Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Top Ten Tuesday: Review-less

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week they, and other bloggers/readers, make a top ten list from a given topic. This week's topic is...

Top Ten Books I Never Reviewed

This year is the first year I started tracking what I read. I also just started this blog oh, about a month ago. While I am trying to post reviews of books I read before blogging, there are a bunch that I’m just not going to get to. So this list is a shout out to great books I’ve read, but never reviewed.

1)      Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarembga. Thoughtful, well written account of a girl growing up in colonial Rhodesia.

2)      The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood. Scary dystopian stuff. Offred? Talk about losing your identity.

3)      Aya, Marguerite Abouet. This graphic novel is definitely not a children’s book! This book follows the adventures of a group of young women growing up in the Ivory Coast.

4)      Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, Xiaolu Guo. Not what I expected as a picture of a modern young Chinese woman.  In a good way.

5)      Stiff, Mary Roach. Who knew a book about dead bodies could be so fascinating?

6)      Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi. A beautiful celebration of literature, told by an Iranian university professor after she’s been forced to resign her position.

7)      Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson. First, I love the title. And the cover. Oh, and the story about a man remembering his time at his family’s vacation home as his parent’s marriage disintegrates.

8)      A Heart So White, Javiar Marias. Language, love, travel, mystery – what more could you want?

9)      Catch-22, Joseph Heller. One of my all-time favorites.  The absurdity of war seems to be an always relevant topic, unfortunately.
10)   A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving. I admit, my arm had to be twisted before I would read this. Now I can’t stop singing its praises. Irving has a true gift for writing about children.



9 comments:

kayerj said...

what an interesting list of books. kaye—the road goes ever ever on

Rummanah Aasi said...

You've got a lot of books that I never heard of, which is good because now I can hunt them down! I've been meaning to pick up "Stiff" by Roach for sometime now. Thanks for stopping by my blog!

LBC said...

This is a great list. I had Aya checked out of the library for weeks, but never got to it. Maybe I'll have to check it out again. Stiff was great, and Reading Lolita. I haven't ever heard anything about 20 Fragments, although I have it on my list for this year.

Come check out my list for the week at The Scarlet Letter.

MJ said...

@kaye - thanks! I tried to mix it up.

@Rummanah - I love finding new books, too. Stiff was fun. I'd been wanting to read something my Mary Roach, so when a friend was cleaning out her shelves, I grabbed that one.

@LBC - 20 Fragments was really good, and different. The format was a little disconcerting at first, but then I got used to it, and it was fun.

Anonymous said...

Loved A Prayer for Owen Meany too, it's been a long time since I read it and I'm thinking it would be a good one to reread at this point!

MJ said...

@bookbabie.com The person who recommended it to me said it was the first time she ever finished a book, then immediately started it again. I read it for my book club, and then re-read most of it again, closer to the meeting, because I wanted it fresh in my mind. I could see reading it again in the near future.

Helen Gunnarsson said...

You've included 2 of my favorite books from the last year or so--"Aya" and "Reading Lolita in Tehran." I loved the 2 sequels to "Aya" and WISH someone would translate Nos. 4, 5, and 6 into English. "Reading Lolita in Tehran" was the best book I read last year! Great to see another lawyer blogging about literature; maybe you'd like to join The Europa Challenge Blog?

MJ said...

@Helen Gunnarsson I need to pick up the "Aya" sequels. Since starting blogging a month ago, my tbr list has grown exponentially! I will certainly check out the challenge - what's a few more books?

Helen Gunnarsson said...

Oh, my TBR list never stops growing--especially since I usually seem to decide to read books that aren't already on it!