on young people, whether they're civilians or invading soldiers. Beautifully written and tragic, I really need to get a post out on this one.

1. Roberto Bolaño, 2666

A hard look at the ongoing rapes and murders of hundreds and hundreds of women in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez, and the society that enables such crimes.

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists! Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top 10 8 Books I Have Lied About

It's been awhile since I've done one of these. This week's topic is books you deny having read, guilty pleasures you keep secret, books you pretend you've read, and other literary activities about which you have not been forthright. In no particular order:

8. Fan fiction

Believe it or not, some of it is damn good.

7. Star Trek books

I've never really hid this per se but I don't advertise it either.

6. V.C. Andrews

Let's make this clear: I DO NOT READ THESE BOOKS ANYMORE. That was a high school anomaly! And they wasn't even the original ones that she actually wrote - it was that formulaic crap churned out by ghost writer Andrew Neiderman. I cringe whenever I think about it.

5. Sweet Valley High series

I WAS ELEVEN OKAY???

4. Jean Baudrillard

French postmodern philosopher, theorist, cultural critic. I've talked about his ideas several times on this blog but I've never actually read him. I confess: all my information about Simulacra and Simulacron comes from Wikipedia.

3. Bentley Little, The Return

I bought this book in high school while on vacation. It was awful. Absolutely horrible. And yet - I occasionally come back to it. In retrospect, it was actually my first introduction to Lovecraftian horror, and I think what intrigued me about The Return is everything I've come to love about the Cthulhu Mythos: madness, ancient horrors, depraved cults worshiping godlike monsters, the vast unknowingness of the universe. So yeah, it's a cheap, silly ripoff, but one of an author I'm quite fond of.

2. Yaoi

I read, like, five mangas. And then I realized how stupid and problematic it was.

1. The Vagina Monologues

This one I feel guilty about. Even as a feminist, I have to admit I'm uncomfortable with it. Not because of the subject matter or the word "vagina" itself but because it sounds like Eva Ensler is just doing what misogynists have always done: reducing women to a sexual body part. I got into an argument about this in college and actually lied about reading it. I ended up bluffing my way through. Feel free to hate me.

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists! Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top 10 Authors Who Deserve More Recognition

I read a lot of translated fiction, which is sadly underrepresented in the American market. With a couple of exceptions, most of this list is foreign authors who need more love in this monolingual country.

10. Ara 13 (American)

"To argue inside any theistic construct is likely a futile effort, and perhaps unnecessary. Ayn Rand is right in declaring existence axiomatic. We must acknowledge existence as revealed by our senses to construct proofs. . . We can academically challenge the credence of reality – claim we are in a dream state and will wake instead of dying – but in the end, we likely come down from our scholastic theorizing and eat and not play in traffic. We assume reality in order to function in this existence; that is what sensible means, after all – as verified by the senses. Hence to act contrary to a common acknowledgement or common sense is nonsense."

9. Suzane Adam (Israel)

I feel almost like an archaeologist, chipping away at a widening pit, descending into it, into another room, a maze. I don't understand anything. I didn't know any of it, violating the oath of years of silence. In my family we always screamed the truth in each other's faces. This did not make me any happier, though at least we knew each other's sore points; her family is partitioned, everyone nursing his own pain.

8. Ingrid Winterbach (South Africa)

"Any icy northerly wind blew for days on end. . . The sky was dull and overcast. The wind whistled and gusted. It was March - almost exactly a year ago. Winter was on its way. The tent was so low that one could stand up straight only in the middle. The grass was nearly flattened by the wind. In the distance the veld was greyish yellow and a muted blue where it met the heavy clouds on the horizon. If our circumstances had been different, one might have called it a scene of picturesque beauty. But I was too down-hearted, and the rain too unceasing - a fine, misty, mournful rain. Every day I yearned intensely for the end of the day, for at least night brought oblivion."

7. Mathias Énard (France)

. . . I thought about Harmen Gerbens the Dutchman and about his apartment, about the Jews of Cairo and Alexandria who came through Spain in 1967, about all those movements in the Zone, ebb, flow, exiles chasing other exiles, according to the victories and defeats, the power of weapons and the outline of frontiers, a bloody dance, an eternal interminable vendetta, always, whether they're Republicans in Spain fascists in France Palestinians in Israel they all dream of the fate of Aeneas the Trojan son of Aphrodite, the conquered with their destroyed cities want to destroy other cities in turn, rewrite their history, change it into victory, in other places, later on, . . .

