Tuesday, May 03, 2011

You Have to Read This Book!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from The Broke and The Bookish is asking us about Books I'm So Happy Were Recommended To Me, what are the books that you probably wouldn't have picked up without a good recommendation? In no particular order:

1. The Hunger Games Trilogy – Thanks to my co-workers for recommending these books, as well as the hordes (am I actually exaggerating?) of bloggers. I devoured them!

2. Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 8 series – Thanks to one of the aforementioned co-workers, Sarah, for making me read them. I was a fan of the show, but was always hesitant on whether I should read the comic/graphic novel series. I’m glad she brought her copies into work so that I could take them home and read them.

3. The Twilight series – Thanks to the same co-workers that recommended The Hunger Games. Of course it was the summer before the first film came out that I read these books. At the time, they were as addictive as anything I’d ever read before.

4. The Handmaid’s Tale – It was actually assigned reading in one of my University classes. So many of my friends in high school told me how much they hated Atwood and I never ended up in a class where I had to read her, so I never chose to pick up one of her books. I’m so glad that The Handmaid’s Tale was part of that University class. It’s now one of my favourite books and made me a life-long Atwood fan.

5. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – Thanks to the same co-workers, plus the bloggers, plus my husband’s step-father (step-father-in-law?) for recommending this book. I loved it and have been patiently waiting for the third book to come out in paperback, since I heard the second and third book are very much connected. However, with the Swedish movies out and the Hollywood ones on the way, I don’t know how much longer I can wait to read them.

I couldn’t quite get to ten. If you count the individual books in a series, I’ve actually got 16 books on this list. Does that count? I suppose I either don’t listen to other people’s recommendations a lot or I don’t have that many real life bookish friends to recommend things to me. Mostly, I just go where my interests and moods take me.

7 comments:

  1. My co-worker also recommended the Twilight series to me right before the movie came out. I feel like I've already seen that series on a few of these lists

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  2. The Handmaiden's Tale was the only one of Atwood's books I've liked. It was so powerfully creepy!

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  3. The Hunger Games, Twilight and Girl With The Dragon Tattoo were all recommended to me too. Twilight has kind of lost it's shine for me now but I did enjoy them all. I almost put Dragon Tattoo on my list.

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  4. The twilight, i must be the only earthling that have not read this and dont care to do so, lol. Buffy the vampire, loved the tv series. The Hunger Game series i've seen on three other blogs so far, Happy Reading 2 U

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  5. The Handmaid's Tale was definitely an interesting read.

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  6. Red, I think that for people who aren't normally into YA or vampires, Twilight had to be recommended. I really enjoyed the books, but from a reading of the synopsis, I would never have picked it up.

    Trish, smellincoffee, I recommend The Handmaid's Tale to pretty much everyone who asks what book they should read.

    Karen, Those are all books that were out of my normal reading habits and I'm so glad that I read them. I discovered not just new authors, but new genres.

    Sidne, I will always admit, Twilight isn't for everyone. The Hunger Games, however, has a much wider appeal and deals with different issues. The Buffy graphic novels are great, but I think you have to like both Buffy and graphic novels to really enjoy the wonderfulness of the series.

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  7. Assigned readings are some of my favorite recommendations. I have my students read Handmaid's Tale and I hope some of them like it too.

    Check out my list here

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