Recommendation Lists

This is my eleventh Top Ten Tuesday post. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s theme is:

Top Ten Books I Would Want On A Deserted Island

 Photo by Jo@net

I decided immediately that size matters. I need to not get bored on this island by myself.

1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J K Rowling

It’s the biggest Harry Potter. End of.

2. The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works

Because there are so many of Shakespeare’s plays and poems that I haven’t read, and on the deserted island, I might finally have the time. Hopefully not though, because I’d still really miss the internet.

3. Burning Your Boats: Collected Short Stories, by Angela Carter

I own this, it’s large, and I’ve yet to finish it. Angela Carter is one of my favourite authors and I could happily read the stories from The Bloody Chamber over and over again.

4. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy

I enjoyed Anna Karenina, so why not?

5. Ash: A Secret History, by Mary Gentle

I’ve been meaning to re-read this for ages. Oh, and it’s the longest fantasy novel ever published in a single volume.

6. Adorkable, by Sarra Manning

Longest YA Sarra Manning book.

7. SAS Survival Guide: How to survive in the Wild, on Land or Sea

Obviously. Gotta live so that I can get back to the internet. Oh, and my human loved ones…

8. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

So I’d have to finish it. Plus it is quite long.

9. In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust

Longest novel ever. I had to read the first volume, Swann’s Way, at university and I enjoyed it. I don’t remember very much about it but it is beautifully written, even if I did skip those six pages describing a church. I’m sure someone must have published it in one volume…

10. The Writer’s Idea Book by Jack Heffron

I can’t just spend my time on survival chores and lying around reading fiction. I have to work on my own career. And I need something to keep me going, lest I resort to ‘Memoirs of a Shipwrecked Blogger’.

Which of my suggestions would you prefer to have on a desert island?

Yeah, it’s Wednesday. Again. But it’s not ‘yet again’! Quite impressive I think, considering that this is my tenth Top Ten Tuesday post! Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is:

1. I consistently forget to renew books on time and get fined. I am slowly getting better at renewing them on time, but the problem is excabated by the fact that…

2. Some library books stay on my shelves/floor for months before I finish reading them. I have developed a strategy to deal with this: I am now only allowed to have one fiction book from the library at once. However, I have multiple non-fiction books on the go from the library and I’m working through them very slowly. But I think that’s reasonable. I can’t be expected to devour an entire textbook about marketing in one go, can I?

3. I keep dropping bookmarks in the bath!

4. When I volunteered as book specialist at a charity shop, I would let books that I liked linger longer on the shelves, whilst others went into the recycling bag. However, I also did the same thing with books by celebrity authors I don’t like – in the hope that someone who might have bought their book new and thus contributed to their fortune would instead pick it up for 99p secondhand. Maybe this one is a bit weird.

5. When it was quiet in the shop I would flick through books that looked terrible based on the cover/blurb/author and read a few paragraphs to confirm my suspicions. I also got through a few little trivia books and joke books in the quiet moments. More notably, I read the whole of Nobody’s Family Is Going to Change in the shop, over the space of a few months.

6. I jump at the opportunity to lend books to friends – because it means more space on my shelves/floor, even temporarily.

7. I often look at what other people are reading on the train, and judge them. If they have an e-reader I read over their shoulder. Usually it’s a Hunger Games or a Harry Potter, which meet with my approval. Sometimes it’s 50 Shades, which does not. Also I find it amusing if they are reading something that matches their appearance. Person in suit reading legal thriller, etc. The other day I saw a hipster reading A Clockwork Orange. I almost laughed out loud.

8. Sometimes I splash soup on books. Therefore I do not eat soup whilst reading a book I bought new. Secondhand books or battered old library books are fair game.

9. I love pretty covers. ’90s book covers, especially for teenage fiction, were terrible. I find cartoonish covers on older-teen fiction really offputting, as I did when I was a actual teenager. In my mind it makes the book look immature. It’s fine for books intended for under 15s, but any older than that and I think a more adult-looking cover is the way to go.

10. Sometimes while reading I’ll skip ahead to see what happens and then go back to read what I’ve missed. I hate this habit and I am trying to force myself not to do it any more.

Anybody share my bad habits and/or quirks?