(All 500 pages are one big sentence!)

6. Mercè Rodoreda (Spain/Catalan)

She told me she knew many things: far away the river was flowing; the dead were asleep; trees that held a dead person likewise died a bit; cement inside a dead person took a long time to dry. She said we knew many things about the light, about everything that transpires as it goes round, returning to us – neither too fast nor too slowly, like our shadows on the sundial hours. The same, always the same, no beginning, no ending, never tiring.

5. Robert W. Chambers (American)

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
                    Lost Carcosa.

4. Esther Tusquets (Spain)

Grrrr. . . No quote! (I read the book for my publishing internship in college and don't own it.) But trust me: if you love Woolf, you'll love Tusquets.

3. Jáchym Topol (Czech Republic)

…my loved one was a bee and a butterfly and knew how to cut with her claws and her tongue, and I tried too … we learned from each other what was good for the other, and that made both of us stronger … running, and the earth turned beneath us, running by graves and leaping across them, avoiding the bones and glassy stares and empty eyesockets … of wolf skulls … and steering clear of traps and snares, we had experience … with falling stakes and poisoned meat … we made it without harm through the red pack's territory … and met the last of the white wolves, they were wracked with disease … and the big black wolves chased us, but we escaped … we, the gray wolves of the Carpathians, had an age-old war with them, they were surprised we fled, their jaws snapping shut on empty air, they had a hunch it was their turn next, the helicopters were on the way … we ran side by side, our bodies touching … running over the earth as it turned, with the wind whistling in our ears like a lament for every dead pack … and the clicking of our claws made the earth's motion accelerate … we ran over the earth, a mass grave, running away …

(One of my all-time favorite passages anywhere. Imagine what the original Czech must have sounded like!)

2. Michal Ajvaz (Czech Republic)

"Until just a few years ago the scientific community, with the rare exception, was of the view that the great battle in the depths of bedroom could not be regarded as a historic event. It was maintained that the records in the reference books were not reliable and were the result of the historicization of certain rituals connected with underground celebrations of expulsions of dragons from savings banks. It was also pointed out that there was no reference to the battle in the famed Lion's Chronicle, which was found, as you all know, on a rainy night in a plastic wrapper on a seat in an unlit compartment, just as the train stopped on the track and the compartment was just beneath the lighted window of an Art Nouveau villa at Všenory, the light of which was reflected in the wet leaves of the darkened garden. It is truly astonishing that the scholars who were hypercritical about the source material should not have found it odd that the chronicle was found precisely outside a villa in whose window could be seen dimly lit on the wall part of a picture on which could be discerned the figure of fauns dancing in a meadow. It would seem that one of the historians noticed that the small object painted in the grass below the birch tree bore a striking resemblance to the scrubbing brush used in the spa-temple, where, one evening, the priest said into the clouds of steam rolling over the baths: 'In the buffet of a distant town, on a blackboard with the names and prices of the meals, is written in chalk the last message of the Lord of the Outskirts - a warning that the blackened interiors of vases exhale into our spaces. This breath, declares the Lord of the Outskirts, corrodes the old constellations. Nor must you forget the impatient and nimble pincers of machines lurking behind the long walls in the streets of Smíchov. . .'"

1. Macedonio Fernández (Argentina)

Humans, breathers, those innumerable incessantly stirring the world's air, relentlessly ordering it into your chests, elevating your eternally open mouths to an eternal heaven, beings of the heartbeat and the voice that either brightens or breaks, which perhaps every day demands alternately an end or an eternity, there's beauty to give us all understanding of the Mystery, and to stop all pain. But where is it? Is it in Art, in Conduct, in Understanding, in Passion? In Cervantes, or Beethoven, or Wagner, or in some great delirium: in adoring intonation, dazzled by Walt Whitman's Man?

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists! Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top 10 Bookish Pet Peeves

With some help from TV Tropes, the site that will ruin your life.

10. Grammatical Errors and Commonly Misused Words

You're a professional writer, for cryin' out loud! "Bemused" and "amused" are not synonyms!

9. Fallen Creator

Anne Rice, Dean Koontz, Laurel K. Hamilton. . . Look guys, maybe it's time for a break. I think we all know you can do better than this.

8. Author Tract

Happens a lot with socialist novels like Johnny Got His Gun, The Grapes of Wrath, and Petals of Blood. I liked those books, though, despite the preachin.' I guess it depends on how much you agree or disagree with the oh-so-subtle message.

