Top Ten Tuesday # 1

It's Top Ten Tuesday time...

I'm having an official go at the meme featured on The Broke and the Bookish, and this week the TTT list is a 'Rewind' week, which gives me the chance to catch up on some old great TTT lists...

They've been doing it for a while, so there's plenty of choice. So... I'm going to try and do two this time, and I'll eventually catch up.

 

List one: The Top Ten Books I HAD to buy, but are still sitting on the shelf unread.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - bought for an OU course I didn't do in the end.

The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde. I'm a big fan of Mr Fforde, and have read all the previous books. I was a little put off as the last in the series wasn't up to his usual standard.

The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw - a recommendation by Mr B's, I bought it in the hardcover version and it's almost too pretty to read, I'm scared I might damage it.

Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson - A TV book club book, everyone was raving about it.

1984 by George Orwell - One of those books you're supposed to read but I just haven't been inspired to read it yet.

The Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger - I challenged my facebook friends to tell me about the books they loved and I would try them. I started it but got tired of the 'goddamns'.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - Another Mr B's recommendation, it appealed at the time, but not now for some reason.

The Somnambulist by Essie Fox - Another TV Book Club book. Bought a year or two ago I think, around the same time as Before I Go To Sleep, and the upcoming Girl Reading. I was looking for titles to read, and bought a few. A friend said she hated it, and so it's sat there waiting.

Girl Reading by Katie Ward, see number 9. I was a little put off with it being a series of short stories.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Another one of those books everyone says you should read, but I can't bring myself to.

List two:  The Top Ten most vivid books/world settings

The Seven Kingdoms, from the Song of Ice and Fire series (aka Game of Thrones).

Cities of Camorr, Val Terrar etc... from the Gentlemen Bastards Series by Scott Lynch. Particularly Camorr from the first book The Lies of Locke Lamora (review). Camor is a Venice like city in a Renaissance like era with strange ancient alien glass skyscrapers. So vivid I could almost feel the hangmans wind!

The Universe in Hitchhikers Guide, by Douglas Adams.  Need I say more?

Panem from the Hunger Games trilogy.  Every detail was incredibly vivid.  You felt right in the middle of things, almost like you could touch the trees of district 12, and see the weirdness of the Capitol and it's residents.

New York City in 2058-60 - from the In Death series by JD Robb.  After 36 books in the series it should be fairly vivid, or there's something going wrong somewhere.

BookWorld from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. A world beyond the written page complete with committee meetings, body doubles enabling the Imaginotransference device, footnoterphone communications between Jurisfiction agents.

City of Reading in the Nursery Crime Series, also by Jasper Fforde. A world where nursery rhyme characters live as PDR's (Persons of Dubious Reality), and Detective Jack Spratt has to solve the murder of Humpty Dumpty, the disappearance of Goldilocks, catch the Gingerbread man (who is really fast).

Room by Emma Donoghue - The entire world exists of a single room.  The narrator thinks this is normal, but the sense of isolation and that feeling of being trapped comes across well.

Nightfall by Isaac Asmiov & Robert Silverberg. I read this twenty years ago, and it's still so fresh. I see this world and feel their awe every time I look up at a sky full of stars.

Narnia by CS Lewis. All the books really, but especially the books featuring the Pevensie children.  As I child I desperately bemoaned the fact that we had built in wardrobes.  I so wanted to meet Aslan.