Day 1 – Top Ten Books in your Library
- Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol
I suppose I rate this one so low on my list not because it isn’t important to me but more because it isn’t the text that mattered. It was the world. The environment. To this day, you hand me something Wonderland related and I will happily devour it. I have read the Looking Glass Wars and Hatter M. I have SyFy’s Alice on DVD. I slogged through Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. And if that isn’t devotion? I don’t know what is.
- 10th Kingdom by Kathryn Wesley
This book? Not gonna lie. It is not awesome. It was a novel written after the fact based on the script for the 10th Kingdom mini series. Because of that, it differs notably in a few places, but not many. It’s a very simple read and nothing is really gained or lost by choosing to read it instead of watching the series. However, I read this book so many times it fell apart on me. Then I had to track down another copy, which is no easy feat these days. It’s a fun read, and the characters are great. The idea is unique. Definitely wouldn’t feel right not having it around.
- The End by Lemony Snicket
This is a more recent addition and it’s mostly found it’s home in my library as a representative of the entire Series of Unfortunate Events. I devoured them one month during a particularly dark time in my life. I had checked them all out from the library and it took, on average, a day to read one. The last one had only recently come out, however, and so the library didn’t have it. Even though money was so tight I could hardly justify a $15 purchase for myself, I bought this book. The lessons of Lemony Snicket should never be put off. They’re far too important.
“At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.”
- Fifth Quarter by Tanya Huff
What a strange little book. It’s the second in a series, set in a world that you really have to read the first book to even remotely understand. Even then, I’m not sure I entirely did. The benefit is that this book doesn’t deal with a lot of the harder to understand aspects of that world, so I suppose someone could read it an it’s own. It deals heavily with a pair of twins, raised as assassins. They work as a single entity, but when one is nearly killed, his sister, quite literally, takes his soul into her body. They spend the rest of the novel sharing a mind as they try to reclaim his own body from the man who stole it, only to find that his sister has grown rather attached to the thief. Such a strange, strange story. But it stuck with me, and I’m not sure I’ll ever know why. I loved the characters so very much, and I think that’s all you really need, even in a story as odd as that.
- The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey
I can never be sure, which came first. This book, or Watership Down. I got them both around the same time, I want to say fourth or fifth grade, and one of them was the first real novel I ever read. But I can’t recall which. Either way, they’ve both made it into my top 10, all these decades later. Black Gryphon was, in a way, a prequel to Lackey’s much larger series, which I never got around to reading. I picked it solely for the cover, which was magical. And the contents did not disappoint. It’s a war story, with a surprising amount of heart. I never questioned the world she had built, not once. The characters were wonderfully flawed and even those I didn’t like, I became attached to. A very well crafted book. I only wish the two sequels that followed it had been as strong.
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling
I’m not going to spare many words on this. It’s another one that is meant to stand in for its series, and if you haven’t read them? Go fix that.
- Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
There are so many Gaiman books that might have made it onto this list, but I picked this one for one line, and one line only.
“You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear.”
But it’s more than that. So much more. I was at a time in my life where that line meant a great deal to me, but there are so many lines I could have chosen. Sometimes I feel like if I ever needed to explain everything I am and that I believe to a person, I would simply hand them this book. The story has never been as important to me as the way it made me feel, and that was good. Not just, a good feeling in general. It made me feel like I, personally, was good. With all my faults, and all my failings. All the things that had gone wrong in my life. I may be broken and tired, but I was still good. Still a good person. I didn’t have to pass or fail.
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
As I said before, I’m not sure if this was the first book I read or not. I do know it was the first novel my mother ever bought me. I remember getting it. I remember how huge it seemed. I remember feeling so proud that I was getting such a large, grown up book, when I was so young. Up until then I’d mostly been reading Goosebumps and Fear Street books, and this was a huge change of form for me. I’d recently seen the film and wanted very much wanted to read the book. It still holds a very dear place in my heart, all these years later.
2-1. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and Wizard of the Grove by Tanya Huff
And so it comes down to it. I’ve asked myself this question so many times and I’ve never once been able to decide on just what my favorite book is. These two have been fighting it out for years. And so they are tied, forever, I think, because I’ll never really be able to pick one.
Outlander
This book has gotten a little more attention recently due to it’s mini series, but it has been a favorite of mine for a very long time. I remember picking it off a shelf at the new Barnes and Noble that opened near my home, right when I was starting college. It was only 3.99 and it was enticingly fat. The first forty pages? I nearly gave up. They bored me to tears. But I have always subscribed to the rule of 50. If a book doesn’t have me in the first 50 pages, there’s no point carrying on. So I gave it 10 more. Those were a very important 10 pages. Sometimes I still skip those first forty, but the rest of the book? It speaks to every corner of my heart. History, Romance, Heros, Villains, Family, Passion…I’ve never read a more enthralling story. Or one so well written. I’ve read it till it fell apart more than once, and I have no doubt I’ll continue to do so for years to come.
Wizard of the Grove
This book called to me, there’s no other way to explain it. Walking at random through a book store, the cover caught my eye. I didn’t even question as I picked it up, carried it to the register, and took it home. It was one of the best purchases of my life. It’s actually a compilation book, combining Child of the Grove and The Last Wizard. Child of the Grove is really the story that I devour, though Last Wizard has my favorite character in the series. It’s such a well rounded story, so I’m going to break each into their own paragraphs.
Child of the Grove could have been a very disjointed story. It starts with a Prince in a kingdom on the brink of war, and follows his story for quite some time. We learn about the mythology of the world, his mother, who is a mythical being, his struggles as prince, and the war they are fighting. All of that, and he isn’t even the main character. His story concludes and we move on to his descendent, several generations later. Again, we follow her through her trials, meeting with a strange being in the woods, bearing his child, marrying the man that loved her all along. And still, the story moves on. Only then do we get Crystal, her daughter, who is the true hero of the piece. She was created to fight a war, the same one that started with her ancestor, and their enemy has only grown stronger. And what an enemy. He is flawless. He is funny, sarcastic, and sexy. He is evil, but we understand where that evil comes from. He is stronger than her, but we still have hope that she’ll win. Truly a wonderful story.
I won’t say much about the Last Wizard as it would spoil the ending of the first book, but I will say this. Lord Death, in these novels, is one of the most original, most interesting, most incredible character I have ever come across. My heart breaks for him even now. Sometimes I wish I were a millionaire and could just throw money at things until they happened so that I might turn this story into a film, only to see him. That’s all I need out of life. My favorite character, in all of literature, bar none.
Note to Self: 