7. All Just A Dream

Does anyone still do this? Oh, right: Glenn Beck.

6. Climactic Motive Rant

The big whodunit cliché, the villainous version of The Summation. You know the drill. The hero's been interpreting clues, following leads, eliminating suspects, putting pieces together, and so forth. Then OMG! REVELATION! They did it? Why, we did not see this coming! Well, now that we're at their mercy, what better time for the Bad Guy, since they finally have the spotlight, to gloat gloriously and explain how and why they did it! Luckily for the hero, some unexpected turn of events usually occurs just as the villain's winding down and leads to their downfall.

This one has been especially on my mind lately, due to a particularly egregious example in a recent book I read that ruined the whole damn thing.

5. True Art Is Incomprehensible

I encounter this a lot. Jakov Lind's Ergo = WTF? And I'm still waiting for someone to properly explain William S. Burroughs.

4. Did Not Do the Research

Dan Brown is full of it.

3. Stalking Is Love

Goes with "control is protectiveness" and "creepy is moody." Often excused because the "love" interest is a monster or supernatural of some sort, usually a vampire. We're supposed to accept this as dangerous but not dangerous dangerous because he, like, totally loves her and would never hurt her, oh noes. Can we please stop romanticizing abusive behavior?

2. Mary Sue

GAGH! Twilight's Bella Swan and The Rose Garden's Lucy King are two good examples.

1. The Taming of the Grue

Defined as "Villain Decay on a species level." Basically, a monster that started out as terrifying Always Chaotic Evil gets toned down to the point where they're either harmless, Misunderstood Nice Guys, or constantly angst-ridden about being a monster. The Fair Folk, for example, became Tinkerbell. Vampires are especially notorious for this: we went from Dracula to the sparkly Cullens. Thank God for Hellsing!

Alas, they have come for the Deep Ones. IS NOTHING SACRED.

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top 10 Dynamic Duos

A few have more than two, but overall, these are my favorite awesome character combos. They kick ass, have various adventures, or just plain go great together.

10. Reitz and Ben, To Hell with Cronjé

Not really "dynamic" per se, but definitely a powerful portrayal of friendship.

9. Harry and Hermine, Steppenwolf

These two were just crazy together.

8. Fournier, Weil, and Pananster, The Officers' Ward

Each would have fallen to pieces if it wasn't for the others.

7. Anne and Diana, Anne of Green Gables

A childhood classic I'm sure many have included.

6. Alucard, Integra, and Seras, Hellsing

Epic kickass manga starring vampires that don't fucking sparkle.

5. Christopher Snow, Bobby Halloway, Doogie, and Roosevelt Frost, Seize the Night

Tragically, this was one of the last good books Dean Koontz wrote before becoming the "Thomas Kinkade of horror."

4. Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, The Millennium Trilogy

Even just Salander on her own is a force of nature. Together they're unstoppable.

3. Dante and Virgil, The Divine Comedy

I'm sure you saw that one coming.

2. Sam and Frodo, Lord of the Rings

Obviously.

1. Dr. Armitage, Professor Warren Rice, and Dr. Francis Morgan, "The Dunwich Horror"

Three scholarly gentlemen who took out an Eldritch Abomination. Professors should be this cool in real life.

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top 10 9 Book-to-Movie Adaptations

I don't watch many movies so this list was hard to come up with. I just couldn't think of one more.

9. Ghost in the Shell

I haven't actually seen this one yet but I've heard great things about it. The manga it's based on is incredible.

8. Girl, Interrupted

Angelina Jolie was AMAZING!

7. Brokeback Mountain

A major milestone in LGBT film.

6. Schindler's List

Literally one of the greatest movies of all time.

5. The Shining

OMG SCARY!

4. The Gangs of New York

Not many people know this, but The Gangs of New York was originally a 1928 nonfiction book by Herbert Asbury.

3. True Blood

Okay, it's a TV show not a movie, but I love it and it's way better than the books. I tried to read the first one, Dead Before Dark, but found the writing so mediocre I couldn't even finish it.

2. Interview with the Vampire

Says Anne Rice herself on Amazon.com:

The film took me back even further, into the soul that had exposed itself inthe writing. Darkness. No grace. No salvation. The film got it. It got "the glamor of evil" and that darkness, that hopelessness, that despair. It is -- and I say this now as a film buff -- a great film. Forget me. Forget the book. It's a piece of sublime work in which genius "happened" as it can in film when great directors like Neil Jordan, and great actors, and great professional on all levels are giving it everything that they can -- when they have but one goal and that is to be true to something in which the author was true to himself or herself. It worked. It's magic. And now ten years later people are discovering it. They are sharing that sublime vision. I'm thankful; I'm happy; I'm proud to have been part of it. I'm grateful. And I hope David Geffen knows. I hope he knows how the world values that film. He did that. I hope he's proud.

1. Lord of the Rings

Enough said.

Book-to-movie adaptations I would like to see (in no particular order):

Precious
Orlando (That's a movie?!)
Rebecca
Trainspotting
City of Bones (Upcoming adaptation of the first book of Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series.)
Blade Runner (Loosely based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
Dagon (Based on H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," my favorite of his stories.)
At the Mountains of Madness (Upcoming Lovecraft adaptation directed by Guillermo del Toro!)

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top 10 Favorite Love Stories in Books

10. Conxa and Jaume, Stones in a Landslide

Simple, sparse, down-to-earth, and real.

9. Harry and Hermine, Steppenwolf

Kind of a weird one. Not a romantic example per se, but definitely two compelling characters bound together by fate.

8. Ursula and Rupert/Gudrun and Gerald, Women in Love

One pair is rather ordinary and the other ends tragically, but D.H. Lawrence's prose must be read to be believed.

7. Jane and Rochester, Jane Eyre

Enough said.

6. Dante and Beatrice, The Divine Comedy

This is the fourth time Dante has turned up on one of my Top 10 Tuesday lists.

5. Tonio and Christina, Cry to Heaven

My favorite non-vampire Anne Rice novel. Vivid, picturesque setting, a great story, and a touching love affair towards the end.

4. Joe and Kareen, Johnny Got His Gun

Okay, I know I've made poor Joe a lighthearted partner in crime with fellow Marxist literary hero Karega, but I gotta admit, this book gets to you.

3. Clara and narrator, The Same Sea as Every Summer

A lesbian relationship told through the most beautiful, flowing stream-of-conscious prose since Virginia Woolf.

2. Jack and Sweetheart, "The Mystery of Choice: The White Shadow"

One of the most haunting short stories I've ever read.

1. Potok and Černá, City Sister Silver

"…my loved one was a bee and a butterfly and knew how to cut with her claws and her tongue, and I tried too … we learned from each other what was good for the other, and that made both of us stronger … running, and the earth turned beneath us, running by graves and leaping across them, avoiding the bones and glassy stares and empty eyesockets … of wolf skulls … and steering clear of traps and snares, we had experience … with falling stakes and poisoned meat … we made it without harm through the red pack's territory … and met the last of the white wolves, they were wracked with disease … and the big black wolves chased us, but we escaped … we, the gray wolves of the Carpathians, had an age-old war with them, they were surprised we fled, their jaws snapping shut on empty air, they had a hunch it was their turn next, the helicopters were on the way … we ran side by side, our bodies touching … running over the earth as it turned, with the wind whistling in our ears like a lament for every dead pack … and the clicking of our claws made the earth's motion accelerate … we ran over the earth, a mass grave, running away …"

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top 10 5 Characters and Literary Figures I'd Name My Children After

Been a few weeks since I've done one of these. This is a tough one.

5. Ligeia (character, Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia")

I love this name but it's probably too Gothic-y for real life. Has kind of a melodramatic feel (and its fictional origin doesn't exactly help).

4. Asenath Waite (character, H.P. Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep")

"Asenath" is pretty cool (it's from the Bible). But it's kind of weird, so it would have to be a middle name.

3. Dante Alighieri (author, The Divine Comedy)

Greatest. Poet. Ever. Another middle name, since it's become so closely associated with Inferno and been used in so many fantasy settings it's kind of a "Marty Stu" name.

2. Shreve Stockton (author and blogger, The Daily Coyote)

"Shreve"! I love it! Plus, she is SUCH an inspiring woman.

1. Hiro Protagonist (character, Snow Crash)

Just kidding!

That's all I can come up with, unfortunately. It occurs to me that most of the characters I come across have names that are either pretty ordinary or way too foreign.

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top 10 Books I Resolve to Read in 2011

I've tried to keep a formal TBR list like most book bloggers but it never quite clicked with me. Nevertheless there are books out there that I have not read and would very much like to. In addition to my other New Years Resolutions, I, E.L. Fay, hereby resolve to read the following over the next twelve months (in no particular order):

10. Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest

and

9. Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire

I'm in the middle of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo right now.

8. Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life

I bought this 802-page chunkster at a used book sale two years ago and have yet to crack it open. It's also been awhile since I've read a good history book.

7. Robert Hughes, American Visions: The Epic History of American Art

Another big non-fiction read. Full of wonderful color pictures since it's also part coffee table book.

6. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Yet another used book sale purchase I haven't gotten around too. Also, I feel like the only book blogger who hasn't read Eco.

5. Alan Moore, the complete League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series

VIRGINIA WOOLF and H.P. LOVECRAFT. Together. *plotz*

4. Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan

Another selection influenced by my love of Lovecraft. Machen (1863-1947) was a major forerunner of Cosmic Horror/Weird Fiction, the genres Lovecraft pioneered. This particular book is said to have given Stephen King nightmares.

3. William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland

Yet another Lovecraft precursor. May also have influenced Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, which is on The Wolves' reading list for October 2011.

2. Monika Fagerholm, The Glitter Scene

Sequel to The American Girl, which made my Top 10 Books of 2010 list. English translation coming out in Britain in August but I don't see anything about an American release. Looks like I'll have to order from Amazon.co.uk.

1. The books on my Top 10 Books I Hope Santa Brings list that B&N did not have.

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top 10 Books of 2010

My complete list of favorites actually comes out to twelve. Note that seven of them are literature in translation and all except one are international. There's a whole world of great books out there and I am so happy to have the opportunity to read and write about them!

12. Véronique Olmi, Beside the Sea (trans. Adriana Hunter - French)

The most depressing topic imaginable and all too vivid yet so horribly compelling.

11. Roberto Bolaño, Nazi Literature in the Americas (trans. Chris Andrews - Spanish)

It's Roberto Bolaño. DO I REALLY NEED TO ELABORATE?

10. Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo, Petals of Blood

A Marxist epic and howl of protest against the corruption of post-colonial Kenya. Heavy-handed but gripping.

9. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Like Bolaño above, this one's pretty self-explanatory. I really need to get this reviewed.

8. J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

The books and the movies are equally awesome.

7. Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North (trans. Denys Johnson-Davies - Arabic)

A reverse Heart of Darkness about an African going to England and inspiring some dark worship of his own. Gives the original Kurtz a run for his money.

6. Ingrid Winterbach, To Hell with Cronjé (trans. Elsa Silke - Afrikaans)

A sparse but heartbreaking story of two friends in the Second Boer War. In the face of nature's eternal immensity, their struggle is ultimately insignificant.

5. Monika Fagerholm, The American Girl (trans. Katarina E. Tucker - Swedish)

Takes place in Finland, despite the title. Postmodern Scandinavian Gothic about growing up in the seventies and the mystery of the lost American Girl.

4. Mathias Énard, Zone (trans. Charlotte Mandell - French)

Ties with Beside the Sea as the year's saddest book. Genocide, war, greed, corruption, rape, torture, etc.

3. Karen Tei Yamashita - I Hotel

Students, professors, artists, filmmakers, poets, musicians, laborers, community organizers. Lists, comics, plays, free verse, interviews, photos, audiovisual transcripts, flights of magic realism, mythology, and real history. Welcome to San Francisco in the sixties!

2. Michal Ajvaz, The Other City (trans. Gerald Turner - Czech)

Hands-down one of the most imaginative works I have ever had the pleasure to read. A stunning achievement.

1. Philippe Soupault, Last Nights of Paris (trans. William Carlos Williams - French)

Paris! Modernism! The Roaring Twenties! French Surrealism! THERE IS NO WAY I COULD NOT HAVE ENJOYED THIS.

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top Ten Books I Hope Santa Brings

My mom will probably give me her credit card like she did last year, so I may well be getting all of these.

10. Dracula, A Longman Cultural Edition by Bram Stoker (eds. Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal)

Dracula is one of the few horror books to be honored by inclusion in the Norton Critical Edition series. . . This 100th-anniversary edition includes not only the complete authoritative text of the novel with illuminating footnotes, but also four contextual essays, five reviews from the time of publication, five articles on dramatic and film variations, and seven selections from literary and academic criticism. . . Especially fascinating are excerpts from materials that Bram Stoker consulted in his research for the book, and his working papers over the several years he was composing it. The selection of criticism includes essays on how Dracula deals with female sexuality, gender inversion, homoerotic elements, and Victorian fears of "reverse colonization" by politically turbulent Transylvania.

9. The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras (trans. Barbara Bray)

Disaffected, bored with his career at the French Colonial Ministry (where he has copied out birth and death certificates for eight years), and disgusted by a mistress whose vapid optimism arouses his most violent misogyny, the narrator of The Sailor from Gibraltar finds himself at the point of complete breakdown while vacationing in Florence. After leaving his mistress and the Ministry behind forever, he joins the crew of The Gibraltar, a yacht captained by Anna, a beautiful American in perpetual search of her sometime lover, a young man known only as the "Sailor from Gibraltar."

(I read this awhile back and loved it. But I still don't own it!)

8. Paradiso by Dante (trans. Robert M. Durling)

Robert Durling's spirited new prose translation of the Paradiso completes his masterful rendering of the Divine Comedy. Durling's earlier translations of the Inferno and the Purgatorio garnered high praise, and with this superb version of the Paradiso readers can now traverse the entirety of Dante's epic poem of spiritual ascent with the guidance of one of the greatest living Italian-to-English translators.

(I already have the first two Durling translations of The Divine Comedy.)

7. 30 Days of Night by Steve Niles (graphic novel)

In a sleepy, secluded Alaska town called Barrow, the sun sets and doesn't rise for over thirty consecutive days and nights. From the darkness, across the frozen wasteland, an evil will come that will bring the residents of Barrow to their knees. The only hope for the town is the Sheriff and Deputy, husband and wife who are torn between their own survival and saving the town they love.

6. The City & The City by China Miéville

The city is Beszel, a rundown metropolis on the eastern edge of Europe. The other city is Ul Qoma, a modern Eastern European boomtown, despite being a bit of an international pariah. What the two cities share, and what they don't, is the deliciously evocative conundrum at the heart of China Mieville's The City & The City. Mieville is well known as a modern fantasist (and urbanist), but from book to book he's tried on different genres, and here he's fully hard-boiled, stripping down to a seen-it-all detective's voice that's wonderfully appropriate for this story of seen and unseen. His detective is Inspector Tyador Borlu, a cop in Beszel whose investigation of the murder of a young foreign woman takes him back and forth across the highly policed border to Ul Qoma to uncover a crime that threatens the delicate balance between the cities and, perhaps more so, Borlu's own dissolving sense of identity. In his tale of two cities, Mieville creates a world both fantastic and unsettlingly familiar, whose mysteries don't end with the solution of a murder.

(This sounds exactly like a Czech novel I read and loved called The Other City.)

5. Anonymous Celebrity by Ignacio de Loyola Brandao (trans. Nelson Vieira)

What if a man were so shallow that he couldn't believe his life had meaning unless he was loved and desired by millions of people? What if everything he learned from his television, from the movies, from what he heard on the radio, was treated as an absolute and incontrovertible truth? And what, then, if this man was amoral, cunning, and willing to lie, seduce, and kill to save himself from anonymity?

With an army of consultants, a library of "howto" manuals, and an endless variety of product placements at his behest, the hero of Anonymous Celebrity sets out to become king of his own little world—which unfortunately turns out to be the same one the rest of us live in. Equal parts Nabokov, All About Eve, and Big Brother, this is a bawdy, irreverent indictment of our self-absorbed culture of celebrity, where to be anything less than famous means being something less than human . . .

4. The Complete Fiction of Nella Larson

Nella Larsen's subject is the struggle of sensitive, spirited heroines to find a place for themselves in a hostile world. Passing is the story of a light-skinned beauty who, after spending years passing for white, finds herself dangerously drawn to an old friend's Harlem neighborhood. In Quicksand, a restless young mulatto tries desperately to find a comfortable place in a world in which she sees herself as a perpetual outsider. Race and marriage offer few securities here or in the other stories in a collection that is compellingly readable, rich in psychological complexity, and imbued with a sense of place that brings Harlem vibrantly to life.

(Click here for Emily's review.)

3. Our Lady of the Assassins by Fernando Vallejo (trans. Paul Hammond)

This slim, cynical novel by a well-regarded Colombian writer is an unsparing exploration of Medell¡n, Colombia's second largest city and the infamous stronghold and resting place of drug lord Pablo Escobar. The narrator is a "grammarian," who has recently returned to his hometown after many years abroad and discovers it has become a living nightmare, where music blares constantly, funerals are less important than soccer matches and a wayward glance is likely to get you killed. In a virtually unbroken dramatic monologue, the narrator recounts a love affair he once had with Alexis, a teenage hitman who carries out revenge killings for rival drug gangs. Post Escobar, the hitmen are disorganized and undisciplined, and they wreak havoc on the city, killing indiscriminately. Inevitably, Alexis too must die. But before he succumbs, he slays dozens of random people who cross his path including police officers, young children, pregnant women, taxi drivers. Vallejo is a vivid writer, and one with a talent for social commentary. He is keen to portray the hypocrisy of religion in a country where killers wear crucifixes, bless their bullets and pray not to miss, but his litany of atrocities, at first hypnotic, quickly becomes monotonous. Everyone in the story is so obviously doomed that by the time the grammarian takes up with Alexis's killer, it is impossible to work up much interest in their foreordained fates. Which may be Vallejo's point after all.

(Click here for Richard's review.)

2. Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño (trans. Chris Andrews)

"The melancholy folklore of exile" pervades this novel, which describes the divergent paths of three young Chilean poets around the time of Pinochet's coup. At university, the unnamed narrator and his friend are fascinated by a mysterious new member of their poetry workshop. Alberto Ruiz-Tagle is "serious, well mannered, a clear thinker," but his poems seem false, as if his true work were yet to be revealed. It becomes apparent that this is literally the case when Allende's government falls: as an Air Force officer for the new regime, he becomes famous for writing nationalist slogans in the sky. (The left-wing narrator, now in jail, reads them from his prison yard.) Bolano's spare prose lends his narrator's account a chilly precision—as if the detachment of his former classmate had become his country's, and his own.

(Alberto was originally a character in Nazi Literature in the Americas.)

1. The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolaño (trans. Chris Andrews)

Set in the seaside town of Z, on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink oscillates between two poles: a camp ground and a ruined mansion, the Palacio Benvingut. The story, told by three male narrators, revolves around a beautiful figure skating champion, Nuria Martí. When she is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team, a pompous but besotted civil servant secretly builds a skating rink in the ruined Palacio Benvingut, using public funds. But Nuria has affairs, provokes jealousy, and the skating rink becomes a crime scene. A mysterious pair of women, an ex-opera singer and a taciturn girl often armed with a knife, turn up as well.

No, I haven't read enough Bolaño yet!

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top Ten Favorite Cozy Reading Spots

I like coffee. Coffee coffee COFFEEEEE! And I like art, creativity, cool atmospheres, and a laid-back vibe. So instead of doing a regular Top 10 list this week, here are photos of my favorite coffeehouses. I could spend hours at any of these places, just reading and enjoying a latte.


This one is currently the closest to me. It's a decent place, nice comfy chairs and tasty deserts, but lacks that special ambiance a coffeehouse must have. Nicely decorated but kind of blah. But it does have a bar-style table right against the front window, which is great for people-watching. Outdoor sidewalk seating is a plus too.


Although I've since moved away, I try to come back here whenever I can. A combo artist studio/cafe located on the first floor of an old house, the proprietoress was one of those fun older women with a quirky sense of style. The side porch was my favorite place during the summer, followed by the front yard, which was full of fun little tables and chairs and statuettes and suchlike.


I did not get to go here very often because it was a bit of a drive. Located in the same area as the above too, so I'm not sure when I'll see it again. But it RULED at coffeehousedom. Funky-colored walls, blue tin ceilings, and an upper level with old battered couches and all sorts of art magazines and alternative weeklies. Had a really cool painting for sale that I wanted but it unfortunately it was $1500.


They're noted for their live performances, which I have yet to see (hopefully soon). A bit of hike from my place, but well worth it. A big, loft-like space in an old brick building in an up-and-coming neighborhood, I especially enjoy their '60s-'70s retro decorating style. Borders on ironic kitsch - like that brass sailing ship light fixture affixed to the brick wall that would look stupid anywhere else. And the collection of old TV sets! One sweet place. I was there for almost three hours a few Sundays ago with Vilnius Poker.


Hooray, my favorite! A short bus ride away, right in the heart of downtown! I came here all the time in college! Low-key indie vibe and stocked with great artwork. I actually have their vintage-y menu on my kitchen wall.

If you can afford it, please consider purchasing fair trade coffee. It will mean a lot to the growers, most of whom live in developing countries and make little money for their hard work.

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top Ten Characters I'd Like to be Best Friends With

10. Ethan Muller from The Genius

Starts out as a spoiled, snobby, ultra-postmodernist jerk until the character developments kicks in. But he's also the owner of a Manhattan art gallery! That's a helluva crowd to run with.

9. The narrator of Last Nights of Paris

He hangs out with the 1920s Parisian underworld. SWEET.

8. Mr. Trąba from A Thousand Peaceful Cities

Because he's just insane.

7. Adrien Fournier & Co. in The Officers' Ward

The whole book is about overcoming tragedy through friendship and camaraderie. And these guys totally rule at it.

6. The narrator of Old School

We can talk literature over coffee. My idea of a fun afternoon.

5. Reitz Steyn and Ben Maritz from To Hell with Cronjé

I liked the bond they formed over a shared love of science and the natural world in the midst of a hopeless war. Very beautiful and very poignant.

4. Anita Blake

I've only read the first book so far and I've heard the series eventually goes waaaay downhill. But for now she's a badass heroine who holds her own against powerful supernatural beings and excels at a traditionally macho career. We can beat up Edward Cullen together!

3. The good guys in Lord of the Rings

I predict LOTR characters will feature prominently in everyone's picks this week, for obvious reasons.

2. Y.T. and Hiro Protagonist from Snow Crash

A kickass teen skateboard courier! A hacker with dreads and swords! A lawless cyberpunk dystopia! HOORAY!

1. Dante, as author and protagonist of The Divine Comedy

Not really a fictional character per se (The Divine Comedy is sort of a self-insert mythology/Real Person fanfic) but I loved loved LOVED his grande metaphysical poetry epic! They don't make them like this anymore, folks.

Okay, I just noticed this list only has two female characters . . . or three, actually, since #7 would include Marguerite. Now how the heck does a massive genderfail like this happen? Remembering my childhood favorites definitely would've helped - that would include Cassie from Animorphs, Dairine from High Wizardry, the Baby-Sitters' Club, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anne Shirley, and Meg from A Wrinkle in Time.

Damn, that would've helped a lot. WHAT HAS BECOME OF MY READING?

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!

Top Ten Villains, Criminals, Degenerates

10. The writers from Nazi Literature in the Americas

Villainous mainly for their beliefs. Luckily they were all too pathetic to accomplish anything.

9. Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights

All-around selfish, dysfunctional jerk who just ruins freaking everything.

8. Popeye from Sanctuary

An impotent creep who kidnaps and rapes a woman with . . . Never mind. How did the 1930s let Faulkner get away with that?

7. The "Ancient Enemy" from Phantoms

Say what you want about Dean Koontz's latest offerings, but this one is a classic of the thriller genre. A shape-shifting Eldritch Abomination, self-styled as Satan, has wiped out an entire town and sees humans as nothing more than playthings to sadistically toy with before devouring. What's not to love?

6. Rupert from Rupert: A Confession

He's what TV Tropes calls a "Villain Protagonist" but that doesn't mean he's sympathetic. The book is entirely from his POV as he defends himself to a jury. What he's being tried for exactly isn't revealed until the end, in the most horrifying detail imaginable.

5. Yutzi from Laundry

This woman literally fits the textbook criteria for a real-life psychopath. Also a rare example of a non-murderous Complete Monster but that doesn't make her any less terrifying. The emotional and physical abuse she inflicts on a helpless little girl is pure High Octane Nightmare Fuel.

4. Håkan from Let the Right One In

Most characters in this book are villainous in one way or another but this piece of work especially stands out. As if being a pedophile harvesting blood for a child vampire wasn't bad enough, Håkan had to go and become the most revolting vampire-zombie-thing in all of modern horror.

3. Sauron from Lord of the Rings

Self-explanatory. One of the greatest and most famous literary villains of all time.

2. Patrick Bateman from American Psycho

I have not read this book. Reading about it was quite enough, thank you.

1. The Cosmic Horrors of H.P. Lovecraft

Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Dagon, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth . . . Not really evil so much as they're completely beyond anything the human mind can conceive of. Villainous mainly for the madness and havoc unleashed once an "unclean mockery of natural law" makes its appearance.

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Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers' answers. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND sign Mister Linky at the bottom to share with us and all those who are participating. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time . . . just post what you can!